The Art of Bombing and Getting Better Anyway | Bobby Cappuccio - 927

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He was Elvis's face for Elvis impersonator. But he was on Saturday Night Live and he used to just did you ever hear of a sitcom in the United States called Taxi It?

him in a comedy club one night over Nigerian geography. Yeah, I don't know, maybe a story for another day. I love Jim Carr for his Jimmy Carr for his delivery, his timing, and his ability to think on his feet. And I don't know if he really thinks on his feet like that or he's just established so many patterns from incredible preparation, so somebody could say something off the cuff, like when he invites the audience to heckle him and you can tell he's having a really great time and

he's just brilliant and ruthless and hilarious. That could be thinking on your feet. I think what it more likely is is tens of thousands of hours of preparation. So he just has a pattern. There's just like barely anything you can say that he's not prepared for, even if he has no way to prepare for that exact heckle. So Michael McIntyre. Michael McIntyre for his one his physical comedy and his observational comedy is just amplified. It's hilarious and it's just it's light like he can make light

of the simplest day to day thing. I just I love Michael McIntyre. He makes me happy listen to him. There's plenty of other people in that category, some of who I probably should not mention. I like from your Country, Jim Jefferies. I think he's an outright legend. I just love his delivery as well. So there's quite a few of them. What about you? Who are some of your favorite comedians and why.

It's just I listen differently or who I'm listening to or how I listen, or I don't know if it's because of my relationship with speaking and creating ideas and starting to drill down in that that I'm also seeing and learning patterns that align with comedy. And I don't know, something has really shifted for me. So it interests me how our relationship with our humor changes based on who we are, what we know, what we But we think it's just this simple, Oh someone's funny or they're not.

form of flattery. Some people think stalking is, but I don't think that's correct. But I I'll never criticize a comedian even if it's like, Okay, you know, just him or I just don't resonate with them. For me, But if somebody, if you're watching a Netflix or you're watching a YouTube show or they're on TV, you are looking at an unimaginable level of preparation, outright failure. They have completely died on stage epically so many times. A lot

of them still do. So where my wife got into an argument with Dave Chappelle, which was mortifying for me because it's like I wasn't what was mortifying for hers. I was not on her side like Dave Chappelle's up on stage. I was like, do not embarrass me in front of Dave Chappelle. Right. So, this particular comedy club is where a lot of a lot of a listers would just rock up and they would test out new material. So they're coming, oh, can I get on stage? Or

what do you GUNA say? No? Right, so, and they would try this material and so much of it is just horrible because they just wrote the joke like three days ago and they haven't practiced it. And it's like, you're watching this. It's like a year from now. This is going to have people in bits on their next special, but it's going.

going to resonate with that. Some people are gonna hate me for that, you know, like when you're saying, like you got to get used to everybody dislays you and just this vitriol and criticism, and it's like, yeah, it's horrid, and it wears on me sometimes to be fair, but for the most part, I just know I have to keep going in spite of how many people dislike me.

enormous attack that was the most vulnerable. I watched it probably three times and I sent it to people. It was the most vulnerable. Honest, this is happening, and I feel really embarrassed, and it's also kind of funny, and I just want to show you you and this is how I feel, and of goosebumps thinking about it. It was so brave. But I love I love comedians that can be really funny and then just really real.

kind of connect to other people, you know. And then and of course there's this, there's this like working out your stuff in front of an audience by giving something to them and getting some acceptance back from that audience. So I think that there's so many layers, like comedians are a special group of people for me personally, Oh god, what was I think Britain's got Britain's got talent? Like all those shows are amazing. I used to just oh,

my wife, you's just watch episode after episode. I'm like, oh god, this is painful. But think about this for

a second. How many you'll resonate with this? How many superbly talented people who are as gifted, hardworking, deserving as any household name would have been a nobody just because they did not have the vehicle, and then these shows put them on stage and it's like the world can see WHOA, this person's got something that's amazing, Like Britain got talent moves me and Simon Cowell I think I think Simon Cowell is a legend because you can tell as much as he does not have any patience to

humor fools. On the other end of that, you can tell how someone who is deeply invested in hardworking and brings something real to an audience moves him emotionally. You can see it. You know, he's not like a warm and overtly fuzzy type of person. It's not like a walking Hallmark card. You can see like how it makes an impression on him. So I think, like so many people have been brought into the world that we don't even know about. I love those shows.

