In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
Click here to watch Marc’s showreel. If you would like to find out more about Marc, visit www.marchoganlive.com or to book him for a speaking event please contact your favourite speaker bureau.
In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
“It was the best talk of the conference!”
Carolyn Boyd – Editor, France Magazine
“Inspiring, fantastic and funny business speaker.”
Walter Schoonebeek – Business Analyst, Louwman & Parqui BV (Toyota & Lexus)
“Brilliant! Funny, observational and very entertaining! See him, hire him, listen to him!”
David Ball – Managing Director, Brand Fuel
“I wanted to thank you again for your professionalism and for taking our crowd through a fun and inspiring journey.”
Valerie Arnold – Senior Learning Consultant – Global Projects, Amgen (Netherlands)
“You were fab!”
Rachel Elnaugh – Entrepreneur and ex Dragon
“Marc draws you in until he explodes into the point of his message. I have never seen anyone achieve the level of audience participation that he managed from a bunch of normal cynics. His livewire style and approach are pretty unique as he mixes humour with logic to make the session fun. There were many nods of scary acceptance as delegates acknowledged they were the individuals he was referring to. If you want home truths and can accept them Marc is your man. If you don’t he’ll make you laugh anyway!”
Martyn Sumners – Chief Executive, Association of British Travel Organisers to France
Click here to watch Marc’s showreel. If you would like to find out more about Marc, visit www.marchoganlive.com or to book him for a speaking event please contact your favourite speaker bureau.
In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
I’ve been performing my keynote Funny Business speech abroad a lot in the last week, here is some of the feedback:
“Excellent, a very entertaining presentation with substance!”
Stefan Lissner – Head of Investor Relations, Q-Cells SE (Germany)
“10/10. Marc was the perfect speaker for the closing session of our National Conference. His presentation was inspiring and uplifting, but also it was thought provoking and personalised for our delegates, which made it 100% relevant to what we all do every day. His presentation style engaged the audience from the opening minute and was delivered flawlessly. Thanks Marc for sending our delegates away on a high!”
Garry Wilkinson – Vice Chair, National Association of Hospice Fundraisers
“Marc presented, at our International Sales Meeting, an interesting, captivating, and at the same time funny, session.
The 90 minutes was well thought out and well balanced between speaking, involving the audience and having fun, whilst at the same time giving us a strong message. The whole group took away a better understanding on how we are perceived. Marc’s story strengthened our confidence and enabled us to believe in our capabilities, both as people and representatives of the company. We are grateful to Marc for coming to Italy to share his experiences and knowledge with us.”
Angelo Speranza – CEO, Burlodge Group-temp-rite International – FIMI
Click here to watch Marc’s showreel. If you would like to find out more about Marc, visit www.marchoganlive.com or to book him for a speaking event please contact your favourite speaker bureau.
In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
As you know since completeing my edinburgh Challenge, I still like to perform and support new and established comedians, here are just a few dates for your comedy diary:
Thursday March 31st Hemel Hempstead
Compering at the Funny Roundabout Comedy Club with the very very funny Eddie Brimson headlining.
You can find out more here.
Thursday April 7th London
Compering my new acts/new material night Desperately Seeking Stagetime.
For more details check out our facebook page here.
Here are some photos of last months events in (very sexy) black and white, becuase everybody looks better in black and white. Just ask Humphrey Bogart…
Click here to watch Marc’s showreel. If you would like to find out more about Marc, visit www.marchoganlive.com or to book him for a speaking event please contact your favourite speaker bureau.
In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
In part 1 and 2 of this blog I shared some of the scientific research that shows how we affect other people’s emotional state and behaviour. Now I want to share how you can control your emotional state and your business outcomes.
A study by Drs Yu and Ranganathan from the Lerner Institute in 2004 confirmed a long held belief that mental rehearsal or visualisation can affect performance.
They created two groups:
Group 1 tensed the muscles of their little finger 15 minutes a day for 12 weeks.
