In Comedy, Life, and Business - What You Can & Cannot Control

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. - Reinhold Niebuhr

How might you change the world, profitably?

In order to change the world, you must understand the difference between the things you can control and the things you cannot control.

Presumably, you want to make money by understanding the difference between the two.

Let's begin with

A. Comedy

B. Life and finally

C. Business

Course Prerequisite: How Was The Party? OODA LOOPS

Table of Contents

A. What You Can & Cannot Control - Comedy

• APPLICATION: Overcoming Creative Stagnation

B. What You Can & Cannot Control - Life

• APPLICATION: Overcoming Nazis(m)

C. What You Can & Cannot Control - Business

• APPLICATION: Predicting the Future by Applying The Six Environments
• APPLICATION: Deciphering the Four Industrial Revolutions

People are constantly asking me to help them Build/Fund a Startup, Run a Company, or Get a Job With Earning Power.

Since I cannot help everyone individually, I'm publishing UnicornLaunching so that people can succeed without my personal involvement.

A. What You Can & Cannot Control - Comedy

I've been fortunate enough to play some great gigs in the past. The World Steelband Competition at Madison Square Gardens in New York City, Second City in Toronto, opening for Quinn C. Martin at The Hard Rock Cafe, etc.

In comedy, there are the things you can control and there are things you can't control. Like all comedians, I learned the difference between the two the hard way.

In comedy, there are three things that you can control. Specifically, you can control your:

• Material (jokes you wrote at home)
• Improvisation (jokes that emerge spontaneously)
• Crowd work (jokes that emerge from Crowd Interaction)

In comedy, you can control your Material, Crowd Work, and Improvisation. Material is when you write a joke and then tell it on stage to make people laugh. Crowd Work is when you talk to the audience to make people laugh. Improvisation is when you make up jokes on the spot to make people laugh.

Warning - Contains Jokes Involving Sex & Race. If you're offended, please hate me for it. Hate makes people richer faster than Love does.

In this set from 2014 - my best set ever (NSFW) based on Crowd Response - I used Material ONLY.

From a Crowd Response perspective, that was my best set ever. Laughter, Applause, guys making the *brrrrRRRAPPP* sound of gunshots after a joke. It was a dream come true. 

Overcoming Creative Stagnation

In comedy, you can control your Material, Crowd Work, and Improvisation. The one thing that you cannot control is the Crowd. 

Here's an example of Material failing to get a Crowd Response. Crowd Work, thank God, swoops in at the last moment to save me (0:28)

After my 'best set ever' at The Hard Rock Cafe, I got depressed. Sure the Material KILLED, but was that all there was to comedy - writing funny Material and telling the funny Material on stage? 

All of a sudden, standup seemed boring. After a long lull - years actually - I got the courage to try Crowd Work and Improvisation on stage. Sure the room for failure would skyrocket, but so would the rewards.

As opposed to Material, Crowd Work, and Improvisation, the one thing you CANNOT control in comedy is the Crowd. In fact, from night to night, club to club, set to set, the Crowd is always changing. Long story short, I discovered the joy of standup comedy was to be found in the intersection and weaving together of Material + Crowd Work + Improv + Audience to create a truly joyous and profound shared experience, not just laughter. Any clown can make people laugh. I wasn't a clown.

The one thing that 'my best set ever' didn't contain was Crowd Work & Improvisation. I would soon discover that Crowd Work & Improvisation was a portal into a new - and much more rewarding - way of performing comedy.

The one thing I couldn't control - The Crowd - was what brought me back to standup after becoming disillusioned. Anyone could write a joke that made people laugh, but how many people could use Material, Crowd Work AND Improv to make people laugh? That was my new goal. And so I went on stage with zero material and things went well - and badly - but most importantly, I was having fun in the present moment.

A lot of people see a constantly-changing Audience as an Obstacle. Six years into standup, I discovered that a constantly-changing Audience was where the JOY was.

Just like in comedy - in life and in business - there are the things you can control and the things you can't control.

B. What You Can & Cannot Control - Life

In life - as in comedy and business - there are the things you can control and there are things you cannot control.

The three things you can control in your life are the way you use your:

• Time
• Energy
• Attention

In other words, the one thing that you can control in life is how you Respond to the Environment. The Process by which you Respond To the Environment using your Time, Energy, and Attention is called the OODA Loop.

In the midst of the most degrading circumstances imaginable, Frankl used the human endowment of self-awareness to discover a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose. - Covey

Losing & Regaining Control Of the Present Moment

You lose control of your Time, Energy, and Attention - in the present moment - when you fail to breathe rhythmically. You regain control of your Time, Energy, and Attention - in the present moment - when you succeed in breathing rhythmically.

Why do we lose our innate, rhythmic breathing pattern? Snakes. Well, not snakes, exactly. We lose our rhythmic breathing pattern due to the antics of our Crocodile Brain.

How might we regain our rhythmic breathing pattern and regain control of our life? That's a bit of a long explanation - which I'll get to, in time. 

For now, read Waking Up by Sam Harris so you truly understand the transformative power of Stillness. As a Neuroscientist and Meditator whose studied in The East, he's the one of the few people who can give you the FULL package.

Overcoming Nazis(m)

The following contains excerpts from Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Victor Frankl was a Jewish Prisoner imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany. What his captors failed to realize was that Frankl was also a Psychiatrist.

His parents, his brother, and his wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens. Except for his sister, his entire family perished. 

