Using Humor In Public Speaking

Greg Schwem is a Chicago, Illinois-based comedian, keynote speaker, and emcee who has spent the past 25 years making the corporate world laugh at itself. When not traveling the world providing laughs, Greg writes a bi-weekly, nationally syndicated humor column for the Chicago Tribune syndicate and is the creator and host of the streaming TV show, “A Comedian Crashes Your Pad. He is the author of two books, “Text Me If You’re Breathing: Observations, Frustrations and Life Lessons from a Low Tech Dad” and “The Road to Success Goes Through the Salad Bar.”

• How easy was it to move from performing stand-up in comedy clubs to speaking for corporate audiences?

• Why do you feel there are so few humor speakers who market themselves exclusively for corporate events?

• How did the pandemic affect your business as a humor speaker?

• Tell us about A Comedian Crashes Your Pad

 

 

Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript

Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.

James Taylor  0:00  

I’m James Taylor, and you’re listening to the SpeakersU podcast a show for aspiring and professional speakers. This episode is with my co-host Maria Franzoni. Enjoy the episode. We are joined today by Greg Schwem. Greg trim is a Chicago, Illinois-based comedian, keynote speaker, and MC who has spent the past 25 years making the corporate world laugh in itself. We’re not traveling the world providing laughs Greg writes a bi-weekly, nationally syndicated humor column for the Chicago Tribune syndicate, and is the creator and host of the streaming TV show. a comedian crashes your pack, I heard it here but that he is the author of two books. Text me if you’re breathing observations, frustrations, and life lessons from a low-tech dad, and the road to success goes through the salad bar. Please welcome onto the show, Greg shrimp.

Greg Schwem  0:56  

Hello, Maria. Hi, James. Thank you so much. I should shorten that introduction. I feel like we don’t have any time left.

Maria Franzoni  1:03  

likes it? I like it’s funny. I do like that title. Text me if you’re breathing? Really? Greg, let’s start and try to understand how somebody who has been very successful performing comedy in the comedy clubs? How do you move from that to a very different audience? When you’re talking about the corporate audience? Because they’re a little bit stiffer? I think I don’t know. How did you manage to do that? Well, you

The transition from comedy club to corporate

Greg Schwem  1:32  

know, it kind of was trial by error, not error. But it was I sort of fell into it. I when I was doing comedy clubs, I also became as a way of making some extra money, I became a trade show presenter, if you’ve ever been on a trade show floor, sometimes you see people with headsets on and they do these live presentations about a product or a service that the company offers. And I was doing that. And I was realizing, number one, you have to you had to get people entertained and laughing in a very short amount of time. And I was also trying to make them laugh about very dry subjects, as you alluded to. And the more I did it, and the more I realized that they were willing to laugh at this, I mean, and the clients that hired me were like, it’s okay, if you go off-script, just make sure that you stay on point with our message at some point. But the more I realized that people were willing to laugh at this kind of stuff, the more I thought there’s, there’s something here, there’s something here, this group, this audience needs to laugh likes to laugh at itself and what they do. So little by little I started transitioning my act, I started writing material about things I was seeing on the trade show floor, I started putting that into my nightclub act. And I had people come up to me afterward and say, Would you mind coming down and doing those jokes at our company retreat? And next thing, you know, I transitioned my entire career over to speaking in the corporate world. And that was, as you said, that was 25 years ago.

Maria Franzoni  2:56  

has to I imagined that the stand-up training, where you said you have to capture people’s attention and get them laughing fast. That must have been excellent because you must have to do shorter the attention span and a stand-up audience where there’s, as you saying, the US liquor involved, it must be a tougher audience to get them to laugh straight away. Are they easier if they’re liquored up?

