What The Funk?

0:00 We're back on what the funk with my bud ceiling. That's right. Bud ceiling. Aha. I don't know what people know who Bud ceiling is. We do. He's the guy who lets steroids run rampant. He got to

0:14 go to the Hall of Fame, but a bunch of baseball players didn't. Good job, bud. But anyways, we're not here to talk about baseball today unless we want to, but John ceiling, not totally an oil

0:25 and gas guy. You've been tangential to it. You've been around it You're a comedian. You've got a very unique approach. And I've actually been really excited to have you on Ben Sirksina introduced

0:37 us. He said, hey, you guys are both Jewish. So you'll probably be from. It's all fun. But now, you know, John, as I told you, we like to get to know the people, the personalities. I think

0:48 this is going to be a fun one. I think we'll laugh a little bit. So question I always asked my listeners is, who are you? Who's John? Sure, well, I'm gonna kill two birds with one stone

1:01 So, I'm not as much of a comedian as I am a former sales guy, enterprise technology sales guy who uses the process of stand-up comedy, which I've performed for 11 years to help sellers better

1:14 understand their audience and why their audience should care about them. So, I kind of do sales enablement, memorable messaging through the process of crafting jokes, and ironically, that isn't

1:23 one.

1:26 That's real. So, that's the first thing of who I am The other who I am is I'm based in Montreal, and I bear no relation to Bud ceiling, and I'm really glad for that, because he also murdered the

1:37 Montreal Expos, the last team I ever cared about in Major League Baseball or any baseball for that matter. So, you touched a sore spot as a way to really launch this conversation. So, we're off

1:49 to a bit of a shaky start, Jeremy, but I thank you for having me. You're welcome So, we talked about this, the first phone call that we had.

2:01 I'm from New Hampshire, which is only about my house was like three hours from Montreal growing up. Yeah, so You know depending on how long they wanted to shake you down at the border going into

2:12 Canada It would be maybe four hours, but we used to go we always used to say right You know the drinking age and in the US is 21 the drinking age in Montreal is if you can see over the bar so When

2:26 when somebody turned 18, you know senior year of high school, whatever freshman year college We would just go up to Montreal. So I have some really formative memories Well, I don't know if I

2:35 really remember everything yeah, but on St. Catherine Street Going to some expose games and there were even a couple of red socks expose games that I went to up there Which were pretty fun. It's

2:48 definitely not like the the glitz and the glamour or whatever a Fenway park It was kind of a dump you got dip dip spit stains all over the field. You got this gross carpet But I saw, this was when

3:01 Vladimir Guerrero was there and he hit the furthest home run that I've ever seen live off of Tim Wakefield, Rest in Peace, Tim Wakefield, but he must have hit that ball 500 feet. It was crazy to

3:12 see. They had some good players. Yeah, that last part checks out. He was the best expo I ever saw. Yeah. And I grew up in an era with like Carter, Dawson, Raines is kind of my favorite player

3:23 from my childhood, but Guerrero was like, wow, he was incredible. But your assessment of the Olympic Stadium is correct It is just such a claiming garbage dump of a place that we're about to pour

3:34 a billion dollars into to fix a roof so that we can have like two monster truck rallies there. I didn't even know that it still existed. It shouldn't, but it does. And that's another sore spot.

3:45 So we'll move on from that one. I wish they got a team. I don't want to move off of this one yet. I wish they got a team up there. Montreal itself is a beautiful city. The food is awesome. The

3:54 women are beautiful, right? It's very cultural, it feels like you're in Europe. And then the baseball stadium was not representative of the city at all back then. And you've got the water, I

4:05 could just picture just an unbelievably beautiful modern baseball stadium in Montreal kind of sitting on the river. So I don't know, maybe it'll come back at some point. We'll see. Well, first of

4:17 all, you made a grave error. It's not a baseball stadium. It's a stadium that they built for the Olympics. And there has been a push to bring back a team to get a, there's definitely interested

4:30 parties locally who want to bring a team back to Montreal. They want to build a stadium right downtown because where the Olympic stadium is, it's kind of in the East End in a weird neighborhood.

4:41 You know, it's not a, that neighborhood's evolved. It's a better neighborhood than it used to be, but it's in a strange place and it's not accessible for our after-work games. So look, I don't

4:51 really care about baseball these days, but I would have mind if a team came back at all, I think it'd be great for the city. Um, you also left out how handsome the men are here. Oh, sorry. Yeah.