really clever. They're very clever. What they're going to talk about, what we're going to go through, how they're going to make it land, all of the little bits and pieces, and then at the end, and that's exactly how it plays out, and it's just bloody clever. Like I think that I'm intrigued by how cleverly shows are put together and how much thought it's not just and how it's

not always just humor. It's sometimes it's it's funny, you Like, I find myself laughing just because I'm like recognizing that they've done that.

I would try that, like maybe finger painting. So I'm enrolled in a finger painting class now, thank you.

It was called Mighty Mouse. It was about this little tiny mouse that had like powers very similar to Superman, and so he would have a little mouse cape and fly around and you know, he would just shout here, I come to save the day, which is really arrogant, like, if you're going to be a superhero, you're screaming that shit. You would never hear Superman like like screaming that stuff.

So the Mouse was a bit of a twat. If we're gonna be honest and Andy Kaufman used to do this thing where he would lipsync but he didn't know any of the words, and you would see him and the skid is he's getting more and more nervous and flustered because they know the words. But then every time the chorus hits, he would put his arm up and sing, here I come to save the day, and then he would go back to being confused. And the timing it was so genius. You would think that there's nothing funny

about that, but it was epic. But he would experiment with things and when he bombed, it was funny, like he would tell the worst jokes on stage, like you know your friend who finds a joke so funny they're laughing at their own joke and they can't continue, but their delivery is atrocious, and you're laughing not because the joke is funny, but because of how funny they find their own joke. And they have no business telling jokes

to anybody, not even the best mates. He would he would do that, knowing full well he can masterfully deliver it, and he would even stop and go no, no, no, wait, wait wait do you get it? Do you understand? And just keep going. And it was just if you find value in dying on stage, And like you said, curiosity, I think curiosity key to life.

Amy at no risks to me personally. So he's like this guy who I'm not going to mention his name, who's a comedian. He's like, yeah, just put your name down. To tell you the truth, there's a very little chance you're gonna get called. Oh really, Oh okay, I'll put my name down. I'll try this. And then like I was one of the first people called and I was like, well, what are you talking about? You said, I was, ah,

screw it. So I'm just gonna drink my chemet and yeah that's Belgian ale by the way, and I'm just gonna hang out and wait for my skit. And then I tried to walk straight up on stage rather than going through the green room. So the host hated me, just hated me because I didn't know where to go, what to do. I just like stumbled on stage. I sat down on a stool. I did my first just leaning on a stool and yeah, and then it was

really tough like I had been. I had delivered at that point, like I don't know, easily over fifteen hundred seminars of my.

It doesn't. But I would imagine quite a lot of people that go up are working comedians and they're just looking to get as many reps as they possibly can, test out as much material, and they probably have stuff that they had written down and they're just trying to practice it in front of a live audience. Yeah, So I would imagine those are the three categories. I think the biggest category is probably the latter, although well I

may be completely wrong. There may be a comedian out there go on this sky doesn't always talking about please right end. We want to know.

was just so beneficial for speaking. And it was really funny because having done the learning around structure and structures and processes and ideas and creating content that I have over the last year or so, and especially since starting the course I'm doing, it's shifted my race because any other time we have had a chat about or anyone has talked about getting up on stage to do comedy, I was like, that is the bravest thing ever. Never in a million million years would I ever do that.