Greg Schwem  3:17  

Well, I kind of like the morning shows, I would rather that they’re all amped up on coffee as opposed to vodka. But I think it’s important. One of the things that I learned on the trade show floor is if you can get them laughing about something relevant to them. That’s a great start. So one of the things that I do is I’ve always customized and I’ve always tried to incorporate material about the audience into the company, or the association into my presentation. And I and I start right off the top doing that, because I want them to know that this is not a canned presentation, that I’ve done the research, and that I, I’m in their world, now I’m in their world as an outsider. But that is what allows me to make them laugh at what they do. And I think audiences do tend to drop their guard a little bit. They’re like, you’re right. Let’s just have some fun this guy is he knows what we do. He knows what we’re about. And, you know, he’s saying a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about for many years. So let’s go ahead and have some fun, and I think they buy into that.

Few Humor  Speakers

James Taylor  4:25  

Now, Greg, you’re over in Chicago, if I’m correct. And I’m here I’m joining you today here from near Edinburgh in the UK in Edinburgh. Every year normally every summer, they have this big Comedy Festival, like 1000s of comedians from around the world come together. And I look at all those comedians and they’re all like fantastic comedians doing different kinds of comedy different types of humor. And then a client asked me sometimes, or James was looking like after you Okay, we’d love to have brought a humorous speaker off to you. And then I started thinking about like, okay, who can I recommend and it tends to be like, there’s like five names. So I’m interested in why do you feel there are maybe so few humor speakers who market themselves exclusively for the corporate market in the higher paying market?

Greg Schwem  5:10  

Well, I think one of the things is I think there’s Yes, there’s a lot of very funny comedians out there. But I think what a lot of humor speakers and comedians don’t understand is that there is a huge difference between doing your show in a comedy club and doing your show in front of a corporate audience at saying 930 in the morning. And I think a lot of you can’t do it, you can’t just bring your nightclub back in and expect it to be the same. Again, I think that these audiences, want to laugh at themselves, they what they’re not as much interested in your nightclub act, they want to laugh at themselves. And I think there’s an awful lot of people who don’t want to put that work in or also don’t think it’s necessary. And I’ve seen comedians at corporate audiences that have not done well. Because of that, because they’re not willing to put in the work. They don’t make that distinction. And for one reason or another, that’s why I think the playing field is very narrow in terms of the number of people who do what we do. And, if you’re, if you’re a buyer, if you’re a corporation, and you want humor, you want to make sure that nobody goes away upset, you want to make sure that the product that you’re putting out is clean and is not offensive. And there’s that that that narrows the herd, okay, even more,

International Audience

James Taylor  6:34  

stuff like that. So like for every 1000 humorous comedians, then you’ve maybe got like a small number, like, say, 50 or so. But then if you’re that there’s a smaller because you speak internationally, you don’t just speak in the North American market. We were just talking earlier, you said you were just your last in person, when you did was in Vienna and Austria. And when I speak that, when I think about the v&a, these lovely people, great coffee shops, but not the like, like humor is not the first thing that comes to mind. So how do you then like to talk to that audience and make that audience laugh and engage that audience with a message? Yeah. And is it different from when you speak to your North American audience?

Greg Schwem  7:12  

Yeah, I found out to the VNA is not real, not real laugh riots. But one thing when I do speak internationally, I rely heavily on imagery. I don’t just talk I also my presentation this, this is true everywhere. I think we’ve become a very visual audience. I think that in the corporate market when you go to corporate events, you’re used to seeing big screens, and supporting imagery on there, people like to look at things as and that’s part of, we’ve been trained by looking at our phones all the time. We want a sort of in-your-face type of imagery. So I have found particularly with international, I kind of ramp up the visuals a little bit because then that’s, that’s universal in language. If I can pull screen grabs from a company’s website, it doesn’t matter what it’s like, here it is, you’ve seen this before. And then I can poke fun at that a little bit. I found that to be the case in I did a show in Posen in Poland a few years ago. And they said to me when I went up on stage before they went there, like if nobody laughs It’s not you. Okay. That’s a great thing to hear. Because now I can only go up from there. Yeah.