5:00 I totally slipped my mind on that one, but present company included, right? And just final note on baseball. If you look behind me, that's Pedro Martinez, my favorite baseball player of all time.

5:11 Understood. Also a former Montreal expo. I know way to, way to keep breaking my heart. I'm sorry, sorry. Thank you for Pedro. So, uh, John, tell me a little bit about your, your upbringing

5:22 Jewish guy, right? But you grew up in Montreal, did you go to school up there, uh, you got into sales. Tell me a little bit about kind of growing up and all the way through college. I'm going

5:31 to avoid all the theology talk. Uh, I don't know if my faith really is, is important here, uh, grew up in Montreal, spent my twenties in, uh, in Toronto, uh, which is a rite of passage for

5:43 English Montrealers. We moved to, we moved somewhere else. We leave Montreal, but I came back, uh, in the mid 2000s, um, to join up I was selling for Oracle, selling ERP, and I joined up

5:55 with an Oracle -

5:58 I was a partner, consulting practice here in Montreal. It was a boutique. And I thought they were doing some good stuff with all my clients that I was selling to. They were doing a lot of services

6:04 work. They were cleaning up a lot of messes. And I just thought, it'd be cool to work for the customers versus, you know, for a large technology company just trying to push up their share price.

6:16 Not always concerned with what customers' needs are.

6:21 And I joined this firm and it was, you know, spent six and a half years there and I've never left Ah, you're in question, man. I'm still, I left them. Since we don't have a ton, well,

6:32 actually I do have a good amount of Canadians that come on this podcast because with oil and gas naturally, Calgary is sort of like a sister city to Denver. That's sort of like the oil and gas

6:42 capital of Canada. So I've had a good amount of Canadians, but mostly Western Canadians. So I want to know a little bit about some of the differences between Toronto and Montreal. So here in the

6:53 US, we just have a completely narrow lens of things, that's just sort of our hat, right? So I'm curious a little bit, talk to me about some of the differences. To me, Toronto feels like a

7:04 Chicago or New York or something like that. Montreal feels like they think that they're Paris or something. So talk to me a little bit about some of the differences between those Canadian cities,

7:14 Montreal and Toronto. Well, look, I don't think Montreal thinks it's Paris. I think it thinks it's different than the rest of North America, which it is, because Quebec is primarily a

7:24 French-speaking province. There are English people here, myself included. There's a sizable group of English people who live here, have been here forever, who come here. But as a result, yeah,

7:35 our attitudes are different. Toronto, I also like to say that Toronto isn't, a lot of like Quebecers, French Quebecers will say that, Oh, Toronto's like the States. I'm like, No, it's just

7:46 Canada. It's just an English place, but I've lived in Toronto, it doesn't feel like. the US. at all. Right. But Chicago is a good parallel. I wouldn't say New York is the parallel that.

7:58 There's parts of Denver actually that feel like Toronto, actually. Really? Yeah, I don't know the neighborhood, but I was walking around. I'm like, the architecture is pretty similar. Yeah,

8:06 it's not on a lake or anything. But it just got a, there's a similar vibe there I found. So there was this between Montreal and Toronto. I mean, other than the language, they work a little

8:16 harder than we do. No, it's true. That's not a joke. I mean, it's there's that's where Bay Street is. That's where our Wall Street is. So there's definitely that. It's a bit more of a

8:25 workaholic culture. It's a bit more sprawl. It's definitely more congested. But Montreal has grown in unique ways the last few years. And we have a, I still think we're the cultural capital of

8:35 county, even though some will say it's Toronto. Look, they're both great cities. I really like, I like living in Toronto. I like living in Montreal. And they, they both have their ups and

8:45 their downs and you know if you can handle a second language. you know, then Montreal's a good spot for you. Which city is colder? Oh, Montreal, there's no doubt. Yeah, Montreal, it's

8:57 absolutely freezing. We went up there for Y2K New Year's and the walk back from whatever we were doing, getting pizza, dinner at the bar or club, to the hotel was like the coldest that I've ever

9:08 been in my life. It is brutally cold there. And where is it more expensive? Oh, Toronto by far. Toronto as well. Yeah. Although Montreal has gone since the pandemic has gotten considerably more