But I sat in that conference and I was like that I feel a bit of a pull to doing that, and I'm like, what where did that come from? Like that because it is terrified still terrifies me, but it's not the outcome of getting on stage, because I know there's so much underneath. It's like, it's the process, oh, I for this relationship with the ability to prepare a skit and make it happen. Like there's a lot of different skills that get honed in outside of just standing

up to deliver it. There's all the preparation, Like we did we did story Slam in Queensland. That was unannounced until we got there and I won it, and what was called is looking back and going Ah. There was a lot of skill sets, so there was the ability to be for that to be announced in the middle of an event, the first World Becoming event, and we had between ten pm and eight the next morning to enter,

so we had no time. I had to think of a story, and then we had one hundred characters to describe the title and the gist of the story that everyone would be voting on, and the people that the top six were going to be doing the story slam, so you had to be really clever and concise in creating a storyline out of one hundred characters. And then we had three minutes. Yeah, so we had then, and that didn't get announced until lunchtime the next day, so

we had to eight thirty. Between eight thirty and twelve, everybody voted, and then at four pm, right before the end of our workshopping and our day our conference, they announced the six and then we met back for dinner at six pm, so we had about two hours to go and have a shower, get ready for dinner, and have a bit of a plan for our three minutes

on stage. And it was brilliant to go through that process because I learned a lot of well, I observed a lot of things that I have over time been able to develop skills around that allowed me to have the capacity to practice the new things that were open to me in this experience.

very hard skill. Like something came up in a meeting today where the MC of an event that I was doing, he had said something about, you know, like putting the work in and learning things, and somebody took that as a personal attack, like he doesn't even know you, right, And like someone in the meeting of the debrief somebody brought up you know, people have no idea what it's like for a speaker up there, Like if you say one thing or you mispronounce a word, people will jump

on you about that, like have you ever done this? Especially when you have people doing like all day workshops or a couple of hours of a presentation, do you have any idea? Like what goes into that stuff is brutal And I'm not saying like you know, because you're getting on stage, so obviously there needs to be an expectation and delivery is critical and it needs to be

engaging just as much as it's informative. But I don't think people who don't do that appreciate all the preparation that goes into it.

Am I really connecting with the audience? Like if you've had enough preparation, and obviously in the first couple of years doing this, that's a big ask, but you should be able if the ad even if the audience isn't speaking, they're still communicating. You should be able to take that communication, make a decision on the fly and restructure your entire presentation right there in a split second and have it

be cohesive. And I was over preparing, Like normally, if I have any PowerPoint or all, it's an image or video something that I cannot say. I think when people are trying to read bullet points, as fun as that is for them and listen to you, they're missing something because there's context there and there is that emotive impact.

If I wanted to put everything I needed to talk about on a PowerPoint, I would just send out a PowerPoint presentation, do the reading and your own like you know, leisure and just like why why rock up to the actual session. So I was started doing a lot of things where and there was also trying to meet everyone's expectations about how they thought I should present or what

they weren't happy about even though they're not presenters. So I was doing all this stuff that I've trained speakers to never ever do, and it showed, you know, like you get up there and you get oh that was a that was a good presentation. Yeah, no, oh that was very interesting. No, that's horrible. The subtitles there is you wasted our time. If somebody gets up like, oh that was interesting. Oh, I mean I learned something that was good information, Like you should have sent an email.

You want to impact people on an emotional level when you're speaking. It is about influence, and because the world to influence has rubbed people the wrong way in the past, what I mean by influence is the ability to positively affect the character, development and behavior of someone or something like a team or an organization. I got that definition from the Encoded World English Dictionary, so it's legit. But that's kind of like that's the game you're playing.

I think like yourself and like Harps and a lot of the people that I respect in speaking, I am very off the cuff and very in tune with connecting with the audience and going where we go together. But in the middle of that learning about even kind of the neuroscience of how people take on the information that

we present. So how am I presenting that? How much am I presenting and expecting people to retain And are they having a good time and having emotionally resonant moments that also translate to things that stay with them once I leave the room.

to where you got to in your career. I attended a seminar one day and the information was amazing, and ever since then, I've just been applying it for me. Like one of the things I came up in the meeting today is somebody wrote in an eval, oh wow. I really like the references to these books because I always want people to know what I'm saying right now, like my stories are me some of them, and the way I'm delivering is me, but the information's not me.

