Speaker's Tools
PRESENTATION TOOLS
Effective Use of Humor in Presentations
by John Cantu
Recorded as part of Fripp's "Preparing & Presenting Powerful Programs" Tape includes tips for all three levels of speakers: Beginner - want to use humor or just beginning to use humor. Intermediate: Using humor and trying to refine your comedy voice. Experienced: Very comfortable with humor, looking for new wrinkle or twist.
Sampling of what tape contains:
Stage one, level one - Just beginning to use humor: How do I actually insert humor into my talk? How do I use humor without making my talk sound like a comedy act?
Stage two, level two - Speaking professionally but not yet using humor with ease and comfort: How do I deal with inconsistent responses (big laughs one night then little laughs for same line)? How do I deal with no laughs? How to PLeaSe your audience with Personalizing, Localizing, Specifying.
Level three, stage three - Speaking professionally and have developed fairly effective method of humor: Comparing the professional speaker with the professional comedian. Quickie guide to creating original humor.
AT001JC - One (1) tape (35 minutes) or CD $15.00
How You Can Increase the Humor Content of Your Vignettes
by John Cantu
You'd be surprised to learn that many funny stories speakers tell are not the simple recanting of some random occurrence of incongruous actions, nor are they the fortuitous result of a series of funny coincidental events, but rather were created by taking a real event and looking at from the perspective of 'what are the elements that can be twisted, turned, bent and skewed' to give a more humorous slant to the reality of what happened. You can discover these principles for your self and you can insert them into your talks and presentations to any degree that you desire.
This tape will enable you to study your personal role models, heroes, and idols with regard to humor and to enable you to see the structure of their humor, listen to the rhythm of their wit, and develop your feeling of confidence to the point where you're utilizing your own innate sense of humor.
AT002JC - One (1) tape or CD $15.00
The Story Behind Awesome Storytelling Fripp
Fripp with David Garfinkel, world-class copywriter, and San Francisco comedy legend ,John Cantu
Tap into the gold mine of your own life experiences to create a lucrative keynote you can give anywhere!
Hey, even though I am one of the principals on this tape, I say you gotta get it. Great real-world examples.
What sets the truly great speakers apart from the rest? Quite simply, it's the power of the stories they tell. In these special 2 audio tapes, you learn how a bout with cancer and a brush with death gave comedy coach John Cantu a humorous - yet riveting - keynote he now delivers to audiences of all kinds. His rollicking signature story was created in a collaboration process that only took a few hours.
Cantu teamed up with Patricia Fripp and David Garfinkel to turn their unique Impactification process back on his own work. (Impactification is the proprietary process that Fripp, Cantu and Garfinkel - known as "The Three Musketeers of Speech writing" - use together to add stage appeal, personally congruent humor and marketing magnetism to corporate clients' presentations.)
You'll learn how to use the same step-by-step collaboration techniques yourself. The Three Musketeers will explain how they rapidly turned Cantu's near-death experience into a hilarious, all-purpose speech.
Also, you'll discover how you can personalize the little-known techniques used by the master
performers, top marketers and marquee comedians, all to make the stories in your next speech... simply awesome!
By the way, you don't need to undergo a life-threatening experience yourself to benefit from this program! That's because as an added bonus, The Three Musketeers will also outline how they took a simple conversation between two airline passengers and reworked it into a story so dramatic that it's now worthy of a Hollywood movie! In short, you will learn new techniques of adding stage craft. . . sales sizzle. . . and professionally-honed humor that will help you with each and every presentation in the future.
About the presenters: Cavett Award winner Fripp is an internationally-renowned charismatic keynoter and speech coach of extraordinary talents and abilities. Garfinkel is an award-winning business journalist, "Guerrilla Marketing" co- author, and world-class copywriter. Cantu was co-owner and producer of the Holy City Zoo nightclub, and is a San Francisco comedy legend whose students have written for Bob Hope, Jay Leno and Johnny Carson, among others. Cantu himself has written for Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller and the Smothers Brothers.
AT004PF - 2 hour cassette or CD pack $40.00
McKain And Mayfield on Humor
by Mark Mayfield, CSP & Scott McKain, CSP, CPAE.
This is a great tape. Runs one hour and is full - FULL - Cantu says, "F U L L" of solid tips and techniques. Excellent. Highly recommended.
