Stephan Dyer returns to the Hot Breath! Podcast to share invaluable insights on how comedians can break into the lucrative world of corporate comedy and potentially earn $100,000 a year. He emphasizes the importance of having at least 20-30 minutes of clean material and being adaptable to various corporate environments, where audiences may have less attention and higher expectations. Dyer also discusses effective strategies for booking gigs, such as leveraging social media, utilizing platforms like Gig Salad, and networking through personal connections.

The episode highlights the significance of structuring a show that includes stand-up, improv, and audience engagement to keep corporate crowds entertained. By the end, listeners are equipped with actionable tips to enhance their comedy career and navigate the corporate landscape successfully.

Connect with Stephan here: https://www.instagram.com/stephandyer/

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• Check out our classes and workshops here: https://hotbreathmedia.com

Takeaways:

• To succeed in corporate comedy, focus on clean material and engaging interactions.
• Utilize your social media network to generate leads for corporate gigs effectively.
• Diversify your comedy show structure with stand-up, improv, and audience participation.
• Building trust with clients is crucial; demonstrate your past successes through testimonials.
• Charge based on the value you provide instead of the time spent performing.
• Customize your performance based on the client’s needs to enhance audience engagement.

So welcome back, Hot Breath of Earth.

This is a very special emergency episode with a previous guest.

He came on the show a few months ago, dropped a lot of hot fire about the business of comedy, the professional mindset it requires to be a professional comedian.

And now he is back.

He sent me a DM like three days ago, talking about the corporate comedy world he's been blazing a trail in.

And we're jumping on a live stream immediately to help give comics the goods on how they can start booking more comedy work.

So, ladies and gentlemen, hot brethren and sister, you got to join our email list to get in the goods and when we're doing these special live streams.

So please, without further ado, welcome back to the Hot Breath of Earth, El campion de dinero.

Stefan Dyer.

Welcome back.

We.

All right.

Yeah, we.

We talked on the last one.

You know, time is money, so we want to be mindful of everyone's time today.

So, Stefan, let's.

I mean, let's get right back into it, man.

Corporate comedy.

What's.

What's been going on with you?

You know, this is how I primarily make most of my living as a full time comedian.

And then you reached out with big numbers that I'm glad my wife didn't see or she'd be like, what are you doing out here?

So where do you want to start, my friend?

We'll let you kind of steer the ship here.

But welcome back.

Absolutely.

So thank you very much for having me.

I got so many messages last time about our previous episode.

So today it's actually very timely because I just kind of taught this session to my elite comedy coaching group yesterday.

If you're interested in English or Spanish, hit me up.

But it's called, this session is called how to make $100,000 a year just in corporate comedy shows.

And I have the step by step right here.

So I'm gonna be looking back and forth, but basically, let's start by the beginning.

How do you get these shows?

A lot of people hate.

A lot of comics hate corporate comedy because it's not the right setting.

It's not a comedy club.

It typically has to be clean, no swear words.

And people think that just corporate audiences are out to get you.

I kind of know both sides because I worked in wealth management for seven years at a bank here, and I've been in that corporate world for many years until I quit to do comedy full time.

So let's start from the top.

How do you get these clients?

Well, the obvious one is basically to get them on instagram or your website, and people, because they know you do comedy, they're probably going to ask.

But it doesn't happen that much because otherwise people would just get a lot of corporate comedy shows.

The other one is called Gig Salad or its equivalent.

It's basically a website, kind of like Uber, but for comics and singers and artists and magicians.

We get a lot of leads through gigsalad.com and basically, if you Google corporate Comedian Toronto, you're probably going to see my business partner Juan Cahill or me come up because it's basically, it has really good SEO.

So it's like Uber.

It gets you a lot of leads.

People can see the comics bio, picture a couple of reels, and how many gigs they booked, how much money they've made, and what the clients, if they're verified gigs, what the clients have said about that performance.

So there has to be like an equivalent of Gig Salad in every single region of the states, if not Gig Salad in the states, because I know we get leads from Buffalo, across the border from Toronto and Ontario.

So that's the second way.

The third way to get them is the Hustle, which is my favorite.

As you know from last episode, I do things a little different.

So you message five people a day.

And you just, like, you have contacts that I don't have.

Yoshi has contacts that I don't have.

So by every time you go to a party, you go at work, you go to lunch, or people comment on your reels or your stories on Instagram, you hit them up and you ask them in the.

In the dms.

Hi, are you here for the videos or for the corporate comedy shows?

Or are you here for the content or for the corporate comedy shows?

And that starts the conversation.

This is something I got from my business coach, Dan Martell.

It's called an open.

So basically that directs the conversation.

Oh, no, I'm just here for the videos.

Oh, okay.

But if they say for the comedy show, for the corporate comedy shows, then now you have a solid lead.

Probably going to say, I didn't.

I didn't know you did that.

Yeah, we actually do a lot of entertainment for companies.

Oh, okay.

Tell me how it works.

And if they're just here for the content, it's okay because now they know you do corporate comedy.

So they are going to come back eventually.

High likelihood.

Because now they know.

Chances are they don't even know other corporate comics.

So that, to me, is my favorite.

So hitting people up in person or via the DMS and letting people know.

Now, the, the fourth one is having really good pictures of you on stage and posting them every single time on Facebook, Instagram, Instagram stories, But most importantly, LinkedIn, because that's where the money is at.

If you could kind of have the picture be like you not in the suit and a tie, because that's unrealistic, but more like in a conservative or clean or kind of corporate environment where people can see like, oh, that guy could actually come to my company.

So just post more pictures about what you want to be doing and that'll lead.

That'll bring leads into your world.

And in the caption, you got to say, I did something similar to a corporate comedy show, or I did this corporate comedy show at KPMG or at Deloitte or at Coca Cola or whatever.

Now, you can't do that if you haven't gotten it yet.

But I'm just setting, telling you how you get these leads.

Now a lot of people ask me then, okay, what if I get the lead?

How do I price it?

And we used to, me and my business partner Huang, we hired a business coach during the pandemic, and he really showed us how things work in Canada and corporate America per se.

Because we've done a lot in the States as well.

We used to price the corporate comedy shows by time.

However, people will typically go for the 30 minute one or whatever.

