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!

Well we’re all in it together apparently, even Manchester United are making cuts…

I’ve also just learnt that George Osborne’s real name is Gideon, he changed it when he was 13. Gideon in Hebrew apparently means “Destroyer”  or “Mighty Warrior”,  l’ll let you choose your favorite definition…

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!

After years of presenting to tens of thousands of people, presenting to a comedy audience is still the scariest thing I’ve ever had to do. I tried lots of things: deep breathing, visualisation, even alcohol -which unfortunately leads to blurry visualisation…

While practice remains the best way to overcome stage fright, I did find this exercise very useful.

Can you remember your best holiday?  Recent scientific research shows that remembering a pleasurable or horrible experience has a physical effect on the body.  Don’t believe me?  Well try this, remember the last time you saw a rat / big spider/ a big bowl of maggots/ Peter Mandelson. Did your skin just crawl?

To begin the exercise you need to clear your mind (it shouldn’t be too hard, it’s Monday morning!).

Now think of a time when you felt confident and focused. As you access that memory, see what you saw at the time, hear what you heard, feel how confident and good you felt. Now, take a moment to locate where these good feelings are in your body (I know it’s a little weird but stick with me).  Where in your body do they start?  Do they start in your stomach, in your head, or perhaps in your fingertips?  Now that you’ve found them, take another moment to feel where they move to.  This might feel strange at the start, but as you take that moment you will realise that feelings don’t stay still, they are always moving in one direction or another.  Once you realise they are moving and can feel which direction they are travelling, then you can start to control where and how they move. 

Start to amplify the intensity of the confident feeling by spinning it faster within your body.  It doesn’t matter if you spin it clockwise or anticlockwise, if you spin it from the top of your head to the soles of your feet or if you spin it round your stomach or chest.  There is no correct method.  The key is spinning the feeling to intensify the good feelings inside you. 

The next step is to imagine that you are getting ready to get on stage.  Imagine you are entering the room waiting to be announced, then imagine walking on stage, as you do so, continue to spin the confident feelings in your body.  Imagine the feelings of confidence amplifying as you begin your speech.

Imagine being on the stage.  Let your body adopt the posture you will use.  Now, imagine presenting passionately, engaging with the audience, and continue to spin the feeling as you present with confidence. 

Keep the feeling spinning; keep the confidence levels amplified throughout your speech, even if you get asked an unexpected question.  Imagine this happening but imagine yourself responding with confidence and clarity as you keep the feeling spinning through your body. 

Imagine your presentation ending, and the crowd applauding.  Imagine leaving stage with confidence, knowing you’ve performed to your best and continued to spin those feelings. 

Now take a moment to consider how that felt.  How confident and clear did you feel?  Just think how strong those confident feelings could get with practice?  All you need to do is to practice this process over and over again before your speech. 

Now, obviously nothing beats actual physical practice and I know for some of you your “Editor” has already decided that this is a stupid idea, but this exercise takes less than 5 minutes and can be practiced anywhere so surely it’s worth giving it a go?

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!

Odd day today on TV: scenes of Maggie Thatcher and miners celebrating.

Maggie Thatcher is 85 today, doesn’t that make you feel old? If you’re too young to remember Maggie Thatcher, she was our slightly more right wing Barack Obama…

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!

Interesting article in Scientific America Mind this month by S. Alexander Haslam and Craig Knight.

Unsurprisingly the size of desk, access to natural light, and our privacy are all predictors of our contentment and productivity (nice work geniuses / genii!).

However what’s more interesting, in the authors’ experiments, workers who were permitted to customize their office decor showed about a 30% improvement in productivity and well-being over those working in undecorated office spaces. Not a bad return on office mementos!

Meanwhile, people who worked in an environment with art and plants were 15% more productive than those in the undecorated space.

However before you rush out to buy those “motivating posters”, design a chill out area and put up some pot plants, you should be aware that in the experiments productivity gains disappeared for “disempowered” workers who had their decoration choices overridden and their office rearranged — even though the rearranged office still contained art and plants.

So if you want Steve to be a little more productive perhaps you could let him put up his ‘Kylie Minogue’* calendar, and Sarah can have her teddy bears and ‘Men In Uniform’* calendar.

*Other stereotypically sexist calendars are available…

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!

Overheard in a coffee break at a conference for financiers:

Financier 1: “I’m reading Russell Brand’s new autobiography; it’s a sequel to My Booky Wook.”

Financier 2: “Booky Wook? Let’s hope he never opens a bank!”

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!

A couple of years ago I learned a great business lesson from my comedy director friend Phil Whelans when he explained how he sold his comedy services. He drew me a Venn diagram on the back of a napkin (see below) and said, “you can have any two of these the three elements, but you can never have all three.”

Any product or service can be good, fast or cheap.

If you want your product to be good and delivered fast it won’t be cheap, because of the extra work I have to put into deliver that.

Conversely if you want your product good and cheap it won’t be delivered fast, as I have better paying premiere customers to serve first.

If you want your product fast and cheap, it probably won’t be very good.

Every time I teach this to a business audience they nod sagely and say, “that’s really obvious, why didn’t I think of that?”

The first key I teach is “Opportunities Are All Around Us” most of the time we’re so busy doing our job or trying to get the sale that sometimes we miss the obvious.

What if for 10 minutes you took a step back, stopped running around, and thought about how you could make your job or your colleagues’ jobs better?

Or if you work in sales, you might want to draw this diagram on the back of a napkin the next time your with a demanding customer?