9:23 expensive. We had this reputation for being a dirt cheap place to attract a lot of artists. But there's

9:30 a housing shortage, rents have gone up. Everything's gone up here. Housing prices are pretty expensive. So we're catching up. We've narrowed the gap, I would say. I wouldn't say we're catching

9:39 up, but we've narrowed the gap. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, we're not going to go away also just to be clear. We're not as cold as you remember it. Things have changed. in Montreal. I don't know

9:49 if we've moved south or something like that, but the temperature, the winters aren't as brutal as I once remember them, and as you remember them. This has been a mild December in general. I mean,

9:59 I'm looking outside right now. Our seasons here in Colorado can be weird. I think April is one of our snowiest months, but it's got to be like 60, 65 degrees out, big blue sky, no snow on the

10:11 ground. Generally speaking, this year has been a little bit warmer. Some are all the way through. So Montreal will become a, like New Hampshire, a more desirable place if temperature keeps

10:23 ticking up a couple degrees as we go, you know, through the century. So there's order that people can't cross meant, you know, they can just walk over and say, we're setting up shop here. So

10:34 just be mindful of that. You're trapped there. You can't leave. Now you can't leave. I'm fascinated by by you, particularly because when I think about sales, right, particularly quota-driven

10:49 technology sales. It's serious business, man. It's hard, right? It's cutthroat. And here you are bringing comedy into it. Like, how did this happen? What was the evolution of you saying, You

11:05 know what? Everybody is so serious and stressed out and it's so quantitative and numbers-driven. Why don't we have some fun? And why don't we differentiate ourselves? And why don't we bring humor

11:16 and true comedy into the sales and marketing process? Like, where did this idea come from and how do you do it? Yeah, so when I started doing comedy as a kind of a hobby to escape my tech sales

11:31 career, people said to me, John, it's so great that you're pursuing your passion. And I said, To be clear, my passion isn't comedy. It's never having a job again.

11:40 So I started this to kind of, 'cause the first time I was on stage, I realize this is sales.

11:47 except how much crap you're compliment. Like I need to show this audience, I understand their challenges and their pains. And I need to quickly earn their trust, get them to say, Hey, this guy

11:58 gets us. And I need them to keep reacting emotionally to what I'm saying in order to keep them engaged. And if you kind of like look at a bit or a joke or one line of the comedian does, that's kind

12:14 of like a sales opportunity Maybe it's a longer one, maybe it's a larger one, maybe it's a smaller one. But if I get the audience to laugh, it's like I close the deal. Yeah. And if I can get X

12:25 amount of laughs in the time that I'm given on stage, whether it's five minutes, seven minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, it's like I hit a quota. And so you need to keep working on your

12:34 opportunities and keep refining them. And so that you can keep hitting quota over and over, if that makes sense. So there's so many parallels between sales and standup. And I always thought that

12:48 it would be really cool. Because I worked at Oracle, there was all kinds of SAP humor that would go around, sure some folks in the oil and gas industry have heard of those guys. Yeah, yeah,

12:58 bigger companies. No, I actually think that

13:03 memory serves, and it's been a while. I kind of think SAP is a greater foothold into that space than Oracle does, but that's a whole nerdy, different discussion for another time. Maybe I'm wrong

13:12 on that, I don't know. No, you're right, you're right Yeah, okay, and so I remember like I was on a call with one of my pre-sales engineers, and we were doing a demo for a prospect or a client,

13:25 actually, on global financial consolidation software. And I, as the sales guy, my job is just kind of tee off the demo, say, hey, you told us you were looking to solve problems A, B, and C.

13:38 We're gonna show you a demo, and if, you know, if we can show you that we can address these three pain points, really, like, is there any reason why you wouldn't buy from us? You know, that

13:47 was kind of like a tactic we used, but like once the demo would start, I kind of like don't tell my old bosses this, but I kind of go to sleep. Like I - Yeah, no, you turn. You turn your camera

13:57 off, you go to the fridge, you get a beer, right? And then you put your feet up. That's what we do with sales guys, right? Well, there was no cameras back then. We were working in the office,

14:06 and this is ancient history perhaps, but you know, and I just remember saying I'm gonna kind of tune out, but there's always like these happy years that go off at certain moments, right? Sure So

