If you took a walk with me, it is likely I would NOT make you laugh.
But if you forced me to get on stage and entertain 150 people with a hand puppet in a language I barely know, I know I could.
Not just courtesy laughs. Deep uncontrollable belly laughs.
I know because I did it.
It was terrifying. But I did it.
You could too.
Backstory:
My wife, Sylvia, was booked to lead worship at a Christian family camp in a small retreat center here in Germany.
We were freshly married.
The camp had a beautiful location near the mouth of the Elbe River.
In one of the phone calls with the camp leader, they asked if she knew anyone who could do a puppet for the kids.
“My husband can do it.”
Guess who never got asked?
Eventually she told me about the little task of entertaining some kids with a puppet.
I was a little upset, mainly about my German, but how hard can it be to entertain a bunch of kindergartners?
Turns out that those little munchkins were sitting in the front row of the entire camp.
I will spare you the freak-out.
But it resulted in creating some really obnoxious sketches and songs.
We wrote the scripts partially for the kids, but mainly for the adults. (Think Pixar)
When it was go time, I was behind the curtain reading the German trying to control a puppet. Zero clue.
Sylvia was my eyes, show assistant, and pianist.
But the writing carried everything.
The crowd, mostly the parents, went wild.
Look, writing an email every day is a way to back yourself into a creative corner and discover how creative you can get.
What would you do if you were forced every day to not just create content, but create entertaining content?
I know you have it in you.
It is tough to land a belly laugh with email.
But getting a little grin from your subscribers is doable.
If you fish for the grin and get it, you’ve increased the odds of them opening the next email.
But you will never get a chuckle if you never try.
I’ve got an ask for you: If you think this post would help your audience, I would be very grateful if you shared it. Either restacking it on substack or making a post with it. I will be sure to comment.
Blair
P.S. The retreat center asked us back for several more family camps. We even made a CD with the sketches to sell. One of the sketches is about the idiot soldiers guarding the tomb and a freestyle rapping angel explaining to the ladies why the tomb is empty, which we listen to every Easter.