Group 2 visualised tensing the same muscle for the same period of time instead.
After 12 weeks, group 1 had increased their strength by 53%, but group 2 had increased their strength by 35%, which is pretty impressive considering they were only pretending to do an exercise!
Now let’s just be clear, in order to influence your staff, or sell to your customers you can’t just visualise them, you do actually have to go and see them!
However, when it comes to success, visualisation only takes us part of the way. When I was preparing for my Edinburgh show I realised very quickly that visualising an audience laughing at my jokes was not enough.
Psychologists Vasquez and Buehler in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33 (2007) reviewed all the published research on the power of mental imagery and showed that people were more successful when they visualised not only the result they wanted but also the precise steps they would have to take to get there.
Scientists have even studied the neurochemistry of success. When we are engaged in an activity our brains are bathed in catecholamines. When we fear failure cortisol comes into play as part of the stress response. In a laboratory environment involving mathematics challenges, Lundberg and colleagues showed that increased levels of cortisol negatively affected performance. Those individuals who expected to be successful were successful twice as often as those who feared failure.
Dr Alice Isen, a psychologist at Cornell University, has conducted years of experiments in this area. Her research indicates that being optimistic before an event can even affect your negotiating skills. In a study she carried out in 1986, her results showed that negotiators who spent just 5 minutes looking at funny cartoons before going into negotiations were much more effective than those who didn’t get themselves into a similar positive state.
When I faced my Edinburgh challenge I regularly visualised success whilst at the same time looked at ways to overcome the various hurdles that other comics told me I would face. Before I went on stage I often read a funny article or watched a funny video on You Tube. Did it help? I don’t know, but it certainly helped relax me, which can only be a good thing…
Click here to watch Marc’s showreel. If you would like to find out more about Marc, visit www.marchoganlive.com or to book him for a speaking event please contact your favourite speaker bureau.
In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
Just a few dates for your comedy diary:
Thursday Feb 24th Hemel Hempstead
Compering at the Funny Roundabout Comedy Club with the very very funny Paul Foot headlining.
You can find out more here.
Thursday March 3rd London
Compering my new acts/new material night Desperately Seeking Stagetime.
For more details check out our facebook page here.
Friday March 18th Watford
Compering at a Red Nose Comic Relief Charity Event at the Horns music venue in Watford.
Click here to watch Marc’s showreel. If you would like to find out more about Marc, visit www.marchoganlive.com or to book him for a speaking event please contact your favourite speaker bureau.
In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
All of us at sometime have spotted a beautiful person across the dance floor but have not approached because the “Editor” told us
“this person is too beautiful and I am too ugly”,
but then again we’ve all seen some beautiful people who go out with some very ugly people…
or as Bertrand Russell the Nobel prize winning philosopher put it;
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
Click here to watch Marc’s showreel. If you would like to find out more about Marc, visit www.marchoganlive.com or to book him for a speaking event please contact your favourite speaker bureau.
In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
Last night’s gig was great, Tony Law was (as expected) hilarious, but enough of that, you want to know about emotions and changing people’s behaviour.
Last time I shared how easily it is to change a person’s emotional state and behaviour with just a few words. I’m now going to share with you how our expressions can affect other people’s emotional state, in comedy we call this “showing not telling”.
Psychologists Nalini Ambadi and Robert Rosenthal conducted a study where a group of independent people viewed a 30 second video clip of college lecturers at the beginning of an academic term and evaluated them on a number of personality variables such as their level of confidence, optimism, likable, and enthusiasm.
The question was, could these independent raters predict how each lecturer’s class of students would feel about them at the end of term?
Remarkably, they could. The lecturers assessed as confident, active, optimistic, likable, and enthusiastic fared far better on student evaluation forms later in the year.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, even more remarkable was the fact that the raters gave their initial ratings with the sound turned off! The videotapes had no audio.