But after getting more coaching and testing it out for many years, we realized and got to the conclusion that we don't charge by the minute because you end up staying there for two hours anyways.

You're there early.

Sometimes the event runs behind, falls behind.

So now we charge for an outcome up to 60 minutes, $2,500, no questions asked.

Oh, but it's only 10 minutes.

2500.

It's actually one hour.

2500, but it's actually 5,000 people.

2500, but it's actually 12 people.

2500 doesn't matter.

We're charging for the outcome and actually not charging for the people or the time allows them a little bit of flexibility on the client side.

So we like to really sell that angle of no limit on attendees.

And it's up to 60 minutes.

So because typically if you just do 20 minutes and charge for that, it's not even worth your time.

At times, going for $300, you got to pay for gas, you got to drive four hours and then you're just like ang, coming back.

So now anchoring yourself, we're probably going to up our prices in a couple, like in January.

But anchoring yourself at that, I think is safe.

If you're starting or listening to this in a country that is not like Canada, US or Great Britain or Australia, New Zealand, and maybe Costa Rica or Brazil or another country that doesn't have that purchasing power, I would say if you're in Latin America, probably 750 to start.

750.

$750.

Anchor yourself.

But the negotiation always starts after they say, ah, well, so you anchor yourself high.

And you're like, well, let me, let me see my calendar.

Let me analyze this because I have a couple of other leads and I'll get back to you.

But you don't, you can't like, you can't have commission breath.

You can be like, oh, okay, let's do it.

Because then they're like, oh, well, you're just playing with me now.

It's not even a, you're not even, you don't even charge that.

You just set a number.

So you got to have that kind of price integrity.

On that note, one of my students yesterday asked me, one of the, one of the guys from the elite comedy coaching asked me, well, what if it's a bigger event or a smaller event, can I change my pricing?

And I said, our coach, our business coach said something about price integrity.

Because a lot of people talk and if they know that you're charging different people different things, you're just going to get confused, it's going to backfire and they're going to get angry.

So just as a long term strategy price, what I just told you, for an outcome up to 60 minutes and test out the waters depending on your market.

So that's what I recommend in terms of leads and pricing.

Now the negotiation starts, they're going to ask for more stuff.

Are we doing good till now?

Yeah, we're, we're we're tracking.

We're with you here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So far, so good.

I do want what I asked, though, before you move on.

Yeah.

How do you get to a point?

Right.

Because I want to be mindful of the people that we have in the group who sort of watch this and listen to us regularly.

At what point do you think you should even get into corporate comedy when it comes to your material, when it comes to how much time do you have?

Like, what do you.

What do you say for people who are like, yeah, I'd like to get into corporate, but they don't have anything clean or like, I guess, what's the gauge to get into it versus Right.

So you're talking about preparing for the moment that you and, like, me and Joel, we do this regularly.

Right.

Like, but we're, you know, decade in plus.

Right.

So we know sort of that.

That game.

But a lot of people aren't.

And I don't know at what point I started doing it.

I probably just did it more out of, like, yo, these prices look much better than this bar that I just did the other night.

And I knew I had material or whatever.

What would you say sort of is your guideline for at what point should you start doing corporate?

Yeah, that's a really good question.

So Joel and I were talking a few minutes ago, and I said, when I get into the structure of the show and how you bring in the two or three comics, you're gonna find out that you don't even need to be that good or have that much time.

Like, you don't even have to have an hour.

You don't even have to be there.

We get so many of these leads that we just put the team together, send them because we're touring, make them make the margin, and just pay the comics whatever is a really good price for the time they're putting in.

But what I recommend is obviously having at least 30 minutes of clean comedy.

But the reality of things is that you're not even going to do 30 minutes.

I'll get into that.

You don't even want to be doing 30 minutes straight because what you want is a dynamic show.

And this is not the most.

This is not the friendliest audience.

It's not a comedy club.

Sometimes they don't even know you're.

You're supposed to be there.

It's clean, they want to get back to work.

Or maybe it's.

It's not an ideal scenario.

So what I recommend, and I'm gonna get into how many people the Structure, the flow is two or three comics, but as a general rule of thumb, probably 20 to 30 minutes of clean comedy because you're probably only going to do 12 minutes yourself.

And we want to get a little bit of improv in there, a little bit of games, a little bit of trivia from the client questionnaire they're going to send you.

So I'm going to get into that in a little while, but I'd say 20 to 30 minutes solid of clean comedy for sure now.

So the next time, the next stage is, oh, okay, so you gave them the price and they're like, okay, but what about you?

Do you, have you done this for other clients or can you show me videos with other clients or do you have anything that you could share so I can send it to my boss, which is all 90 a lie.

They want to see it themselves, but they're oh, I gotta socialize it with my boss.

So you gotta treat it like they're the decision makers.

Although sales 101 is you wanna get all the decision makers in the same call so you don't have to like follow up for two months and then the deal, the deal dies.

So you wanna get all the decision makers there.

So basically then what I have is two pieces of one pagers, two separate one pagers, one with the corporate stuff that I offer.

So the public speaking workshops and improper team building workshops and comedy, like at least three offerings if you can.

You could just make them up with ChatGPT and have this one pager have logos of companies that you've worked with ideally, but you've also could have logos of like comedy brands that you've worked with.

Even if you have three or four logos, it makes a big difference because they recognize these logos and they're like, oh, okay.

And then have one pager of testimonials.

So I'm going to share my screen right now and I'm going to show you what those look like for me.

Can you see my screen?

One second.

I will add it.

Let's see if.

Right here.

There we go.

Now we can see it.

Okay, cool.

So this is our 1 pager for the stuff that we offer.

Typically it has some nice pictures of you on stage.

So this is us, me and Juan doing a TED Talk in Malaysia.

Some zoom testimony, like zoom.

Some people on zoom.

So you, they know you also do zoom comedy, big stages, a short bio.

Some of the programs that we offer, very short, two to three description, like two to three sentences per program and then the happy clients.

So Here are some of the logos that we've worked with.

And as you can see, our pictures for me and Huang are like smiling, but in a suit and a tie.

So it's like a mix of comedy, authenticity and business.

In the logos side that we're talking about, you can see the TED Talk logo, Comedy Central, Coca Cola, LinkedIn, Uber telescope.