I didn't come up with any of this, And even if I did come up with it and create a model around it, it's because I probably heard it from twenty different sources that I'm putting together here. Read this book, read this study, and they're like, oh, we love that, because now we can go after the session's over and

go explore what interests us about the topic. Like that's the highest outcome I'm looking for is I now can go out and pursue my own curiosity because they're not going to remember ninety five percent of what it is that I said. But if they go out and dedicate themselves to a lifetime of learning for a subject matter that has value to them, that's brilliant, Absolutely brilliant.

are you doing? So I started noticing that, and I also started noticing I didn't like being up there. Like last Friday, I was working with an executive leadership team for a college, and I love working with these groups of people. And as I'm in the convention center, you know, not a feeling when you're walking through the convention center, and as you're walking through it, you're just picking up more and more energy from everyone, like you're just expanding

and expanding, expanding. I'm walking towards the room, I'm like, what's this room gonna look like?

eating your sandwiches, you can listen to this guy. I want to be here, And I started realizing I don't want to be here like I would want to be doing anything else, like oh, getting up this early in the morning, And I realized, what is happening to you? So for a lot of different reasons, I was struggling

with burnout. So I was completely toast. I said, you know, one of the things I need to do is get back into my authentic speaking style because this whole scripting out word for word and trying and going over it and trying to remember it, this shit doesn't work for me, right, I know it works like actors do that all the time. I mean and by the time they deliver, though, like they make that their own. So the script's only like ten twenty. For me, it was like fifty percent of everything.

You're on the wrong path because you're stressed out and you're not thinking properly and you're doing the same you're making the same mistakes that a lot of people make. So you need to reset. So I went to Rakovic to reset. It's a great place to reset. Very cold and came back. So, okay, let me try something not different, let me go back to the way I'm used to presenting, and it just it's been getting better and better.

I really wanted to do a great job for him, and I was like, oh, I could tell he was disappointed, and you called me. He's like, my team is doing better already. They loved it. They loved everything. You had to say they used it. It worked immediately. I can't thank you enough. I was like, oh, okay, so I was off base there. So I think getting out of your head. It doesn't matter. Here's the thing. It doesn't

matter how well you perform. What matters is how connected are you to the audience and what's the state of you bring into the room. I'm listening to the audience. If I feel from the audience, I feel for myself that I am flowing. I'm not forcing anything. I've done enough preparation. I'm adapt I'm adaptable. It's the information's not coming from me, it's flowing through me. I'm like an antenna.

That's when I know I've delivered. Now are there people that are going to write, yeah, I didn't like this, or oh I love that. Yeah, of course, Like I did a session and I prepared thirty hours for one hour, and people like, oh my god, that this person like was so prepared, like so many layers, and somebody wrote I thought the presenter was completely unprepared. Superficial answers that's

always going to be out there. You know, they're always going to be in the audience, and you have to if I get twenty percent of that, Okay, I need to change something. If that's like a couple of people, you're definitely going to get those. You should you shouldn't take those seriously, and you shouldn't take be that was amazing. That's presentation I've ever shouldn't take that seriously either. You know,

you know where you're at. How do you know? Because you do a lot of speaking and you're you're you're like really good at it. So what's your litmus test?

I love connecting, I love being in the room with people. Podcasting is quite consistent for me. It's it's almost every day doing my podcast on the podcast with Harps, and there's a lot more ebbs and flows in just daily life, and there's been times sipped from the very beginning of this journey right up until definitely this year, I've just

been a shit of a year. At times where I have been in the middle of conversations and I've thought beforehand, I should just cancel this, but I'm not one to cancel, so I just kid. I feel like I'm in a funk. I'm tired, and i just don't feel like I'm going to bring my best. And then in some conversations, I just feel like I'm doing a terrible job as a host.

I'm like, you are so terrible at this, Like this feels like a question answer podcast and not your usual flow of conversation, and I really beat myself up and get down about it, and I'm like, oh God, And eventually I'll have a listen to it. Sometimes it takes a while because I don't want to listen to me being shit, And occasionally I'll listen to it and be like, ah, what was the problem. There was no problem with that.