John Cantu:This was given to the National Speakers Association Northern California chapter in January 1997. It is one hour of solid tips. With my extensive background in comedy/humor, it is a rare pleasure when I hear someone presenting ideas that are new to me. This talk did that.
On this tape, Mark Mayfield has the opening remarks and 20 seconds into his very funny presentation about why he doesn't like being up on platforms, I sat up and took notice. I said to myself 'This guy is the real deal. He has a comedy club cadence to his talk.' I could tell from his speech rhythm that he'd been on a comedy club stage numerous times. I had the good fortune to sit next to him during the luncheon and we swapped stories and sure enough, not only did he have comedy club experiences, he also was a former night club owner. I have heard to many speakers talk about comedy and humor and basically they relate 30 or 40 funny stories, that, while they are entertaining to listen to, don't really give you advice you can use to create your humorous talk. Mayfield and Scott really give you good solid advice. If you are wondering whether to by this tape or my tape - - - buy both. They give you different material and different ideas.
AT001MM - One (1) tape or CD $15.00
How to Speak and Be at Ease at the Same Time
by John Cantu
Full of insight that will help YOU Fully Conquer Stage Fright by the legendary comedy coach John Cantu
You will learn Two Dozen Simple Techniques:
- Eight things you can do to eliminate stage fright before you even arrive at the speaking venue.
- Six things you can do when you are on site before you even start to speak.
- Eleven things you can do to keep you calm and make it less stressful while you are actually speaking.
- How to do an effective self-debriefing after your talk for better future self-control of nerves.
SPE001JC - PDF format $9.97
The Art of Riffing
by John Cantu
You will benefit from this even if you're a speaker who uses little or no humor
You will learn two dozen simple techniques:
- How to move the next level, so your presentation is perceived as fresh and not as a canned presentation being given for the 500th time.
- How you can take your prepared material and tie it into banter with the audience to add aura of immediacy to your set.
- How to tie your material into audience suggestions that, at first, don't seem to have any connection with what you had planned to say.
- How a top speaker used these techniques when speaking in a foregih land with remarks that were being to be translated and totally stunned her listeners.
- How you can banter with your audience and be comfortable as you think up ad-libs on the spot.
How to notice things around you that are constant gist for riffing so you can be the life of the party with unplanned humor.
SPE003JC - PDF format $9.97
Add Humor to Your Speech
by John Cantu
Have you always envied those who seemingly have the knack of using humor effortlessly? Have you always believed that "Humor is a natural gift only some are born with?" Or if you have made people laugh, has it always been a mystery to you why people are suddenly laughing? Then you are in for a revelation.
Humor is a skill. And it is a skill that you can develop.
Modeled on the comedy writing workshops Cantu ran at the Holy City Zoo for years, Add Humor to Your Speech is slanted on creating and presenting humor for speakers. You will get the answers these questions:
- Do you have to be born funny?
- Can we learn how to be funny?
- Should speakers try to do jokes like a comedian?
- How can I discover my own authentic style of humor?
- What is appropriate humor for business settings?
- How to find appropriate humor for a particular business?
- How to add humor to a serious topic?
- How to find humor that does not violate copyright laws?
- How to get fresh material for free?
- How to ad lib
- How to put humor into our talks
- How to support your material with physical humor)
- How to PleaSe your audience
- How not to bomb with humor
- How many laughs do you want your speech to generate
- How many laughs makes for a good humorous speech
- How to use humor without using jokes
- What's timing and how do you get it
- How long do you wait after a laugh to start speaking again
- How do we edit humor
- What do we do after we edit the humor
- When you get humor from a source - is attribution necessary
- Is there any hope I can be successful adding humor?
With a built-in quiz to help reinforce what you just learned (with reference to the audio clip containing the answer.)
QA001JC - Audio Format: CD $29.95
Add Humor to Your Serious Speech
by John Cantu
Originally presented at the National Speaker Association's 2001 Western Education Workshop - titled Humor for Non-humorists: How to Write and Deliver Humor in "Serious" Speeches
On adding humor to a serious subject: "I went to two other coaches before I went to Cantu. And they couldn't help me with it. And then I went to Cantu and we worked on it and he showed me how to do that. And I thought that it was just incredibly brilliant of him."
Holly Stiel
http://www.thankyouverymuchinc.com/
Learn how to use humor as a tool to increase your visibility and increase others' enjoyment of your presentation - even if the subject is serious.