Ey, so you.

These are logos that we obviously want to put there because they're recognizable and any other company be like, oh, they went to Coca Cola.

Yeah.

Then why wouldn't I hire them if Coca Cola already hired them?

And then just a couple of titles like keynote speakers, trainers and facilitators, or comedians, a website and your number.

But this is so basically the program offering.

But this one is basically the one that we have.

Let me just see.

So the one for the testimonials is this one.

So as you can see, same layout, pretty much the same picture on top.

But here I have two sentence testimonials for every.

Not every company, because we've done like over 100, but some cool companies, bit by bank of Montreal, Royal LePage, KPMG, the University of Toronto.

So also in different industries and testimonials of the people who have.

Who hired us and what they said after the show.

So now they're like, oh, but who else hired you?

Well, all these people hired us.

You could see the logos that we worked with.

And I say the other cool thing is that we can send you a flyer with your logo and the time of the show at no additional cost so that you could send save the date for your company.

So basically, this is the holiday laughs flyer.

This is the can you hear me now?

Which was our pen, our pandemic show, and this is our Hispanic Heritage Month flyer.

As you can see, it's the same picture, just different headers, which you could probably do on Canva yourself.

And now that starts to really set the tone as it pertains to.

Okay, these guys are.

Are legit.

They've done several companies, they have these testimonials, they have the flyers.

And now the last hurdle is usually.

Oh, okay, yeah, well, no, I like it, but can I see you on stage?

Do you have, like, some videos of you doing a show at another company?

The answer to that is no, because other companies don't allow us to film them and their employees because it's a private show.

However, I have these two to three reels, maximum 90 seconds that you're going to send them.

It could be even a link from Instagram from your Reels, and then you send them these reels when they ask for them, because you don't want to, like, overwhelm them with like 17 different attachments.

You send them to them and you say, this is family friendly, this is some of my comedy.

And rest assured, this is very important.

There will be no mention in the show of sex, politics or religion, because at the end of the day, you're going to go in and out and you're never going to see them again.

But the person who hired you, they're on the line because they're bringing you.

So if the show sucks, it's on them, not on you.

You're never going to see them again and you're still going to get paid.

So you got to just mitigate all these angles and provide comfort that the show is not going to be you talking about, like a million different topics that make people uncomfortable, including sex, politics and religion.

So those are some of the things that you, you gotta, you gotta give them in the call.

Ideally, it's always a call on Zoom, because you can share a screen and if you send them too many assets, too many things in the attachments, in the email, they're not going to read it.

They're probably going to butcher the presentation to the boss, and then they're not going to like it.

So you ideally get all the decision makers in the same Zoom call, ask for how many people, ask for how many, what date, Ask where it's going to be, ask the theme.

And my favorite question of all time for client calls is, what would make this a 10 out of 10 for you?

What would make this event incredible for you?

So then they tell you all the things that they want to see, which sometimes are different than what you think is a great event.

And then all you do is just tackle what they said and do the comedy show, and then you're golden.

They're for sure gonna bring you to other departments after that.

We've been to the Same company like 12 times because they just bring us to the next department, the next department, the next department, because now they trust somebody and you're saving them the whole time of having to go on vet, book, find, see somebody, and you're probably already in the vendor system after the first time.

They're like, oh, well, but can you, could you make this show about industrial engineering?

Because we're Industrial engineers and then you say no.

However, this is very important.

You gotta educate the client.

If I make a show about industrial engineering and the show is in 17 days, it's going to be the worst event in history because comedy takes years to perfect.

So if I write a show and perform it in 17 days and I haven't even tried it, it's going to be the worst experience for you and for me.

You don't want that.

I've done this, this, this and this and this corporate comedy show works perfectly.

However, once we move forward and we get the green light and you process the invoice, I'm going to send you a questionnaire where you are going to give me information about the company, who's there, some of the funny characters, personalities and a couple other things.

And with that, we will customize a bit of the show so that it feels like it's for you.

We'll write, we'll write a few one liners and everything.

It's not going to be 60 minutes or 30 minutes of new comedy about industrial engineering, but it will have things about your company that you are going to for sure love.

So they love this questionnaire thing.

Then they feel, oh, like super cool, you're going to do it about our company.

And you're like, yeah, with all the information that you send me, if you send it to me with a week in advance, I will make sure to customize the whole thing.

And at the end, in execution, all that means is that the first five to eight minutes are going to be about them with the information that they gave you.

And you could do like a fun trivia, but it's not going to be 30 or 60 minutes of industrial engineering comedy.

You charge differently.

Do you charge differently for that, Stephen?

So we could just go through it like in 10 seconds.

But they love that questionnaire because for whatever reason they always ask about customization.

They want it to be for them.

So we just came up with this solution that pretty much everybody loves and we educate the customer that it's not a new show, but we will customize it for them.

Can you see the questionnaire?

We can.

And if you guys are listening so you can see the video on our YouTube channel in the, in the Live tab.

Yeah.

So for the people who are just listening, it's basically a Google form and it says comedy show questionnaire.

Thank you for filling out the questionnaire.

This will allow us to customize the show for your company if one of the following questions does not apply right n A so email contact info.

They write their name, company phone number and here's where the magic starts to happen.

One sentence of what the company does.

Because sometimes we go into companies at early days and we didn't know what they did.

And that's the worst thing, man, because you need to be able to know to know who your audience is.

That's a lot of opportunity for a comedy.

Which teams departments will be attending?

Because it'll be different if just marketing or just HR or everybody is attending.

How many people will be there?

From what countries or cities will the people be connecting from or attending?

What age range of the people there?

Any inside jokes within the company or team that you can share?

Maybe something weird that's been happening, something that everyone is talking talking about.

It could be from a year ago or a week ago, Something people really like about your company and or a team.

Something people are annoyed by in your team and company.

Any fun, quirky or weird facts about the company.

Constant questions that the com about the company that employees get from people outside of the company.

And here's for the improv part.

We have an improv part in the in the show where we bring two people up and we do improv games like sound effects or we tell a story or something fun in front of the whole audience.

But we just bring people, two of them to come up with on stage with two of us.

So we just ask six names of people that are willing to participate in building a comedy scene with us.