14:16 like your ears become radar to detect certain things, and I had a really dry sales engineer, and he had an accent, like a thick accent, and he was really boring. It's global financial

14:27 consolidation. It's a boring topic, no matter who's delivering it. And at one point, he told this joke that was about the challenges of global financial consolidation, and

14:40 the customers laughed, like they were existing oral customers, they found it funny, and I'm like, Oh, yeah, he made that up on the spot. That was really clever. I'm a flater, we're doing

14:48 another demo for the same software. He told that joke again, and he got the same reaction. I said, Oh, wait, he does this on every call. Do you remember the joke? No, God, no. And he's

15:04 getting the same reaction, he's using it at times to earn attention, to demonstrate credibility, to be likable, to show them he really understands their challenge, and they're waking up, because

15:16 it sort of resets their attention span, and does all those other things, I said. And so I said, would it be cool, now that I know how to write jokes, and how comedy works a little bit, to help

15:25 more sales teams, and more marketing teams, craft humor that shows prospects, I really understand this challenge, and how it impacts you, and maybe those around you, and that's what I set out to

15:35 do, and that's what I do today. And is it content that's created for, like, outbound emails, you know, phone scripts. things to happen within demos. Like where is this most applied? Recording

15:47 videos and sending those

15:52 to people over a video or things like that. Like, you know, where does this come into the process? Well, that's the beauty of it, all of the above. Okay. So I've counted 15 to 20 touch points

16:02 and channels where if you take a short, quick one liner, we'll call them ice-breaking bit of humor that it can be adapted and repurposed for 15 to 20 different channels and touch points So cold

16:16 email, absolutely, it's the hook.

16:20 You know, there's seven cold outreach channels and all. The only one I would say that some of the jokes can't use are right on a cold call, but I've kind of crafted something called, I've created

16:29 a type of joke called the cold opener where I call you up and I say, Hey Jeremy, this is John Seelig in this call. It's colder than blank. Right. And the blank is meant, 'cause cold is this

16:41 great word that can be used in many idioms reflect human emotions. So if you're angry at me, you're gonna give me a cold stare. Yep. If you're nervous about something, you're gonna get, or

16:53 trepidatious, I guess is the word, you'll get cold feet. If you're scared, flat out scared, you break into a cold sweat. And there's like five others like that, or maybe even more. Yeah. And

17:05 so, you know, what makes your target persona break out into a cold sweat specifically around challenges that you can solve.

17:16 So if anyone's listening, it's like, what problems do you solve? How does it make your process, why are they scared of the problem? And all of a sudden, you can work out a cold opener that says,

17:25 hey, this email, this call, this voicemail is colder than blank.

17:31 That's a good hook. Well, that's it, right? It's you're highlighting your relevance. You're standing out, you're saying something different. Is it going to get you a million laughs? I'm not

17:41 telling you it is, but you're to be different than everyone else reaching out to them. Um, and you're showing them to understand their challenge and the goal is to segue into a conversation about

17:50 that challenge.

17:53 Do you have metrics or do you believe that it actually leads to better, more responses, better engagement, more authentic human connection when you leverage jokes as part of a sales process,

18:06 particularly in an opener. So I have a client who told me they closed some, some revenue off a cold email They didn't quite give me metrics, but one of my clients told me that he closed 160 K and

18:19 they were small SaaS, 160 K of net new revenue in just two months using these ice breakers at their trade show booth to engage visitors to the booth to educate visitors like on the problems they

18:33 solve. And when he told me that I fell off my chair. So they were like, this is the CRO and he's only had a team of five reps And I wrote them a whack of jokes. I do something called humor as a

18:44 service. humor as a service has you got it. You've pronounced it really well. I like that.

18:52 And the goal is not to arm them with like a whole stand of comedy act. It's like find a joke or two that you feel will be a great icebreaker to show prospect to explain prospects or what problems you

19:04 you solve for them, how you make their lives better and get into a conversation about those topics. So that's the best that's the best use case and the best metrics I have. I have individual reps

19:16 who message me and say this works so well while their bosses aren't always tracking it because they're working about a million other things. I can show you so many screenshots. You know I

19:28 use the same joke on so many people that I reach out to. This is on LinkedIn so if I send you a LinkedIn connection request I include a note inside the request and I say Jeremy, I hope you accept

19:41 this request despite it being colder than the relationship between sales and marketing. Nice. Yeah, I can actually pull yours up. It was something funny. I remember that. That's it. And it's

19:51 like, people say to me, I'm accepting this is the greatest request I've ever got. I'm like, it's kind of sad if you think about it 'cause it's not the greatest. The bar is kind of low people.