1. Holly's serious story with added humor
2. John on how he helped Holly look for nouns/verbs
3. Holly's second not so serious story - Your own creativity
4. Nobody is naturally funny at first
5. Adding humor to your vignettes
b. How much humor to add
c. Taking the pressure out of being funny
d. As a speaker you are virtually bomb proof
e. How to find humor in your topic
6. Laugh lines are not always apparent
7. Humor is a judgement call
8. Opportunity knocks
With a built-in quiz to help reinforce what you just learned (with reference to the audio clip containing the answer.)
QA002JC - Audio Format: CD $29.95
Humor in a Business Context
by John Cantu
Humor in a Business Context was originally presented for an MBA class at The McLaren School of Business in San Francisco, CA
Humor is most effective in a business context (besides helping you generate higher speaking fees) in making even the most dry material interesting. Your audience will be grateful for not boring them, and you will impress them favorably making them less likely to skip training sessions.
Humor is a proven method for generating sales.
Do you want to arouse an audience interest and keep their attention on what YOU are saying. Humor is recognized around the world as the best way to disarms hostility and get a less than willing audience to listen to your viewpoint whether they finally agree with you or not.
Humor helps you to connect with your audience. It is an easy way to build rapport and increase the value of their experience as they can more easily understand and retain your message.
THE TOPICS:
- Humor Is a Tool
- Why Use Humor
- Reagan - The Power of
- Using Humor Gets Easier
- Follow the Laughs
- Dissecting a Joke
- Truth Joke
- Anthropomorphism
- Observational Humor
- Complex / Simplex
- Word Play
- The Reverse Joke
- Comedians Do Not Improvise on Stage
- Material
- Accountants
- English as a Second Language
- Bomb Proofing Your Material
- You Don't Think It's Funny but it Works
- Be Conversational
- Joke Books
- Laugh Journal
- Stories Your Friends Laugh at
- Wall Street Journal
With a built-in quiz to help reinforce what you just learned (with reference to the audio clip containing the answer.)
QA003JC - Audio Format: CD $29.95
How Not to BORE Your Audience to Death!
by John Cantu
Now you can learn Cantu's exclusive performance secrets for public speakers, comedians and business people who aren't professional speakers but who have to sometimes give presentations and who want to avoid being dull. What are YOU waiting for?
You can forget someone's name. You can forget what you want to say. You can forget a prop. You can leave some material out. You can put material in you didn't mean to. You can mispronounce words.... You can do all these things and still give a well received talk. But the one thing you can't do is be boring.
In this video John Cantu shows you how to make your material connect, your voice reach and your body electrify an audience.
You'll Learn:
How to blow your audience out of the water by getting them to identifying with you on an emotional level.
How to make boring facts and figures interesting.
How to find the right vocabulary that makes people WANT to hear what you have to say.
How to rehearse your speech so the audience wants to REMEMBER what you say.
How to divide up your content so you finish on time and don't run over.
How to project your voice.
How to rehearse with a microphone so it becomes an organic part of your speaking persona.
How to make your gestures dynamic, natural and big enough for the stage.
How to be exciting and memorable by learning Robin Williams' secret for using the platform.
How to use humor and be bomb proof.
Timing - what it is and how to get it.
VD002JC - Workbook and DVD $39.97
CANTU'S UPDATED 2011 GUIDE TO 101 WOW SITES TO BOOST YOUR COMEDY CAREER
by John Cantu©2003-2011
Here are 101 web sites John collected that can cut years off your learning curve as a humor writer, humor performer, or just provide valuable information for you if you are a serious humor fan.
- CHAPTER 1 That is one of the most commonly asked questions of any creative person. And the only answer is, "From everywhere." But one does have to have that initial spark of an idea that then works like the proverbial grain of sand in the oyster's shell that is transformed into the pearl. Here are nineteen sites to help you with ideas on creating your first monologue or humorous speech.
- CHAPTER 2 Once you have your monologue or speech written you have to practice your delivery. Effective delivery depends of effective use of your voice and your gestures. Here are nine sites to help you support your material with effective vocal control and body language...
- CHAPTER 3 There are techniques that one uses as a speaker that are different than the techniques you use as a stand-up. Here are six sites to help you if your career choice is that of a humorous speaker...
- CHAPTER 4 Perhaps the thought of standing in front of others and delivering you humor ideas verbally is not what you wish to do. Maybe you are more comfortable writing your ideas and letting others read them. If that is the case here are eight sites to help you be a better comedy writer...