Humor  In The Scoping call

James Taylor  8:28  

So Maria, when you’ve, when you’ve booked SpeakersU’ve had clients come to you as speakers before Have you had to in that scoping process that we had? We had tunnel talking about last week or two weeks ago. Do you find you have to, ask that question and probe into that question with the client? About humor, whether there’s Yeah, where the humor sitting?

Impact Of Virtual On Humor 

Maria Franzoni  8:50  

Yeah, I do. And actually, many clients would come to me specifically because I like comedy. I like to laugh. And so I do tend to know who the speakers are, who insert humor in their speaking. And they would come to me specifically because they want a serious message, but they wanted to be delivered with humor. So yeah, then you would have to talk about the difference. The differences especially there’s an international audience, but Greg, you’ve got it. Right, the whole image using images and ramping that artists because that is a universal language. And I wonder if that helps you over I hate to use the P-word, the pandemic word, but if that helps you over this period because you are so switched on to visual and also because you have your TV show. Did that help you transition your speaking business?

Greg Schwem  9:35  

Absolutely. It did. And I think when because I was working virtually, you know, people say you know what, boy, it must be hard to make people laugh virtually. Yeah. I will not disagree with you on that one. But it’s a challenge that I relished. And it was quite joyful to just know that you were making people laugh. from wherever they were, I mean, when you’re alive everybody’s in the exact location, they’re all staying in a very nice hotel, and so forth. And, and all I could do was just imagine where some people were, they might have two kids trying to do virtual schoolwork in the next room, and they, you know, they’re like, I’ve got 30 minutes in here before I have to go back and check on them. And to be able to hear them laughing. I thought, well, I’ve brought something to their day. But getting back to your point about using imagery and so forth, I think that was certainly in the in doing virtuals. Being able to laugh at something other than just my head on screen, is a real plus. And I think it’s very, it makes my presentation very relatable to people.

Hybrid Audience

Maria Franzoni  10:45  

And actually, we were talking earlier, and you’ve been to a live event recently, and the client that you said, the client insisted that if anybody wanted to attend, they had to attend in person and not virtually. And I wanted to find out from you if you’d had to manage that hybrid situation where you’ve got a live audience and a virtual, how do you do that? Yeah,

Greg Schwem  11:10  

I mean, it well, you almost have to joke about it a little bit, you know, first, I have to start by addressing that. And just, you know, like, when I would wait, the last one I did were hybrid, like I did a joke, and it didn’t do very well, with the live audience. I didn’t get a real response that I said, Well, I’m just gonna assume that everybody watching at home, just thought that was hilarious. So

but it’s good. You do you. But I feel like

to this to this company’s point. They said, We don’t want to offer a hybrid experience, we want everybody to be there. Because I think they realize the value of face-to-face communication. And I think they said, Look, this is where our resources are going to go, we feel you we feel we’ve created a safe environment. Now, we want you to be here and experience what we’ve spent a lot of time creating. And it was amazing to see and to see what people how people responded to that. I think everybody was very nervous about it. But the and they also had I don’t know if you’ve seen they did these bracelet things where a lot of companies are doing where you were a color-coded bracelet, you know what I’m talking about, right? Green Men, you can hug me yellow men kind of keep your distance and red men six feet apart. Now, that was something else I could joke about because I went up on stage. And I said this is great. I said, actually, and I know this works. I said because my wife and I’ve been using this system for the last 25 years. But I keep trying. But I keep trying to add another color. So and I think it’s very important that you laugh at what’s going on right now. And that’s why I think humor is so important because I think as you alluded to people need to laugh now. COVID is not a funny subject at all. What has happened to us because of COVID? That’s funny. There’s an awful lot of humor in there. And I think people need to realize that and I think that’s why more and more companies are at least considering even if they may end up saying well, we don’t have time for a comedy or something. But at least they’re considering that and that. I feel very proud that I feel like maybe I had something to do with that and

James Taylor  13:20  

because I’m still doing what I’m doing. 