That was not clunky, Like I thought that was clunky, and that wasn't clunky, and I didn't sound however, I thought I sounded. So it really interests me in how we because we are emotional beings and energy driven beings.

How do we? And it was the same with boxing, It was the same with thinking that you know a performance was shit, And like I always tell a specific story where I was sparring, and I remember, I can so vividly remember this day where I sat down afterwards and I took my head gear off and my mouth guard out, and I was just kind of staring at the wall, frustrated at myself, pissed off. And my coach comes over and he goes, what's the matter with you? And I go, just I just frustrated. I'm sick of it.

I'm sick of being so shit at it. And he looked at me and he goes, yeah, no one in this gym has ever put pressure on Carly the way you just did. That's the best you have ever sparred. Now, Carli was worlds at more advance than me and a few weight divisions, maybe two or three weight divisions heavy.

I'm in a small ring and she and to hear that feedback, I was like, hang on, I think I'm sitting here under the guys that I am so shit, and I'm embarrassed about it, and I'm frustrated by it, and I'm annoyed that I don't know how to get better. And then my coach comes and says, hey, that's the

best you've ever sparred. And on top of that, as a little fucking tiny little novice here, you've just put more pressure on one of our girls than most people have ever Like, how do we trust ourselves to keep going?

I don't really blame him, but he said nothing. He has an he has an amazingly productive creative day because of craft, because every day he has worked on his craft. So he walks in on set and he's feeling amazing. He's going to produce something special. He walks onto set and he's feeling completely like shit, He's going to produce something amazing. It's craft. It's just keep going and doing the reps. But like you know this better than anybody,

it's not about doing the reps. It's not about like, Okay, I've done like four presentations this week. It's about how you do it. Okay, What am I looking for? What's the main thing I want to convey? How do I want people to feel? Okay? I presented what happened? Right, Like, what if I could go back in time, rewind and do this whole day over again. What went particularly well here? What was I really pleased with?

stick with that that got really good soundtrack? Maybe it's that. Okay, if what would I have changed? Why? And is there anything that I didn't anticipate that happened that I was surprised by? Like what surprised me? What was novel about this particular session? What did I learn? You keep doing that and then you prepare based on that, like you carry all that over into practice for the next one. I think you'll get better and better. So it's a value.

It's it's it's getting up, doing the repetitions and evaluating what happened and what do I do next?

not just the doing of it. Like yes, it's a performed like, yeah, this most of what I do relies heavily on performing well doing it, but I don't do it. I didn't start doing it because I performed well. I started doing it because something about the doing of it captivated me and made me want to perform well. Right, And then I think that subconsciously we can fall into the trap of well, one day I'll just feel like I'm good at this, and that never It never happened.

In boxing, I'm aware. I was aware that I had a skill set. I was aware that I won more than I lost. I was aware when I got titled. I was aware that I had capabilities and had and improvements. But in the middle of that, the driver of it was always I'm doing this to get better.

own head and puts you in the moment. It puts you on stage, it puts you in in connection with other people in your audience or sometimes you know, you could find out where there's meaning in something by just trying shit, because I don't think I agree with you. Where if there's something meaningful, something you value, how can

I express this value? For some people that's public speaking, for some people that's making music, or there's also I was just fucking about and I found out in a good way, right, So he was like, like, what I got up in front of an audience. I didn't want to be there. Oh, so it's sad. So a couple of weeks ago, Dennis Weightly died. Dennis weight Lee was a public speaker. He was like one of the godfathers of the self help industry, you know, like if if self help was a mafia, he would have been one

of the heads of one of the five families. And he just he was the first person I was ever introduced to. And I met Dennis. Actually, we've hung out, we've we've had big nights out actually, and you know, I kept in touch with him for a bit. There's

another lesson there and then stopped. And he was the first person I ever listened to where I said, oh my god, I didn't know people expressed ideas this way, and I was enthralled because my boss was driving around and he was like, Okay, I want you shut up for like thirty minutes, which, as you well know, epic esque and just just listen to.