20:02 It's really all we're trying to say. And it doesn't take that much effort to stand out if you grab a pen, paper, dock, and just start to get some, sort of get your relevance to your prospect on a

20:16 paper and learn a few fundamentals of crafting humor. It can be done and it can be exploited over and over to delight people and to get into conversations. So is this like your full-time job? This

20:29 is what you do. This is what I - Humor as a service. You've started a company where you do humor as a service. Well, humor as a service is a product offering within comedy writing for revenue

20:38 teams.

20:41 Do you have any competition?

20:45 I mean, I don't know. I'm sure there's some copywriters. I think the difference between me and some of some people who may compete with me is that they're usually a little younger and I've worked

20:55 in, like I sold ERP, I sold data warehousing solutions and reporting tools. I've been a consultant, so I've seen like operational issues. You know, I've worked for some folks who invest in

21:11 companies. So like I understand operational issues and I could go into the reeds a little bit more and business process challenges. And sometimes if you have four years experience of selling, you

21:24 know, like a20 a month SaaS tool and you go into the sales coaching game, you might be lacking some expertise and some insights. Yeah, that's a fair statement. Yeah, so I kind of think I bring

21:36 some real world insights and some creative.

21:44 I love it. I kind of want your job now. If I'm being completely honest, but no, I mean, they're of course just being in sales. You have a platform to leverage humor. So I do think the fact that

21:55 you have that background, right, of being in sales and then the stand up comedy experience

22:02 really, really has kind of naturally led you down this divergence of both of those into a company. So congratulations on following what you want to do and hopefully smiling a little bit more every

22:15 day because this is what you want to do, you know? Yeah, listen, some people not going to tell you everyone in the world gets what comedy writing for revenue teams is all about.

22:26 You know, some people say, Oh, you can't train our reps to be funny. And I'm like, I'm not going to train your reps to be funny. We're going to use the process of writing humor to better enable

22:34 them. Right. So that's a bit of, some people don't get that. And that's fine. I wouldn't expect them to. first blush.

22:43 And sometimes, you know, maybe you do just need the messaging versus the enablement piece. Some companies, I love writing jokes about really esoteric problems, business problems. So for example,

22:54 work with the company they were doing.

22:58 They're a software that helps privacy and marketing teams manage their global privacy compliance efforts. It's really boring stuff. It's fun to just convert the real problems they're solving into a

23:13 short, quick message that people go, Oh, that's funny. That's a lot of fun.

23:20 Love it.

23:23 Do you still do stand-up comedy or you're done with that? I'm in and out.

23:29 I go through moments where I'm like, You know what? I want to get on stage and test some new ideas and I want to try and refine them because that the process is the most fun part. But comedy is,

23:39 it's a scene. And, you know, if you're not in with the right people, sometimes you don't get onto the right show. So I get frustrated with that a little bit, even though sometimes material, my

23:48 material gels and it's coming together, but there's these roadblocks. And I'm a bit older than a lot of people who run things. And I've sort of learned to just accept that I'm

23:59 gonna use comedy more for what I do to kind of like listen, I speak and I present. So kind of it gives me some stage time and it helps me just get a little more comfortable But I perform for roughly,

24:11 I don't know, like when the pandemic hit is kind of the beginning of my slow down point. Right. And I used to do clubs and bars and festivals and crappy open mics as well. So I did it all for, I

24:24 don't know, eight years or whatever before the pandemic hit. Well, I think a lot of people have aspirations to do that. I mean, I think deep down I kind of do, but I've always been worried about

24:35 like, well, what if you forget a joke? What if you freeze? Has that ever happened to you? You ever wanna go to a stage or forgotten your talk track? Is everyone on Kryptonite? Yes, because I'm

24:47 a writer more than I am a performer who wants to just interact with the crowd and say spontaneous stuff. Like I'm a guy who writes stuff and I wanna deliver it. I wanna remember it and I wanna