I’m James Taylor, keynote speaker, and speaker business coach and this is the SpeakersU podcast. If you enjoy listening to conversations that will help you launch and grow your speaking business fast new thought possible, then you’ve come to the right place. Each week we discussed marketing strategies, sales techniques, as well as ideas to increase the profitability of your speaking business and develop your craft. You’ll find show notes for today’s episode as well as free speaker business training at speakers u.com this week’s episode is sponsored by SpeakersU the online community for international speakers, SpeakersU helps you launch grow, and monetize your speaking business faster than you thought possible. If you want to share your message as a highly paid speaker then speakers will teach you how just go to SpeakersU.com to access their free speaker business training. 

Something I’m always intrigued with humorous speakers corporate events and I’m not sure how you can have you square the circle. I know a lot of comedians I’ve been watching some stuff A while back about Ricky your vase and he was about the Golden Globes where he loves to offend powerful people and it gets a joker and the audience is in with the gag. So it’s not you know, and you know, Mel Gibson comes into the gag and all that kind of stuff. But I’m wondering like the role of the offense of someone in the audience taking offense, even if you don’t like you mentioned that the wife joke they’re like in a lifeline now. Um, yeah, maybe someone might take offense. And I’m the reason I asked this question is of all the speeches I’ve ever given, like, the totality and I’ve given speeches like 35 countries now. out in places where you think macrobiotic, like Saudi Arabia and places with different kinds of cultural norms. The only place that someone has ever taken offense is something I’ve said, I’ll say I have shown on screen was in Florida. And it was because I showed a 16th-century painting of a mermaid from Brazil. It was like a mermaid is a beautiful painting. 15th-century Brazilian artists drove this Mermaid, but the mermaid had nothing on top. So there is various and woman chaos, which I enjoyed your speech, but I was offended by that photo, that picture you put up. And I was like, Well, you know, present. It’s not a real person. It’s a mermaid. It did make me kind of think about the role of a fence. And for further speakers like the not humorous speakers, we can kind of see almost in a way easier for us. Yeah, for you. Someone taking offense, what you said even if you don’t mean someone to take offense at it. Right, it must be a hard one to square.

Taking Offence

Greg Schwem  16:05  

Well, you mentioned Ricky Gervais is one of my favorite quotes from Ricky Gervais is just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right. That has become a and he has said that he is very true. And he has, he has been a champion for that kind of thing. And I 100% agree with him. The bottom line is if you’re going to remove everything that might offend one person, then there’s not going to be any humor in the world. And I’ve developed a whole new presentation about this. It’s called you can’t cancel laughter. And I’m going to be giving this presentation next month for the Society of Human resource managers who I call the gatekeepers because human resource managers sometimes are the people who decide whether or not I’m going to be appropriate for their group. I’m doing the show for other meeting planners and I expect the present I’ve already given it a few times, it’s it can be a little controversial. It’s been a little contentious at points. But I am very much sticking to my guns and saying that the positive benefits of humor far outweigh, especially now. any possible negative ramifications. And again, if you’re going to go companies have come back from the brink of destruction using humor. And I mentioned I mean, I’m showing my age a little bit. But back in the mid-80s, Wendy’s hamburgers here in the United States was they came out with this campaign called where’s the beef, which was three elderly ladies, and you’re familiar with this, James. And as a result, this just became a catchphrase, where’s the beef? their sales went up 38%. But I sometimes feel that if that campaign had been launched today, somebody would go, I don’t know. We’re now we’re making fun of anybody here who thinks we’re making fun of the elderly. Does anybody here think we’re making fun of people who are hard of hearing, maybe swipe left? Maybe we better not do that. And that’s a shame. And that’s what I want to convey to my audiences with this presentation is be careful. Be careful before you decide that one thing may offend one person I mentioned. You know, I’m not big, I’m not a big fan of quoting studies in my presentation. But I did come across one from Harvard not long ago. So you know, it’s true, because it’s from Harvard. And that is that a boss, people think, you know, we’re all about retaining employees and giving them happy work environments now. And 27% of employees say they’re more likely to stay in their job. This is according to that study if they thought their boss had a sense of humor, even if it wasn’t a great sense of humor, that that is one of the reasons that they stay in their jobs. And again, we’re all about retaining the best employees now. Everybody’s looking for workers, everybody’s feeling burned out. And I think that humor is one of the things that keeps people why not come to work, where you feel that you can laugh and, and not be worried about how it might look. And that’s not true everywhere, by all means, but I think we have become very trigger-happy for lack of a better phrase and just saying, I’m sorry, bear bres. You know, let we can’t hire this guy. Whereas again, if they just said, Okay, first of all, it’s on a fictional figure and mermaid’s breasts. Right? And it doesn’t have anything to do with what you were talking about. You know, I’m sure in your speech, you didn’t say hey, now’s a great time to bring up partial nudity. So the mermaid me