So then they give us names that are people who are typically will contribute and not like be like no, I'm not going up.

These are fun people that if they suggest it, they're more likely like we've never had anybody reject us.

They always come up.

And then the last two things are any specific people characters within the company that all employees know about and that you can share funny facts about.

And then the last thing is success stories.

We love to close every show on a high note with accomplishments that the company has had in the recent past.

So if you could share three to five, that would be amazing.

While financial accomplishments are always good, we've noticed non monetary milestones like volunteering, donating, partnerships, promotions, client testimonials, like giving an award to somebody are the most meaningful to team members.

So we always close the show congratulating them on the accomplishments for the year.

Because even if the show sucked, you're still going to end on a high note because people are going to clap and be proud about what they accomplished.

It never sucks, but trust me, you just have all these different ammo, like information and ammo that people give you.

Just to give you like a very quick example, I'm not gonna show it because, because it has names of people, but we got this questionnaire from a company three days ago and they gave us information about like 19 people and we picked the best eight.

And the way we started the show is with a one liner.

So I say, hi, my name is Stefan Dyer and I'm Costa Rican or as most people call us here, Mexican.

And hahaha.

Okay, so and break the ice.

And then I say we're going to start the show with a little bit of a trivia exercise.

So I'm going to read some things and I don't know, I don't know where my tab is.

You can see them.

Oh yeah, here we go.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna read a description in jeopardy mode and you gotta guess who the person is.

So this person always leaves early on Wednesdays to go cycling because he loves cycling more than his own job.

And people like, oh, dad, dad.

And then it always gets people riled up.

This person is 35 years old and still lives at home or whatever.

Maybe they got to give you permission to say that.

But people love if they give you the information that means you have permission to say it.

And people are super really good sports about these things.

So we started with trivia with like of these eight people and people went insane, just yelling, laughing, pointing, and now it's all smooth sailing because you already won the whole thing with this start.

Because even if the comedy doesn't go very well, the improv is definitely going to hit a high note.

And if the part after that doesn't hit very well, you're still going to end on the success stories from their own like job.

So you're always going to have different tools on your toolkit so that the show does not depend on the comedy piece of it.

I'm going to get into the structure of the show.

But before that, do we have any questions, your honor?

Well, we'll hit an applause sound effect first.

So funny.

Yeah, I, it's funny.

I was just about to text Joel like so there's, there's, this is like an amazing masterclass first of all.

So like just off the top, great material and great stuff there.

There's an element here that I want to be careful about because I feel like as you're going through this, you are talking with someone who has ex.

Like you have experience in corporate.

And I can, and I can hear it because I'm also in corporate and I've been in corporate for 22 years before I went full time comedy.

And I think there's elements that I think you should explain somehow some way and how corporate people like talk, manage, because you're.

This is all good stuff.

But I think it's important that you explain sort of corporate environments for people who have never worked in a corporate environment and want to do corporate or people who've never been inside of those places.

Because there's, there's a type of behavior.

You've, you've mentioned it, right?

Like the suit, smile, the sort of the material to stay away from, right?

Like those things are all sort of corporate type things.

But I also think it's important that you sort of overlay.

How do you know you are ready for that as a comedian?

Even if you have 20 minutes of material, what's sort of the gauge that you help people out with?

And then the other thing.

So that's.

I don't even know if that's a question or not.

That's just more just something.

It's good, really good.

And then you talk a lot about sort of just like these improv games that you're playing as part of like your package.

And I don't know if our audience has done improv or improv things.

I know from our last interview you have improv background.

You did Second City, you've done sketch, you've done a bunch of different like things.

Maybe talk about how to put together a team that sort of can do all of these things as well.

Because what you're talking about is like producing, right?

Like you are producing a show, right?

Like this is not a master class of like Stephen Dwyer the corporate guru.

This is a master class, Stephen Dwyer the businessman who's putting together and making things happen, pirouetting this entire little thing.

But it's the, it's the, it's the show, right?

Like you are making all the stuff sort of like happen.

So I think there's like little bits of different pieces that I don't want to get away from and make assumptions about that I think might be lost in some of the stuff that you're talking about.

Because I think you have to understand to do improv you gotta be good at somewhat improv you like.

And that's the key is like there's a lot of Skill sets that you're sort of bring it into this, which I think is amazing.

And in my mind, like the thing I was going to tell Joe is like, dude, me and you can do this and turn it.

Because me and Joel have done like, I don't know, maybe like five or six country clubs.

And in my mind I'm like, oh, my God, we could have done like improv games in these country clubs.

And we just did like a two man show, 30, 45 minutes apiece kind of thing.

Yeah, man.

I was already thinking seeing Stefan with his business partner, I was already like, oh, Yoshi and I could do this.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So Yoshi, you're absolutely right.

There's so many pieces to that, to this that, that like yesterday took like an hour just to explain the whole thing and sharing screen and everything.

But let me just address the points that you mentioned because it's so important too give the context as to what this environment is like.

So these people don't have your comedy knowledge or your comedy interest.

All they care about is to not get in trouble.

Yeah.

And to not lose their job over you.

So you don't have to be the hero.

Like what you think or who you think are the funniest people may not be the funniest people in this environment.

So let's talk about the setting, attention span.

Definitely like less of an attention span.

Because a lot of people, this is not a comedy club.

They're not here to have a drink.

They're probably thinking about the next meeting or maybe it is a holiday, holiday event where they're bringing you in, but they don't even want to see you that much because they just want to go and talk to their friends and drink.

So it has to be very dynamic.

That's why I don't even recommend doing more than 12 minutes straight of comedy, of stand up.

You got to switch it up with all these things, the questionnaire, the improv, you switching up and bringing in another comic and then you coming back again.

Just keep them guessing.

The next thing, which is context, is this.

These are serious people.

Not, not because they're serious at home.

It's just that they're more serious at work because their boss is there.

They don't want to be like, ah, just screaming and being like silly because this is their job.

At their work environment, typically they're more conservative because they're at work.

There's reputation at hand, like at stake, and their bosses there.

And last but not least, the layout is not ideal.

So there may be tables or maybe people are standing up watching you or maybe they're all in like, like town hall environment where like it's like a, just like rows of 20 chairs.