24:56 deliver it. And my third time on stage, my first two times went pretty well. All things considered, they went fine. And my third time on stage, I hit the Royal Trifecta of Suck, which is like

25:12 the room was only comedians. And it was my first time performing to only comedians. And I had seen these guys do really well. I thought they're really funny. And I got on stage and I looked out

25:22 there and everyone was just sitting with their arms folded, like, who's this guy? Like, who the frick is this guy? And so, and they were younger than me and I'm feeling judged 'cause I started a

25:34 bit of an older age. And

25:37 I did my first joke. and it had gotten laughs, the first two shows, and it didn't get the laugh. Yeah. And they're judging me, and I blank so hard. Like, I just forget it all, or I think it

25:53 was like early on or somewhere in the middle, and I just, I didn't wanna like walk off stage. I had watched somebody before I had actually gone on stage, blank, and just started walking off stage.

26:03 I said, I don't wanna be that person. So I had all my notes on my phone, but I had to find them, I was super nervous, and it took me 10 minutes, but I got through a five minute set. Yeah. I

26:14 also got heckled by a comedian in that set. So I forgot my stuff. I bombed, I got heckled by a comedian who was on sister with psychedelic drugs.

26:27 It happens to everybody, right? And then I blanked and I bombed some more. So to answer your question, to this day, that is the most, that's the thing PTSD and comedy is like forgetting your

26:40 stuff. And that has been the hardest obstacle for me to overcome. Because I know that when I'm presenting, I'm not always, when I'm performing, I'm not always in the moment. I'm sort of like, I

26:54 know that people sometimes can see that I'm working hard to process. Like what's in my head and how do I pull it out and present to them as I wrote it on paper? It's not always the healthiest way to

27:04 do stand up But

27:07 over the years, I've learned to let go of the script here and there, but that's always been my biggest challenge. Yeah, and then you can't dwell on it in the moment. It's almost like you're like

27:16 being a guest on Jeopardy or something like that. And there was a question that you knew the answer to, but you got it wrong. And you got to move on quick, right? Instead of just thinking about

27:25 that one answer because then before you know it, there's two, three more questions and you didn't even click your buzzer, right? So you got to be on your toes and totally I value and understand

27:34 that. Want to do a little bit of rapid fire questions for you because I want to get in your head a little bit more Put you on the spot. That sounds creepy, but all right fine

27:46 What is your favorite comedy movie of all time? Oh, man, it's probably well There's three and they're all different. So can you humor me no pun intended and just allow me to go through all three

28:00 Of course, and then I got to tell you mine, too. Sure. So dumb and dumber is like It's so funny it. I don't know if it holds up. I haven't washed in a while But it just for a while it held that

28:11 that place but something in the last few years has come along and Probably pushed it out because it's a little bit more modern and that's super bad That's my favorite. Yeah, super bad. It's super

28:24 bad. It's so it's so on the nose and I don't I don't know how those guys did it. It's just so good. It's so fucking fun Yes. So funny. And the rewatchability of it, and the fact that you keep

28:40 laughing when you watch it for the 17th time is

28:47 just unbelievable. There's so

28:52 good. From there that's so real, to my experience growing up, I was kind of like all three of those kids in one, different points in my life. And I just - That's funny. And I remember, I don't

28:57 know if you remember the scene where Seth is on the soccer field with Evan? Yeah, of course. He's telling him something, and the gym teacher's yelling at Seth to get out of here. You're not in

29:07 this class and he kicks the ball into the stands and the teacher says, You're getting that. He goes, No, I'm not. Like, that was just - I had like 17 guys in my high school grade who would do

29:16 exactly that and say exactly that. No, I'm not. Like, I got the bully type, but also the funny guy, yep. And the third one, it's not a conventional comedy, but I think it's so brilliant. And

29:27 like, it doesn't really compete with these other two is the Big Lebowski. It just makes me laugh so hard. It's weird. I feel like the first time that I saw that, I was expecting it to be the

29:35 funniest movie ever. And I was more just like trying to follow it and thinking that it was trippy, right? But then as you watch it more and more, the humor starts to really, really play. And of

29:45 course, shut the fuck up. Donnie is a line that I've used time and time again. So I love it. I love it. And nobody rolls on Chavez either. Correct. I mean, there's so much funny stuff in there,