James Taylor  19:45  

I just because I’m not as confident as you are about comedy, probably on stage. So I just tend to make fun of myself. I think that’s safer for me as a speaker, but there’s no comedian I

Greg Schwem  19:55  

do this route.

And I agree, and I also think there is a very fine line. And I’ve said this and this is Maria, this goes back to your point about Weiss and both of you about why so few people whose comedians started in comedy clubs cannot make that transition to corporate, I think there’s a very fine line between having fun with an audience and belittling them, or mocking them or feeling like you’re, you’re pote, you’re looking down on what they do, no matter how, you know, no matter what my audience no matter what they do for a living, even if it’s something I don’t understand at all. Or think what you know what I would never possibly use this product. What I have to remember is that this is their life’s work, they come to work every day, or they get up and they go into their home office. And they’re passionate about what they do. And it’s very important that what I say, aligns with that the minute you start talking down to a corporate audience, or if they feel you’re talking down to them, you’re never going to recover from that. And again, I’ve seen a lot of very funny comedians crash and burn at corporate events because they’ve never figured that out.

Crash Your Pad

James Taylor  21:05  

So talking about crashing isn’t. Tell us about a comedian who crashes your pad? Oh, yeah. Well, so

Maria Franzoni  21:12  

what a link. I’m sorry, I have to upload that link. That was a good segue, wasn’t it? Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Schwem  21:18  

And that was not set up everybody watching? No, I mean, we all you know, everybody who travels, I think some people, we all have our ways of what we do in our downtime. I got very fascinated with the home-sharing business. I’m a people person, I like to talk to people, I don’t sit in my hotel room. I don’t think anything’s funny sitting in a hotel room. So I thought, well, as long as I’m in all of these great locations, why don’t I take a day and stay with somebody who I found on a home-share property? Who, who strikes me as a unique person or as a unique property? And I want to find out why they’re doing what they’re doing white? What is it about somebody who lets a stranger into their house and lives with them? I couldn’t do that. My wife would not have it. But there are lots of people who do. And I wanted to know who these people were. So I started staying with them and filming my encounters. And next thing, you know, it became a DVD series that you can find on streaming media now. And I’ve shot over 35 episodes in three foreign countries, including in the UK, I stayed on, I stayed on a canal vessel in one of London’s canals and it was oh, I hit my head about 17 times.

James Taylor  22:34  

So it sounds like this. Does this show like a mix between Anthony Bourdain and that movie, the holiday the home exchange? Is it, Yeah, yeah, that’s

Greg Schwem  22:42  

a good way to put it. Exactly. Exactly. And it’s just I just want to know, I mean, I am dropped into these situations. And I always say that the people I’m not the star of these episodes, I’m the straight man. My hosts are the stars. I want to find out what makes them tick. And, and also what goes and then I’ve expanded the series to see what goes on around there. And when I can I put elements in by stand up back in there. That’s been difficult during COVID. Because a lot of clubs were closed. But you know, in a perfect world, would I have liked to have been on stage at a club in London, as part of this episode. Yeah, I would have I wasn’t able to do that. But at least I still had somebody that welcomed me with open arms to their boat.