And maybe you don't even have an elevated stage.

Maybe, maybe you get a lantern, like a podium, like a lantern.

Not even a, like a mic to walk around.

So I mean once you get more experience, you get to talk about this beforehand.

But to Yoshi's point, yeah, it's definitely more conservative, less attention span.

People are not here to enjoy.

They didn't pay for this comedy ticket.

They forced to be at this event.

Yeah, I mean it's not like they're having a beer with their friends.

The boss organized this or HR organized this and they don't even know who you are.

They couldn't care less.

So you gotta come prepared to this being entertainment.

This is not a stand up comedy show or an audition for Just for Laughs.

They couldn't care less what Just for Laughs for Comedy Central is.

This is you doing good.

Good.

Okay.

Comedy clean.

Having it be dynamic, changing it up and making them a part of the show.

So it, and most of these environments are offices.

Only co workers are there.

They don't, they don't have their significant others.

And again, there's a lot of reputation at hand.

So considering this and recognizing this adverse, these adverse conditions, you gotta try and be a like chameleon of sorts where you gotta dress up nicely.

I'm not saying like a suit and a tie do it up.

But you gotta know who your audience is.

Maybe if you're performing at Google or Facebook, you're not going to go into suit and tie.

But you certainly want to be like one step above everybody else.

Yeah.

Like you want to look like you get paid $3,000 to do this for sure.

And if you're a holiday party, I always dress up like that.

You got to dress up for holiday party.

Absolutely.

Suit and tie, even if it's a nice shirt and, and a jacket.

Absolutely.

Flare it up with like Christmas attire too.

Right.

Like, even if it's like a holiday party, I'll wear like a green eye or like a green jacket or just something to bring flavor into it as well.

But yeah, that's absolutely.

And like 70% of communication is body language or how you look.

So this plays a part.

You don't.

People are already making judgments.

You haven't even opened your mouth.

So you don't want people to be like, oh my God, they brought this guy.

Like they don't.

You don't Want to get criticized without even opening your mouth?

Yeah, I remember a corporate gig I did and they also brought a magician as well.

And in my mind I was like, I do not want to go after this magician.

And part of it was just like, yeah, I did like 20 minutes and he did it after me.

But it's like you said, it was just entertainment.

I brought a different flavor than the magician did.

But to your point, I was just the entertainment.

And just remember that you're the entertainment.

So it's almost like you're saying what other flavors of entertainment can you bring in this non very adverse situation that it's not truly set up like for the typical comedy club that most people are used to.

So.

So yeah, let's get, let's get into it.

So now that we know the adverse situation, how can we not take it personal?

Remember, a lot of these people may be enjoying, but they're just kind of serious because they're at work.

But, but they may be enjoying which is like a.

They may be enjoying like a 7 out of 10, which would be a laugh laughing out loud at a comedy club.

They're just not showing it.

So you can't take it personally and punish your own performance because you think people are not enjoying.

So now how can we make it as dynamic as possible to mitigate these adverse conditions?

So here, here goes the structure of the show.

You gotta get somebody to read you to read your bio or the bios of the comics.

So get somebody to introduce you because you don't want to be like going up and like nobody's paying attention and like, hey guys, I'm a comedian.

Please let like, you can't do that.

You gotta have the boss or like the HR person, somebody who's respected to read your bio.

Your bias got to be fire.

Yeah, do it with ChatGPT.

Make sure that it sparks a little bit of curiosity, but don't oversell it.

Don't be like, this is the, I'm the best comic in the world.

Don't do that.

Just curiosity.

Brag a little bit of the things you've accomplished and get people to want to see you a little bit.

If you could have a one liner in your bio that kind of has a bit, a bit of humor.

Even better.

ChatGPT will help you with that.

Now I always go in to war with my business partner.

Now we're very comfortable just going, me and my business partner Huang.

But at times we would bring have a roster of three comics and that just adds a little bit of like A dynamic portion to it.

Because you could do five minutes.

The other guy does five minutes, and then the other guy does five minutes, and then I come back again with five minutes.

So just seeing somebody else kind of changes the pace.

And, you know, if a bit is, like, silent, 30 seconds in is not gonna be a good night.

But, you know, at least you're not gonna die for 25 minutes.

You're gonna die for five minutes, and then somebody else is going to come come up and change the energy.

So two to three comics.

Have somebody read the bios.

Go ahead.

The fact that you said five minutes.

Five minutes.

Five minutes, and then come back five minutes later is so insane.

In a good way, because I've never heard of that before.

We've, like.

That is so, like, next level thinking to just rotate between bits of.

Just like, oh, you do five, you do five, you do 5.

And then a host comes back, and then y'all do a different five minutes of just.

Yeah, it just, like, changes the whole dynamic of what people are used to.

So you just saying that.

I'm like, oh, my God.

I've never literally thought about that ever.

Because.

Because we come from the comedy club school, you know, this doesn't have.

You can't bring, like, the feature back again.

Like, it doesn't.

But these people have never even been.

They have no concept of anything.

So you have to educate your audience.

Like, sure.

Good.

How's everybody doing tonight?

Good.

So.

So now we're gonna get into.

So do one liner.

Get the first laugh.

10, 20 seconds in.

My friends, I'm so excited to be here.

We're gonna have a full roster.

We're going to have three amazing comics today, as you heard from the bio.

And we're going to be coming in and out just to add a little bit of a dynamic flavor to the show.

So my name is Stefan Dyers.

And then you start.

So the structure that I recommend that we do that Huang and I kind of not invented, but that we've developed through the years, is start two minutes with, hello, what's going to happen?

High energy and a one liner.

Then five minutes of kind of Jeopardy.

Office Jeopardy.

Trivia, which is what I was saying before.

Like, I'm gonna describe this person, and you guys have to guess who it is, but they don't even know you know this.

So it just adds, like, a whole flavor of positivity because they're like, oh, this guy did his research.

And it's a fun game.

So you get five minutes of little work.

Jeopardy.

Trivia.

Then you do.

This is very important.

Then you do actually five to seven minutes of standup.

But what we've discovered is that the best standup is the one liners.

The very short one liner, 40 second bits that you wouldn't even consider your best bits at a comedy club because you don't have a lot of momentum after that.