29:57 whether you get it or not, the first time around, the more you watch it, like you said, the subtleties come out, the humor isn't always in the lines, it's in the characters and the quirks. And

30:06 I just think it's such a brilliant movie and it makes me laugh pretty hard as well. Right, and even the darkness, right? Like in the serious scene when they're putting, you know, dropping down

30:14 these ashes over the Pacific and then the wind blows back in their face and blows the ashes on them. I mean, just that like all that stuff is just so epic. So

30:24 I love it. Who is your favorite stand-up comedian? Oh, it's a question I hate 'cause I really don't have one. I'm not that big, stand-up comedy nerd. I'm not someone who has watched it. Like,

30:38 there's a whole history of stand-up that I've never paid attention to. It, and it changes. It just comes down to who did I see most recently and who made me laugh recently. Look, there's, I put

30:48 comedians into two categories. There's offensive edgy ones, which some, I'm sure people listening to prefer to this prefer I don't know why I'm thinking that, but I just gonna say that, 'cause

30:60 more people do like the edgy stuff, but there's also the clean ones. And I, look, it's harder to be clean. It's harder to be funny and clean, and I have so much more respect for those guys. And

31:10 the guy on the clean side, who I really love lately, I'm not saying he's my favorite comedian ever, is Nate Bergazzi. I

31:17 don't know who that is. He's inexplicably funny.

31:22 He's just, he's from Tennessee, and he's got a really low-key draw, Like, not a draw, but like. It's just low key delivery and there's just something inexplicably

31:35 you can. He's inimitable as the word like he's like no one can do what this guy does. I can't explain why he's so funny.

31:43 And then on the kind of more offensive side lately it's guys like Sam Marill and Mark Norman. I love a lot. Ronnie Ching is really funny. I mean, I love Bill Burr, but it's been around a while So

31:55 there's always the newness factor of a comedian you see and you're like, Oh man, that made me laugh. And that's what I'm into now. But there's a guy I'm going to put out there, his name is Sean

32:04 Keene, and he's no longer with us. He's from Montreal. And when I was 16, I used to go see him with the comedy works here in Montreal. And he had a

32:08 whole persona, which 16-year-old kids hadn't seen He'd come out

32:16 with a trench coat, slick back hair, and sunglasses.

32:25 And he just had a gruff, he just did gruff offensive kind of like dark one-liners. Like that was a small act. And so I recommend people kind of check that out. It might be a little dated, but

32:35 they're still pretty funny. Yeah, I mean, you listed some that

32:39 I know, some that I don't know, but I agree. One of the more fun nights of my professional career actually was in Los Angeles where we went to the comedy store. And it was just a series of

32:53 comedians presenting, I think they each had 10 minutes. And it was a lot of relatively famous comedians that were going there. It's where I got exposed to Chris Dilea. And I think Dave Chappelle

33:04 even came on, Joe Rogan for 10 minutes, just one after the next. You could see like, what's your flavor, what's your style? It must have gone on for like five hours. I mean, at that point, I

33:14 left my face hurt. You know what I mean? From smiling and laughing. Some engaged with the audience. Some didn't. I remember at one point, I forget who it was, but somebody came out and he's

33:27 just sort of like standing there and kind of checking his hat and laying the stuff and he's like, what? And the crowd's like, come on. He's like, what? Like, when you go to work, you just

33:37 start working right away, right? You know, just kind of fuck around for a couple of minutes, right? So I just thought, all right, that's a fun way to engage and differentiate. So

33:47 you're touching on something which is comedians, they know what to like call out the elephant in the room, whether it's something that's literally in the room, or whether it's something that

33:56 society is confronting. So it's about speaking about, you know, truth, things that are painful. And I mean, there's no reason why we can't do this in sales and marketing. Yeah, yeah, no, I

34:11 love it. I love it.

34:14 So you've mentioned to me as well in discussions about actually like, not being a booth babe, but being like a booth comedian. right? Like you literally stand at booths at conferences and tell

34:27 jokes and try to get people to come and see and do demos. Is this really a thing? You actually do this? Well, full transparency, I haven't done it yet. Okay. But my clients, who I mentioned

34:38 earlier, the one who closed significant revenue, they just took the jokes I wrote and did it themselves. And that's an approach. But not everybody is able to sort of kind of be a little sticky, I

34:49 guess you can say. And so I'm looking to work with companies to help them engage visitors to their booth, to sort of get the conversation started around the problems they solve, for visitor, for

35:02 anybody

35:06 at that, let's say, trade show. Alternatively, some booths don't know how to drive traffic in the first place. Maybe your giveaways and go on that, huh?