- CHAPTER 5
- CHAPTER 6
- CHAPTER 7
- CHAPTER 8
- CHAPTER 9
- CHAPTER 10
Those of you who know John's abilities as a teacher and his insight and passion for comedy won't be disappointed. It's an easy read and an even greater resource. This ebook will help YOU keep your audience (clients, friends or relatives) laughing.
SPE004JC - PDF format $9.97
The Light Touch by Malcolm Kushner
by Malcolm Kushner
If you are a business person this book will show you how to gain a competitive advantage with humor (even if you can't tell a joke).
Very good book with solid real world examples. Especially for you if you think "I am a serious speaker in the business world and I am afraid humor will lessen my credibility."
Includes:
- How to manage conflict with humor
- How to develop personal anecdotes that make your point
- How to use humor to boost morale and build effective teams
- How to use humor in negotiations
- How to handle awkward and embarrassing situations with humor
- How to use humor to improve letters, memos, and reports
and much more.
Transform your sense of humor into a powerful business asset. Highly recommended. A main selection for Macmillian's Business Book Club; also translated into: Dutch, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish.
Full Disclosure Notification: Cantu is quoted as a 'comedy guru' in this book.
BK001MK - Hardbound 270 pages $18.95
Leading With Laughter ®:
How U.S. Presidents Use Humor to Relate, Motivate and Communicate Want to use humor in your businessfor the light touch but afraid it might erode your authority? Now you can study how six past presidents used humor on-purpose, successfully.
You will hear actual audio clips of six of the most powerful leaders in the world: George Bush, Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Lyndon B Johnson. You will learn from their mouth, how to use humor in business so you too can "lead with laughter".
In this collection of unique historical recordings, Malcolm Kushner, a humor consultant, former student and sometimes collaborator with John Cantu, demonstrates how you can use humor to gain attention, create rapport, and build goodwill -- even if you can't tell a joke. Buy your set now and start leading with laugher.
AT007MK - Complete Six Volume cassette set $49.95
Cantu's Comedy Wit and Humor Wisdom
©1999-2003 by John Cantu
Cantu Humor was a series of articles John wrote during the last four years of his life where he sums up for you what he had learned and taught so well.
Valuable articles on
PERFORMANCE/ON-PLATFORM OFF-PLATFORM SKILLS: How to do it
HUMOR DEVELOPMENT TECHNIQUE: How to write it.
Below are the articles on Humor Writing Development Techniques.
- The Substitution Technique:
- Writing the reverse joke
- Humor Principles - #1
- Observation and Inspection of Wordplays
- Writing entertaining and realistic dialogue
- Complex/simple Contrast
- Anthropomorphism
- Exaggeration Technique
- The Essence of British Humor - Understatement
- Thirty Years of Comedy/humor Writing - Some lessons Learned
- The Word Play - Words That Sound Alike
- Off-The-Wall Humor
- Finding humor lessons For You in the Work of Gary Larson
- Your Humor Lessons In The Work of Monty Python's Flying Circus
- Doing Full-scale Sketches
- Some additional thoughts on sketch writing
- The Misdirection Humor Technique
- The Take-away Joke and It's Cousin the Negation Joke
- The Combo Technique
- The Truth Joke
- Formula Jokes
- The Fill-in-the-Blank Joke Technique
- "Ignoring the Obvious" Humor Technique
- The Endless Segue Story Telling Technique
- The Use of Overlays to Spice Up your Humor
- Literal Sarcasm Humor Technique
- Pattern Jokes
- The Art of Riffing
- Writer's Block? Look Around You and Create
- Increase Laughs by Using Funny Attribute for Quote Authors
- Increase Laughs by Using The Relabeling Humor Technique
- The Misunderstanding Humor Technique
- Your Material's Acceptance
- The Alphabet Humor Technique
- Increase Laughs by Using The Time Machine Humor Technique
- Don't Pre-Judge Your Initial Ideas
- Increase Laughs by Using Humor Through Contradiction
- Increase Laughs by Doing-Things-the-Hard-Way Technique
- The "Hammer & Nail" Humor Technique
- Physical Jokes - Jokes That Have a Physical Component to Them
Here's a practical example from Cantu's Comedy Wit and Humor Wisdom
Cantu's Humor ezine all together in a PDF format -
269 pages of digitally indexed articles on Performance/Platform Skills & Humor Writing Development Techniques
30 years of expertise for only $29.95