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!

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from email. Amen”

Email is incredibly useful (unless you’re Royal Mail) but I’ve found that it can also have a negative effect on how businesses communicate.

Here are some simple ideas to make your email communication more effective.

Email rapport

We all learn in business to match words, voice tone and posture to create rapport with colleagues and customers, why can’t we do the same with email?

You could match:

1) The header.

2) Greeting e.g. Dear Sir, Hi  Marc etc.

3) The sign off.

Look at:

1) Their sentence structure. Can you match it?

2) Can you answer any questions in the same order as their original email?

3) Do they use bullets or numbering? Can you match these?

4) Are there any words or phrases they particularly like to use?

Do not request read receipts

These are generally annoying and may make people think you don’t trust them. Remember, not everyone uses the same email software so they may not work anyway!  It is much better if at the start of your message you say, “This is really important, please can you confirm receipt and actions to be taken”. Or even better call them and check that they got it!

Be active not passive

Try to use the active voice of a verb wherever possible. For instance, “I will speak to customer services today,” sounds better than, “Your query will be raised with customer services today”. The first sounds more personal and human whereas the latter sounds like C3P0 sent it.

Time for a tea break

Before sending your email leave it for 5 minutes, or longer if you wrote it when stressed, angry or drunk!  No email is that urgent that it can’t wait 5 minutes, if it’s that urgent, phone them.  It could be time for a nice cup of tea.  Then read it again.  Ask yourself, how would you feel if you received it?  If you’re satisfied with the answer you’re ready to send it.  If not, rewrite it!

Remember the person in front of you

One final thing… if you’re serious about improving your communication, you need to think about how people perceive you in the round.  And that includes giving people your full attention – never respond to messages or texts on your Blackberry / iphone, whilst you’re talking face to face with someone else. I’m pretty sure none of you would walk into a meeting with a pile of household bills, charity letters, credit card bills, invitations and proceed to open them, read them and reply whilst telling your colleague to, “Carry on, I’m listening”!

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!

Watching the Ryder Cup today, I was amazed when they played the national anthems for America and Europe. The European national anthem is Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.

Has anybody in Brussels actually seen the movie Die Hard? The movie where every time Alan Rickman’s character, Hans Gruber and the rest of his European terrorists/ bank robbers appear, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” is always playing in the background!

I think the American Ryder Cup team should play all their rounds in vests and no shoes…

A few years ago Tiger Woods was asked the question how he got so good. His reply; “It’s funny, the more I practice, the better I get!”… I’m not sure he was talking about golf…

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!

Nearly all businesses are built on the principles of carrot and stick, or incentives and disincentives.

I hate the term “carrot and stick” because it makes out that I’m an ass and I don’t know any person that wants to be a donkey (please don’t Google “I want to be a donkey,” your computer will melt).

The problem of incentives e.g. bonuses is that they can:

i)    Foster short-term thinking;

ii)   Become addictive and encourage excessive risk taking;

iii)  Encourage cheating, shortcuts and unethical thinking.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out what that could do to a company, industry or even an economy but the reason companies use bonus incentives is that they’re:

a) clear and understandable; and

b) easy to measure.

But in my experience, and according to Daniel Pink author of the New York Times Bestseller “Drive”, bonuses work best when the task is routine (and dare I say it boring) e.g. report filling.  So, what happens if the tasks are a bit more complex?

It’s up to us to be a bit more creative.

From the moment we learn to talk we quickly realise that the most annoying word we can say to a parent is, “why?”

It’s the same when we’re adults – no boss wants to be asked, “why are you asking me to do this?”

So if you’re the boss or a team leader how would you respond?  Your job is to create a compelling purpose that goes beyond the task.

I was speaking to a company that makes windows last week; how do you make that more compelling?

Well their product keeps people safe and warm, saves money, saves electricity, helps the environment, and adds value to people’s homes.

The reason people will buy their product is not because of the price or the fact that they are fit for purpose – every window company can compete on price and the specification of a window.

The reason that people buy from them is that they trust them because the customer knows that they will do anything and everything to deliver on their promise.   This level of customer service is highly prized.  If we can do that for our customers, are we also doing it for our people?

So why do your people work for you?  The reason a person will work for you and will be intrinsically motivated to work hard is because they know that their company cares for them, will pay them fairly, will listen to them, look after them, encourage them, will not berate them when they make a mistake but help them to achieve their potential.  They work for you because you will allow them flexibility in how they do their job by giving them autonomy to do their job in a way that is good for them and good for your company and your customers.   In short, they work hard because they trust you that you will deliver on your promises that you are there for the long term and you will look after them and develop them for the long term.

So when the task is routine, sure, give them a bonus.  But if you start to use bonuses simply because they are easy and measurable, rather than creating a compelling purpose for your people to do their job, you may end up with people who are only looking out for themselves, and we all know what that can lead to…

My Editor for years told me that all employees needed was incentives and that bonuses work, that our economy was built on carrot and stick. But my experience becoming a stand-up and getting to know other comics (many of who don’t get paid for their trials) taught me that there is more to motivation than incentives.

A comic gets up on stage for a different reason, they are intrinsically motivated to perform. Nearly all comics realise that it could take many, many years before they earn a penny from comedy, yes they love the feedback from a crowd, but many are just as proud when after many hours of thinking they manage to craft a good gag.  The truth is they have a purpose and that’s what drives them.  What sense of purpose can you give your people?

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!

After months of meticulous research, here are my findings:

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.