All participants had to go on was the evidence of their eyes. Our attitude gives off a halo – in as little as 30 seconds we and our products are being summed up!
Now what’s really interesting is the principle of emotional contagion – the idea that we spread emotions. Prof. Elaine Hatfield and her colleagues from the University of Hawaii (why didn’t I study there?) believe that emotional contagion is a primitive and unconscious behaviour. According to her studies, it takes place through a series of steps. Emotions are shown through unconscious facial expressions (see part 1). When two people meet, one of them will start to mimic the facial expressions of the other, with the person exhibiting the strongest emotion leading the other to feel the same.
So our emotions and feelings, can affect our customers’ emotions and feelings. Don’t believe me? Think of someone you’ve worked with in a previous company, who you looked forward to seeing, who always made you smile, who was always happy and cheerful.
How do you feel?
Now think about someone you used to work with who you dreaded (because you love everyone you work with now!), in fact the moment you saw them coming down the corridor you’d try to dive into another room or pretend to be answering a call on your phone.
Can you feel the difference?
But let’s not dwell on that person who could suck the life out of any party, it’s much nicer to think about the person who was the life and soul of the party, who lights up the room when they come in…
I wonder when we walk into a room do our customers light up or do they want to slink away in disgust?
In Part 3, I’ll be sharing how your attitude has a measurable effect on your business success…
Click here to watch Marc’s showreel. If you would like to find out more about Marc, visit www.marchoganlive.com or to book him for a speaking event please contact your favourite speaker bureau.
In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
Since Edinburgh I still like to perform comedy so tonignt I’m compering at the Funny Roundabout Comedy Club (Thursday Jan 27th) at Indy Jax in Hemel Hempstead with the hilarious Tony Law, Chris Carr, and Nicci Mack (prepare to have your minds blown)!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=175980962425558&ref=mf
Click here to watch Marc’s showreel. If you would like to find out more about Marc, visit www.marchoganlive.com or to book him for a speaking event please contact your favourite speaker bureau.
In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a standup comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
A lot of people come up to me after a Funny Business corporate event and ask, “how can I get into comedy?” Well people, here’s your chance…
Starting Thursday, February 8th I will be hosting the first 2011 Desperately Seeking Stagetime comedy event at the Queen’s Head pub, Piccadilly, London.
Desperately Seeking Stagetime isn’t a gig. It’s a place for new (& old) comics to get together and try to make each other laugh. And for other people to come down and watch them.
OK, that does sound a bit like a gig. But no money changes hands, except to the bar staff in exchange for refreshing drinks. And you don’t have to bring all your chums down, just to get a five minute spot. Though if you want to, that would be lovely. I’m bringing mine…
How To Get A Spot
If you’re a comic we’d love to see you do your stuff, however you can’t book a spot in advance!
Arrive early (I’ll be there from 6:30 pm!) to claim one of the 8 guaranteed spots. Arrive nearer to 8pm and you’ll have to put your name in the hat… but you’ll probably get on anyway.
The show starts at 8pm and runs until… somewhere between 10 and 11pm, depending on how many people turn up. There are only two rules. Please buy a drink because the pub are giving us the room for free. And please stay until the end, to support the other acts.
Stand up, impressionists, musical comedy, sketches, ventriloquists, mentalists, whatever you like really. Come. It’ll be fun. Sit in the front row and we’ll give you chocolate.
Here are the details:
The date: First Thursday of every month
The time: 8pm – 11pm
The venue: The Queen’s Head, Piccadilly Circus, Denman Street (next to Piccadilly Theatre), London W1D 7HD
http://www7.beerintheevening.com/maps/?pcb=W1D+7HN
The price: FREE!
You can join the Desperately Seeking Stagetime Facebook group here!
Look forward to seeing you there.
Marc
Click here to watch Marc’s showreel. If you would like to find out more about Marc, visit www.marchoganlive.com or to book him for a speaking event please contact your favourite speaker bureau.