James Taylor  23:29  

Maria, did you fancy a little bit of that going away somewhere? Hang on,

Maria Franzoni  23:34  

I don’t know. I like my own space. I’ve got to that age now where I need my own space. And first thing in the morning, you don’t want to see me. You don’t even talk to me. I’m a grouch. And I wanted to ask you, Greg, do you ever combine that idea of a comedian crashing your pad with your corporate word, you have a crash, maybe one of your corporate clients is dafs places. And then you know,

Crash VS Corporate

Greg Schwem  23:56  

it’s very funny that you mentioned that I’m doing a show neck in two months for the Boise, Idaho Chamber of Commerce. And I’ve been their emcee. This will be my third year of hosting. And they said, how would you like it? If we have them? I know they have an auction. They have a silent auction. But they also have a public auction where they raise money. And they said, What if we made you one of the auction items where we encourage people to bid. And their prize would be you show up at their place the next day, and they become part of the episode and I thought that is a great idea. So I’m going to go out to Boise a few days before I’m going to shoot some other businesses and other things that I find intriguing and funny about Boise and then I’ll do the show and we’ll film that. And then yes, somebody will bid on me. And then the next morning, Knock knock. Let’s finish the episode. So yeah, we are trying to do that. I mean, and I’ve got another one coming up. I want to as much as I can incorporate The groups I’m speaking for the episodes, I’m doing one for a bunch of funeral home directors in San Antonio, Texas. Now that’s going to write itself a document over them, I can’t imagine what their tradeshow floor is going to look like, you know. Goodness. So anyway, yeah, I hope to do that. And again, when now that things are opening up, and I’m excited about where the series might go, and the different possibilities, just because now, you know, people are they want to laugh, and they want to laugh in their environment.

James Taylor  25:38  

So we’re going to have a link on our website for speaking business. tv. to your website to Greg swim.com. But you have a little giveaway that we’re going to link to as well. Yes,

Giveaway

Greg Schwem  25:49  

exactly. So this is a book I wrote a couple of years ago, this is called The Road To Success Goes Through the Salad Bar. And some people say, where’d you come up with that title? And actually, it was one of my corporate clients, we were talking, and he was talking about needing to hire people. And he said, he said, You know, I said, I wish I could just see everybody at a salad bar. And like, I said, Please explain. And he said, Well if you see the decision-making process, how quick are people? And how much did How much do they put on excess amounts of so forth? And how quick are they with money? And the more he talked about that, what a great idea. So he was talking about how he observes people and how they go through a salad bar. So anyway, I wrote that book. And basically, it’s a lot of material that maybe didn’t make it into my corporate app, maybe it’s a little too long. And I wanted to flesh it out a little bit more. But there are all sorts of it’s everything you’d like to laugh about. In the business world, whether that’s, you know, your resume, or your virtual job interview, or, you know, you say, Maria, your space high, you know, this, your space at the hotel, and so forth, an airline free chasing airline, frequent flyer points, all of that relates to business. I talked about how people do things in Japan, and I make fun of all the business tycoons that we love to hate, like Jeff Bezos, and so forth. These are all chapters. So I wrote the book. And yes, so the link is you can download free the audio version of that book that I read, don’t worry, I don’t laugh at my jokes when I’m reading it. And that’s the link so you can download

 

James Taylor  27:25  

free free. Fantastic, we’ll put that link at speaking business.com. And we always like to finish up the show kind of sharing some tools. So, Marie, I know you’ve got a tool of the week. But what for you, Greg, what, what would be your kind of tool or tip for people that when it comes to hiring a human speaker, for example?