She like, all right, you're coming back. So I was like, I don't know, I'm gonna throw up, Like I don't want to do this, and they were It was the worst. Both of those things were the worst experience ever, especially the big group. But then people would come up to me and say like, oh wow, that was so helpful for me. I got something. What there was saying is I saw something possibility for me that I didn't see

before that, and that connected to my value structure. I wasn't even aware explicitly what my value structure was, but I knew the exchange of ideas and dialogue and discussing possibilities and creative ways forward was something that enthralled me, you know, at a table with two people, not like three hundred. But from that day forward, I think the next five hundred times I spoke, I wanted to throw up right before every single time. But drawing something happened.

I was so connected. I disappeared, so I had no awareness of what I was feeling in terms of fear and anxiety, and after it was over, I had this euphoric feeling. It was just incredible. Oh my god, I just love doing this. So for me I didn't know. Oh, speaking as how I can contribute, I.

that's really there's something there. And then a boss of mine, a company merged, and then I got thrown into this networking membership he had and fuck Bobby, the terror of standing up in front of there was thirteen people in the room at this first one thirty. The terror I had to stand up and speak for sixty seconds to introduce my name, the name of my business, and what we did to my peers was terrifying. I remember as they each went around and had their turn, my mind

just went blank. I'd written it down, I'd practiced it all night, I had it. I'm pretty sure I had it written in front of me, but I didn't want to read it because I hate that. But I just remember sitting there and having this empty, blank mind and I couldn't hear what that was. I couldn't hear what the other people did. I don't know what they were

saying because I was so fucking terrified. And eventually here we are, like, it's it's so crazy where new thing, and you're saying with the improv like I did that not because I wanted to do improv, but I was by the time you introduced me to Dave Razowski, and I had no fucking idea what improv was. What is improv? I literally did not know you could have said gobbledygook to me, Dave is a gobbledygook coach. That is what I heard when you said Dave's an improv.

I was a little bit afraid of Dave. Actually I still am probably a little bit afraid of Dave because I was like, this guy is so free and in the moment and creative and express like it.

It took Dave like four months. I could just see Dave sweating in sessions with me, just just sweat pouring down his face, like he probably canceled his sessions after me. It's like I'm just gonna have a lie down. It's just.

my friend. They're standing there in front of the world going I'm gonna punch you in the face real hard. I'm here with an intention of beating you and you might get hurt. And there's something about that that for me, was very appealing in its honesty and very real. I think that the improv was a place where where I get so that taught me how to function within that boundary set. And then improv was a place where there were different rules and still rules, but self expression there weren't.

There wasn't hey, this is what you have to do. It's hey, there's actually there's no way to do this. Here are some rules to give you a structure, but now you just have to you just have to be and do whatever comes up. And I think that I can often find myself looking for answers in this course I'm doing with the structured ways of processing thought and structures ways of I don't know coming up with what we're presenting. I don't work within those structures, and my

brain implodes. I go, I don't know what. Just tell me the fucking answer. Just tell me the answer, or just put me on the stage with no plan. They're the rules. You either do it for me or just put me on the stage and I'll and it'll happen when I'm there because i'll because that's the structure I know. So I think that improv is a place where you just have to start using a new muscle and being

okay with it and having fun and going. There's no implications if you get it wrong, someone's not going to knock you out. You're not going to get CTE. You're just gonna You're just gonna be there and you don't have to be funny.

And that's the same as a speaker. People people think you're on stage because you think you're good, but actually you're on stage because you want to be good. And I think there's more different and there's.

I was like, Oh, isn't that beautiful? That is why at the core of what we are as human beings, I believe it is art because that's all there is. I think that is the deepest level of existence, and it's something that is disappearing from all world pathologically. And I don't know, we could probably do a whole episode about what's causing that. I don't know, but I think when you think about when do I feel most human

at the core, it's that definition of art. It's when that level of art is occurring, whether on screen, in concert, right on stage, or at a coffee shop between two people that are completely disappearing in dialogue and conversation communion with one another like that. Shit, it's powerful.