35:12 Other than, you know, so there's two, there's two ways I can help. Number one is, do you want to improve how you engage visitors to your booth? So imagine Jeremy like you're a sales guy. for

35:22 the company that I'm working with. Correct. Somebody wanders over and's like, they're kind of looking around and we have a choice. We could say, hey, do you want to enter a giveaway? Do you

35:32 want your badge scanned? Which no one does, right? But what if I say, hey, do you want to hear a joke about

35:40 project management of your, of your, what's the correct terminology? I'm going to expose myself here. But like for, let's say a project site We want, we want to measure a given drilling project.

35:52 Is that a good way to put it? There you go. Measure the effectiveness or the cost of a specific drilling project. Let's say that's what your company does. Hey, you want to hear a joke about the

36:01 challenges associated with effectively measuring profitability of a drilling project? I mean, what's that other person going to go? They're going to, the likely response is like, all right, what

36:13 do you got? Yeah. Yeah, right And so, at that point, I deliver a joke or two that highlights again. these challenges of what sucks about measuring profitability, and two things are gonna happen.

36:27 Either they're not gonna laugh, and at that point they're gonna go, Well, that's interesting, because the joke is rooted in real truth and subject matter expertise. So they might go like, That's

36:35 not very funny, but I wanna talk about that. Great, you as a sales guy, have your conversation. I'm gonna go see if I can make someone else laugh. But if they do laugh, at that point, you can

36:45 go to them while you're laughing at that. And they're gonna say either because it was a problem past, it's going to be a problem in the future, or it's a problem right now. And either way, you're

36:56 in a conversation with them about something that matters

37:01 to them. And the ice has already been broken. Meanwhile, I settle off and I go up to someone else and say, hey, you wanna hear a joke about managing profitability of your next drilling project?

37:09 Right, right. And another sales guy is standing next to me and someone's like, same idea, all right, what do you got? And it's just a way, like if I can do that all day, a seller to do more

37:21 conversations, book more meeting.

37:24 And if they're not having traffic, I'll do a five minute stand-up set every hour

37:30 with the jokes that I've written. And hopefully we can get people talking about it, engaging people. I mean, this is awesome. And then, you know, at a show where people are walking around and

37:41 talking, maybe you get some of that like, hey, did you go to the joke guys booth, right? They got like a comedian over there, making jokes, it's actually kind of good Like, this is, this is

37:51 cool. I gotta give you credit, man. I mean, obviously this is creative and it's bold. And I hope you can continue to monetize it, but I feel like I need to bring you with me to a conference or

38:02 something like that. Let's do it. Let's write some jokes, let's film some reactions to people's. That's a good idea. Yeah, and I listen, I also think every company that I work with or just take

38:14 the jokes that I write and deliver themselves, they can be recording those reactions content

38:22 for whether it's linked in so not your company page, but for people's personal brands. I'd like to do some would just get a slack message in the background or something. I did.

38:33 I'm just kidding. I'd like to do some some more of that too. You know, not too long ago, I filmed like I had a professional

38:41 tiktokker follow me around and sort of film like a day in the life. And it was just like mostly all series. So now I want to incorporate some of the lighter side. And I think what you're talking

38:51 about is exactly doing that. So I love it. Well, John, I had a blast on this podcast. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find you? Where can they reach out to you? How can they

39:04 engage you in your services and all that fun stuff? Yeah, I would say best spots are my website, J-O-N-S-E-L-I-Gcom. So johncelicom, there's no H and John And find me on LinkedIn. Those are

39:17 those are the two best spots to get all of me. Well, that's great. That's great. And hopefully you start putting some more, or you continue putting more jokes and content out there that people

39:27 can relate to. It is particularly niche, right, what you're doing now. So not everyone's going to find everything funny, but John Sielig, John J-O-N-S-E-L-I-Gcom, and you can find them on

39:40 LinkedIn. John, this was a fun one, very different from most of the other podcasts we have, but certainly enjoyable, so thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, and this has been a blast,

39:50 and I can't thank you enough.