You just hahaha, next.

Hahaha, next.

Like a lot of these two 3 minute, 4 minute, 5 minute bits are the worst because this is a low attention span environment.

So you got to do the one liners.

You'd be surprised how much people laugh at these one liners compared to the longer bits.

And so you do five to seven minutes of one liners or your type five, your type five, which is your best five minutes for, for the people who are starting in, in comedy and listening to this.

And then after I do my type five, then I'm like my friends, you don't just get one comic tonight, you get three for the price of one.

Or, or if it's just me and my business part, you get two for the price of one.

This next comic has performed in four continents, has been at Comedy Central, is doing a comedy tour in Europe in March.

Please welcome from Bogota, Colombia, Juan Cahia.

So I kind of hype it up like the guy's been sitting there, everybody can see him, but I'm, I'm, I'm making it exciting, you know, I'm excited.

So they have to be excited.

The honest is just a reflection of you.

So then Juan comes up, does five to seven minutes of stand up type five one liners, shorter bits.

And then if it's a third guy, then the third guy comes in, you won't have a third guy.

If you're doing 30 minutes, you could probably do 30 minutes just between you and another guy.

But if it's one hour, you could certain me and Huang duo an hour all the time.

But if it's one hour, you could probably bring a third person.

And then after that third person does their type five, then you do the improv game.

So let's contextualize this improv situation.

This is the lifesaver.

If you've never done improv, join an improv class at the Second City or any improv school in your, in your city.

There has to be somebody who's taught it.

And we typically do a short story where we travel the world, hop on a plane and do different, do different pit stops in different countries and we tell a story of when we're doing this trip and we bring up two people and we tell them we already have the names of the people because they gave us six names in the questionnaire that they filled out previous.

So we bring them up, we're like, please welcome Joel.

Joel Byers.

And everybody's Joel.

He's coming up and he's like, oh my God.

Okay.

But he kind of already knows because he got put on the list.

And if he doesn't, he's gonna say yes anyways.

Because if he got put on the list, he's a good sport.

And last but not least, please welcome your very own Yoshi.

So everybody's like, ahaha.

Everybody.

Yoshi.

Amazing.

So we explain my friends, Joel, you're on my team.

Yoshi, you're on Huang's team.

Okay, we're gonna tell a story.

And this is an improv game.

So you don't get to talk.

You only get to do sound effects.

And whenever I point at you, you get to do the sound effect of whatever I'm describing.

Okay.

And now there's a billion improv games.

But this is just a friendly one that we've identified.

And it's super good because they, because they're not saying much, they're just doing sound effects.

It's kind of safe, it's family friendly.

You physically, you can't get in trouble with the company because they're not even saying things, they're just doing sound effects.

You could do like office karaoke.

You could do anything.

If they're like a music crowd or anything, you could prepare some tracks.

But there's a million improv games that you could do.

If you take, you've taken some classes, you're going to be more comfortable.

But I always recommend tell Chad GPT, like the environment, what you want to accomplish, some of the things that the client want that they told you from the question, what would make this a 10 out of 10.

And Chad GPT is going to give you like 10 games or 20.

And then you pick the best one.

Go practice it with your friends, your comedy friends, because you don't want to do it for the first time ever at this corporate comedy show.

You want to have some reps before.

Yeah, yeah.

Because it's definitely going to make the show, but it could also break the show if you're not ready.

So after the Improv, you're probably 30 minutes in already.

You'd be surprised how fast this goes by now.

If it's a one hour show, then you just copy and paste.

You do another five to seven minutes.

Each person and you do another improv game, a different variation with two different people.

And then because it's so high energy, the improv after the second improv, if it's 45 or 60 minutes, then you just literally say, thank you so much everybody.

It's been a hell of a show.

Please give another round of applause to Joel and Yoshi.

They were the stars of the show or the two set.

The two set of people.

People that came up after.

And to finish off the show, we want to acknowledge all of you for your hard work.

We talked to some of our spies at the company and we have some really cool accomplishments.

So you can clap after I read each of these.

But first off, congratulations for all the incredible hard work you've done this year.

So first off, I have the marketing team organized the CIBC Run for the Cure and they raised $22,000 for cancer.

Round of applause to them.

The company donated $5,000 worth of clothes to the local shelter.

Random.

So all the non financial stuff is most meaningful to the company.

You could also say that you made $10 million this year, but nobody really cares because they're not, the employees are not getting any of that share.

So.

So but two or three accomplishments gets really like, gets people really grateful and they clap.

So after that you say thank you so much for having us.

Congrats on an amazing year.

Yoshi, Joel, we gotta bring you up on tour because you're the best improv improvisers I've ever seen.

And now last thing we always do is we take a selfie.

We love you, you've been an amazing crowd.

So we, me and Juan, turn around, take a selfie with everybody and if they're cool, you could kind of sense it throughout the show.

You said, and the last thing we do is we just do like a 10 second video.

And I say, I'm here, Stephan Dyer, Juan Kaya with Coca Cola.

And this is our lovely audience.

And you turn the cell phone around and then people go, ah, they go crazy.

You could also ask them to turn on the flashlight of their phones so it looks even cooler, like a comedy show.

And with that you leave like a boss.

But with that selfie and that reel, that video parentheses, when you go to the event, you're filming the road you film, when you go into the event, the doors, the lobby, the people, you film a little bit of the speeches that people are doing before you.

And then you create like a 30, 40 second reel of the event which ends on you actually like doing the selfie video with Everybody like, ah, so now you have two pieces of content that you're gonna go post on LinkedIn.

The selfie picture with everybody describing how you did a corporate comedy show.

It was amazing.

You mentioned the people you tagged, the people that were already came up to the improv and they're cool because you just did a show with them and you tagged the company.

So now it's LinkedIn shows it to the all the people in the company who are kind of jealous because they weren't at the show or they're happy because they were at the show.

So they're going to comment as well.

And you post the reel separately as well.

You could even be the same caption or a different caption.

So the best thing is you're doing two things.

You're telling everybody that you did a show at this company, which means that you do shows at companies and the company will comment because they had a great time.

And it's going to show it to more people in other departments, which is likely going to get people to message you privately and bring you to another department.