Tools

Greg Schwem  27:43  

Well, I think when it comes to hiring a human speaker, do your research. And don’t just say we saw this guy in a club, or our VP of marketing has a pretty funny brother, or our VP of Marketing is pretty funny. Maybe we’ll just use him. I think it’s really important that you, you know, video is key. And I think it’s also important that be willing to say I need to see more than just 30 seconds. If you’re not comfortable with 30 seconds, you’re hiring a speaker for 45 minutes or 60 minutes. And I think it’s important that you ask that speaker, I need to see more than just your two-minute reel, it may if that’s enough, my demo reel is four and a half minutes. Hopefully, that’s enough, but I have more if you need to see more. And also, once you commit to hiring a humor speaker, stay committed. Okay? Don’t Don’t say. We think everybody wants to laugh as long as you don’t talk about these 87 topics. Okay? be committed, know that your audience wants to laugh, you thought it was a good idea. Now work with the speaker. And don’t be afraid to work with the speaker. That doesn’t mean write material for him or her. But don’t be afraid to say, you know, where are you going with this one of the things I do with my I talk about my visual presentation, I let the audio I let my clients see it beforehand because I want them to

James Taylor  29:11  

be stressed them a hell of

Greg Schwem  29:12  

a lot I want so a lot of speakers will not share their presentation. I want them to be comfortable. And I also want to know that I’m factually correct. I don’t want to be joking about something that does not relate to this audience. And sometimes I’ll get on websites and I’ll start going down a path. And next thing you know, I’m in a different division. And they’ll say okay, that’s not our group. Thanks for telling me. I want to know those things.

James Taylor  29:36  

That’s great. That’s a great piece of advice. Yeah. Maria,

Maria Franzoni  29:40  

what about you? Cuz I know you’ve got a tool this week as I have it. Yeah. Because, yes, I like apps and software and tools. And James does too. So nothing to do with humor. This is about sort of organizing your office a bit. My tool is called a Yay. Isn’t that nice? Are yay.com it’s a local business to me and they Avoid the telephone service. So I’m going to impress you might with my knowledge, his voice, his voice over internet protocol. But what does that mean? It means rather than using your mobile phone, you can have a phone over the internet. And so if you need a switchboard, and you’ve got lots of people, if you have a VA that you need to bring in, you can give them a voice number. They don’t have to use their mobile, they can dial internationally using the app at a fraction of the cost, they can make a lot of phone calls for you. People can call you and be directed to whichever person it happens to be. You have a virtual switchboard, which I love. But it means then you’re you don’t have to give out your mobile number. If you don’t want to, you have a proper business number. And it can be geographical as well. And it’s so inexpensive. But the other thing I love about it is if you’re in your CRM, or you’re on Google, or you happen to be summary on LinkedIn, you put a phone number, you just press the button and the app on your computer will dial it. I don’t even have to find the keypad and put the number in. It just dials it for me. So it’s just very cool. It’s a great solution. And very inexpensive.

James Taylor  31:06  

Fantastic. Yay. Yay, yay. Yay, yay. Yay, yay, yay. So Maria, maybe I can kind of hand it back to you to thank our wonderful guest this week.

Maria Franzoni  31:17  

Greg, thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure. We’d like to talk about humor. And anybody out there if you want to share any of your humorous stories, we would love to hear them. Get in touch with us on LinkedIn, you can get in touch with Greg on LinkedIn to send us your humorous stories. You never know. They might appear somewhere at some event, or we might use them in the show. Greg, thank you so much.

Greg Schwem  31:41  

My pleasure. Maria, James, thank you so much. It was a great conversation. And thank you for doing your homework and I hope to see you down the road and keep laughing

Maria Franzoni  31:51  

keep laughing everybody. Goodbye, everybody, everyone.

James Taylor  31:55  

You can subscribe to the SpeakersU podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts while you’re there. leave us a review. I appreciate it. I’m James Taylor, and you’ve been listening to the SpeakersU podcast.