94: How the Science of Humor Can Turn You Into a Better Businessperson with Peter McGraw

BiggerPockets Business Podcast

BiggerPockets

Business, Careers

4.8 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2021

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does humor and business have in common? At first glance, not much, but after digging a little deeper, there’s quite a lot that humor can teach us about business. Peter McGraw, behavioral scientist, author of Shtick To Business and The Humor Code, and host of the Solo Podcast kept wondering why we find certain things funny. He decided to put it to the test in his lab, HRL, the Humor Research Lab. Peter discovered that we often find things funny when they’re wrong, but okay. Threatening, yet safe. Things that make no sense, yet make perfect sense. Most importantly, you don’t want to be the person who thinks they’re funny, but actually isn't it. You have to think funny, not just be funny. You have to fight the status quo constantly, to make material that people will find outlandish, but true enough to laugh at. But how does that relate to business? Peter brings some great business examples that followed the same flow of most comedy writing routines. Take AirBnB for example, when they first launched the idea, most people thought they were crazy. I mean, who would want to sleep in someone’s spare bedroom or mother-in-law suite for a weekend? It turns out, almost everyone in the world would. These kind of outlandish but great ideas come through a process that Peter calls “Sh*t-storming”. Contrary to regular brainstorming, sh*t-storming is when you throw out crazy ideas, and sometimes, something will come out that is so crazy, it actually works. Besides AirBnB, Peter relates this to Tim Ferris’s cold calling method and the P90x workout system as just a few examples. Comedy and business aren’t that far apart in the idea creation stage. Follow Peter’s advice and your business won’t get laughed out of your next meeting! In This Episode We Cover: The underlying theme of humor and why we find things funny How writing jokes and creating businesses overlap Fighting the status quo to create something that is great How to create a “chasm” so your customers love you and you’re haters don’t The importance of keeping an idea journal to write in Saying yes to happiness, regardless of the financial outcome And So Much More! Links from the Show Peter McGraw's TEDx Speech Joel Osteen's Church Tony Horton's Website Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill Airbnb Tim Ferriss's Blog Barry's Bootcamp Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/bizshow94 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So, you want to be a marketer. It's easy. You just have to score a ton of leads and figure out a way to turn them all into customers. Plus manage a dozen channels, write a million blogs and launch 100 campaigns all at once. When that's done, simply make your socials go viral and bring in record profits. No sweat. Okay, fine. It's a lot of sweat. But with HubSpot's AI-powered marketing tools,
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1:28.3	Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast show number 94.
1:34.3	But in general, most products, most services, most offerings start very niche. And the idea is to delight your customers within that niche and don't worry
1:47.0	about the haters because you're never going to make them happy anyway.
1:53.0	Welcome to a real world MBA from the School of Hard Knocks where entrepreneurs reveal what
1:58.2	it really takes to make it. Whether you're already in business
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	...

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