And second of all, you're showing your network that you do corporate comedy.

So they start associating you and your profile and your name with corporate comedy and you get to see who likes it.

Who comments, Message everybody who likes it message everybody who comments, say, thank you, thank you for having us.

Or if they're not part of the show, oh, I saw that you liked it.

Or in commented.

Are you interested in having a corporate comedy show for your company?

Are you interested in entertainment for the holidays?

So now you have a whole bunch of leads because you did this show.

Pro tip, the show doesn't even need to have gone very well because people who see it online, they just see the amazing picture.

So they assume that the show went amazing, but you're just getting up all kinds of leads.

So next thing you know that one show gets you four shows.

Those four shows get you 16 shows.

I know it sounds easier than it actually is because it is a lot of hard work, but you get to see the momentum of the whole thing.

And now with those reels you have even now you have reels to show your next clients of stuff that you've done for other companies with without it actually being the video of the show, if you know what I mean.

It's just like a 40 second reel, but it's not the one hour video of the jokes.

So you put some background music into the reel, you post it everywhere, TikTok, Instagram, Instagram stories, your Facebook, your twitter, your everywhere, LinkedIn.

And it starts to get you a lot of leads.

Any questions, my friends?

Will you also ask the companies for referrals to other.

Absolutely, yeah.

That's way to get good leads.

Yeah, yeah, that's Joe's specialty right there.

He'd be asking, I've done some shows with that man.

That dude asked.

He was like, hey, if you, since you guys were here at this country club, if your companies ever needs it, hit me up.

And I love that because it's just to your point.

We had it.

We just had a good show.

If you guys want to have a good time, let us know if there's other people who are interested in having such a good show that we just had.

So I like that a lot.

Yeah, you have to ask.

Even.

Even pro.

Pro tip you could make.

So what we do at all our comedy shows, not corporate, but all our comedy shows, is we have business cards, but with a QR code.

And if you scan that QR code, it takes us to our link tree.

And in that link tree, they could follow you on Instagram.

And the third option is corporate comedy show.

But you're not going to pass out a million business cards at the corporate comedy show.

But what you can do, and I've seen it done very well, is have a banner.

Like a.

Like a.

You know when, like when sponsors bring their banners, have a banner that looks professional, looks, looks elegant, corporate, with you smiling, kind of maybe a logo of your company or just your name, and have a QR code.

And it just says, book us or something.

Book us for your next event.

So if there's a hundred people at the event, not a hundred people are going to come talk to you because there's somebody else after you who's going to do the event.

So you can't even talk to everybody.

You just leave at times, or if you're lucky to be the last event, you're gonna speak to maybe eight or 12 people, but you're not going to talk to 200 or 100 people.

100 of the people who were there.

But if you have the banner with the QR code, they could see you see the banner next to you when you're performing.

And they could.

It has to be elegant.

It can't be like, just book us.

Because then it's like, bro, like, we paid you to be here.

Don't, like, come and sell while you're Performing, it has to be, like, nice to the side and they could scan and book a call with you.

So.

Man, oh, man, that is so much information.

Oh, my God.

Dude, I've never seen a bigger mic drop in such a long time.

You were just like, any questions?

You have any questions on how to make money?

I just told you how to make money.

Yeah, probably.

That's the last mic on how to make money.

I'm over here.

Just give it out.

Free game over here.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, it's just.

I.

I know I'm making it sound easier than it actually is, but I'm actually.

Now it's either easy for me, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You figured out a system, but also you've put it.

Yeah, we have a system.

Yeah, you put it.

And obviously you guys have, like, perfected it.

But I just love the fact that, like, I mean, there's obviously some things that you've done and you've perfected, but you've also very much tackled, I think, from a business perspective, all the things that people run into.

Right?

People run into.

Oh, how do you.

How do you show proof of what you've done?

Testimonials.

How do you show proof of where you've done the business?

Oh, show them a clip.

How you show proof of the kind of show?

Oh, just run the structure.

So all the things that people sort of tend to run into.

You've already sort of thought about it, so it makes it like, oh, if I just.

To your point, even if I just run your structure and run your, like, solidified show with anyone who's ever done improv, like myself and Joel, we've both done improv, we both taught improv, we both taught standup classes.

So we know how to do this.

And we've done this for corporate organizations.

Yeah, this.

This framework is almost like, oh, any questions?

So well done.

Yeah.

And I think for a comic listening to this who was like, oh, man, I just wanted to do my first corporate gig.

I think a good place to start because, I mean, this is.

It's kind of like, yeah, you've built a system, you built a network and built a lot of trust in the industry to where you're able to, like, you know, a hundred grand from this.

But I think a comic just starting out, wanting to get into corporate comedy, I feel like their most attainable first step would be to contact people within their immediate network and start to try to gauge interest in some sort of warm leads that way.

Would you say that's a Good place to start.

Absolutely.

That's straight out of Alex or Mos's $100 million leads book, which is incredible.

Everybody should read it.

$100 million offers and $100 million leads.

Alex Hermosi and.

And basically he talks about you message 100 people a day, and he teaches you how to do it.

You could actually just ask ChatGPT what Alex Ramos recommendation is on how to message people.

But it's basically.

You don't go like, well, yeah, basically we're not going to get into it on how to message, but you have probably a thousand followers or 10,000, however many that.

That'll.

That'll run you 100 days of 100 people a day.

You have probably 3,000 contacts in your iPhone or 500, I don't know.

You have people on LinkedIn, Facebook, and the people who already know you are the best because there's trust implicit.

Like, implicit trust already.

So 100%.

You don't even have to go for one hour now.

You have to.

You could do 15 minutes for 700 bucks, you know, and that's so much better than having wings and a beer, you know, for your.

For your local comedy club.

And.

And the.

The next pro, pro step when you've been doing this for so many years is we don't even go to these anymore.

If you're touring, like, we just get these leads.

We're like, this is how much it costs.

And then the wording is, we have a roster of comics.

Unfortunately, for that night, we already have an event.

However, we'll send you three of our best comics from our roster, which will deliver an incredible experience.

You pay them a good price, but you get to keep the.

The other money.

Of course not.

That's not how it works.

Because they're only doing 10 minutes and they didn't have to work this client for a year.

And the skill set.

The skill set here is not comedy.

The skills that here is selling.

If it was.

Say it again.

Say it.

Save for the people in the back.

Yeah, it was that easy.

Everybody.

The business is selling.

The skill set is selling.

Not comments.

Yeah.

And the curating.

So you gotta know your audience from the call, from the questionnaire.

And then you're like, I'm not gonna send three guys who talk about sex to the show.

I can't do that.

I'm not going to send three guys who have the same style.

I'm not going to send three deadpan guys because they have the same style.

You gotta have different styles, genders, energies, so that you.

It feels like it's an experience, not.

You're not setting them up for failure.

And you are a recruiter of set of sorts.

When you go and perform, like, and tour and see your friends at the local comedy club, you gotta see, oh, you know what?

This guy is actually really good.

And he could do clean comedy.

He's actually got eight solid minutes.

And then I'll just tell them what the flow of the show looks like because we got it down.

Maybe you get one person who's good at improv, who could structure the improv game or could run it, facilitate it, and now you're making money.

You don't even have to be there.

So it's.

It's the curating and the structuring of things, but the skill set is selling because it's the comfort, it's the relationship, it's the trust, and you're selling the experience.

So that's what I've learned.

No big deal.

Yeah, just some dude over here dropping gems on how to make money in comedy.

We're over here fighting for chicken fingers and beer tickets.

He's like, no, I'm gonna just give you 40 chances to make $100,000.

Yeah.

And we appreciate you going into overtime here.

And just in summary, you basically break down how to book the leads, which is messaging people.

Gig Salad is another one.

And also talking to people in person, people you talk to, socializing, mentioning that you do these things.

Hosting, talking.

100%.

Yeah.

Basically just letting everyone know that you do this.

And another website people may not, that's in the States is something called the Bash as well.

That's like.

That's basically Gig Salad, just another version of it.

So those are two versions, and I think they both have free tiers as well, if you just want to kind of see if you can get some leads that way.

Yeah.

And then you talked about structuring the show and all the different elements of that, from the standup to the improv, to the customizations within the actual company, and the Jeopardy and the improv games, the trivia.

And is there anything else I missed in Summary.

I was trying to.

Trying to put a button on it for people and you mentioned, of course, no sex, religions or politics and keeping it clean, which for people watching this live stream.

We appreciate you.

And I'm gonna give a link to my clean comedy workshop just because you all just took time out of your afternoon and hung out with us.

And I believe in the power of at least knowing how to be clean.

So those of you that joined us live today, I'm gonna send you a link to get access to my clean comedy workshop so you guys can start.

It's also a really good exercise for people who don't think they can do clean comedy.

Yeah.

To just do a corporate comedy show because then you're going to see how much is possible without swearing.

And you now have become more versatile and a better comic and you kind of convince yourself that you don't need these things to get the laughs.

And sometimes even if it's funnier with a swear word, you may still get a similar laugh and connect with a different kind of audience that may book you in the future.

Yep.

Boom.

Exactly.

So, yeah, I think the best way to land this plane is Bob Kirk asked in the comments, like your contact info, because Bob's in Toronto and he's done corporate performance, writing and improv.

Oh, my God, that roster, baby.

Yeah, right.

If you're performing at any retirement homes, Bob would be the guy.

Bob says, are Those Canadian or USD?

It's the same when we go to the U.S.

it's the same price.

Yeah, absolutely.

I will say I will bump up my prices if it.

If it's significant travel or time.

Like, it depends on the context and the magnitude of the whole thing and the preparation it takes for sure.

And.

But yeah, those are the standard.

And if we go to.

If we do something, we.

We quote the same thing in US or Canada.

If we do something corporate comedy.

But if it's too much travel, we'll bump up the prices.

Absolutely.

I think we can drop Stephen's contact in the show notes too.

If people.

To reach you.

Yeah.

How can people reach you?

Stephen Stephan.

His name.

Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Respect.

I'm so used to people calling me Steven and so hard.

Not whatever.

That I don't even react to it anymore.

Yeah.

Freaking Joel over here.

I'm trying to get on the roster.

Joel.

By mispronouncing his name.

Yeah.

Anything about it.

Definitely.

Anything.

He called you Joel.

Well, I corrected it.

Yeah.

Right away.

That's because we're on that Latino wave.

And Dyer, any questions, hit me up on IG and happy to discuss and chat and conquer the world one corporate comedy show at a time.

Yeah.

And you do the coaching as well.

So if people want more info on that, you can DM you about that as well.

Absolutely.

We break down our calls for revolving themes.

Comedy structures, marketing and branding, social media and content creation and business and mindset.

So every week we change the themes.

And this was yesterday's session, so you could imagine what the others like.

We're just adding value nonstop so that we could actually be like, monetizing what we actually do.

Absolutely.

Amen.

Let's go.

Thank you, Hot breath verse.

If you found this valuable, reach out to Stefan Dyer on social media, share this with your fellow comedians.

That is how we're going to expand.

The hot breath verse is you out at a show telling at least one comedy friend about hot breath.

And we're going to spread that comedy love one comic at a time.

So we appreciate all hanging out with us today.

Absolutely.

And I'll tell you this.

You listen to Stefan, things happen.

We over here, we.

After the first episode, we listen.

We dropped some money, but everything we dropped was good stuff and it all made sense.

We did marketing on the show.

It worked out.

You listen to this, man, and guess what?

You don't make that 100,000, baby.

Yeah.

And.

And guess what we're going to do with that money.

We're going to reinvest it and it's going to make us a million dollars, man.

The.

The last thing.

The last thing I want to say is just try the corporate comedy because our comedy standards are.

Are completely high compared to what they consider funny.

It may be a tougher audience, but a one liner that may get an okay laugh at a comedy club may get a bigger laugh at a corporate environment because it's just a very.

There's not even expectations of making people laugh because it's a corporate environment.

So just try it.

And if you fail, you're never going to see them again anyways.

But you still get that experience and get paid.

I don't even know what corporate show you were talking about.

I have no idea.

I wasn't even there.

Yep.

Beautiful.

Well, thank you, Hot breath of verse.

And we will see y'all next Tuesday on another live stream.

We love you all.

Bye.

Love y'all.

Hot breath.