Frankl himself suffered torture and innumerable indignities, never knowing from one moment to the next if his path would lead to the ovens or if he would be among the "saved" who would remove the bodies or shovel out the ashes of those so fated. 

One day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called "the last of the human freedoms" -- the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away.

Frankl realized that his captors could do what they wanted to his body. He also recognized himself as a Self-Aware Being who could look as an Observer at his very involvement. His basic identity was intact. He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him.

In other words, he learned that the only thing he could control was his:

• Energy
• Attention
• Time

Between what happened to him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response. In the midst of his experiences, Frankl would project himself into different circumstances, such as lecturing to his students after his release from the death camps. He would describe himself in the classroom, in his mind's eye, and give his students the lessons he was learning during his very torture. 

Through a series of such disciplines -- mental, emotional, and moral, principally using memory and imagination -- he exercised his small, embryonic freedom until it grew larger and larger, until he had more freedom than his Nazi captors. 

They had more liberty, more options to choose from in their environment; but he had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options. He became an inspiration to those around him, even to some of the guards. He helped others find meaning in their suffering and dignity in their prison existence.

Reactive people focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control. Their focus results in blaming and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization. The negative energy generated by that focus, combined with neglect in areas they could do something about, causes their Influence to shrink.

Whether you're reading this in a jail cell or in the C-Suite, you have control over your:

• Time
• Energy
• Attention

What you do not have control over, however, are The Six Environments.

C. What You Can & Cannot Control - Business

Let's zoom WAY OUT. Fundamentally, what you cannot control is the fact that you live on Earth. The Mystics used to call the Earth The Kingdom.

In life, you can control your time, energy, and attention.

In business, you can control your:

• GOPST (Goals Objectives Plans Strategies & Tactics)
• Target Market
• Product

We'll delve into each of these at a later time. While you can control your GOPST, Target Market, and Product, what you cannot control in your business is called The Six Environments:

• Political, Legal & Regulatory Environment
• Economic Environment
• Sociocultural Environment
• Technological Environment
• Competitive Environment
• Geographic Environment

The Six Environments Framework was created by Professor Richardson, a Professor of International Management (U of T, Seneca). The Six Environments is the precise reason that Professor Richardson is requested for Television Interviews more than his peers.

As a person in business, you respond to The Six Environments by making decisions around your GOPST, Target Market and Product. As an aside, I believe that the world is in turmoil because we do not have a common language with which to describe and criticize the world. When we have a common language AND are courageous enough to separate the things we can control vs. the things we cannot control, only then can we describe, criticize, and then enact high-impact, sustainable change with a clear view of the Trade-offs. This common language starts with a basic understanding of The Six Environments. 

Job Hunting And The Six Environments

I discovered the true value of The Six Environments as a Recruiter. I've been a Recruiter/Headhunter/Headhunter Launching Startups and a Teacher for 15 years. Now I'm doing what I used to do on the phone, on camera.

Shout out to Mary who closed a Million or Two with Redfund.

As a Headhunter, my job was supposed to be to place Executives in high-paying, high-status jobs. But that's not the way I saw my job. Not entirely.

As a Headhunter, I saw that my job was to place an Executive in a Job with Earning Power. A Job with Earning Power is a job that - if performed effectively and efficiently - confers the ability to earn MORE MONEY in the future onto the successful Executive.

In order words, a job with Earning Power enables the successful Executive to Earn More Money in the future.

That just left one problem: how could I predict which companies and startups would have the highest probability of conferring Earning Power onto the Executive I placed in a job? To know that, I'd have to predict the future.

More specifically, in order to deliver Jobs with Earning Power to my Executive Candidates, I'd have to forecast the most lucrative Problems Worth Solving, Jobs-to-be-Done, and Functions-Worth-Delivering across the globe. Then and only then would I be able to select the startups and companies who I believed had the best chance at dominating a future that didn't exist with a Whole Product.

So how did I predict the future? That's easy. Problems Worth Solving, Jobs-to-be-Done, and Functions-Worth-Delivering emerge as a result of the collision, mixing, and cooperation between the Six Environments across time:

• Political, Legal & Regulatory Environment
• Economic Environment
• Sociocultural Environment
• Technological Environment
• Competitive Environment
• Geographic Environment

Let's zoom WAY OUT again.

Humans - for obvious reasons - have divided the Earth into countries. Humans have divided the Earth into countries primarily on the basis of Geography.

Predicting the Future by Applying The Six Environments

How can Geography help us predict the future?

Geographical Environment

The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fat 

Nuff said.

Sociocultural Environment

There is an important school in Sociology called Functionalism. Functionalism says that everything exists because it performs a necessary Function. For example, Crime allows Society to Punish the Criminal, thus clarifying and portraying the Rule of Law across the Country.

The Economist David Foote in his breakthrough Boom Bust & Echo proudly stated,

Demography, the study of human populations, is the most powerful tool for understanding the past and forecasting the future. - Foote

To predict the future we must understand the Sociocultural Environment.

To predict the future we must understand the Sociocultural Environment.

No - seriously - to predict the future we must understand the Sociocultural Environment.

Nuff said.

Technological Environment

Can you see how an understanding the history and trends in the Six Environments can lead to trillion-dollar businesses?

Nuff said.

Economic Environment

Nuff Said.

Competitive Environment

Many thanks to Professor Rothenberg for pointing me in the right direction. Homospatial Thinking and Janusian Thinking [The Divinity of Number in general via Arthur Koestler] are truly the source of all creativity.

Welcome to Complex Systems. :D

Startups, Sole Proprietors, Corporations, Crown Corporations, Governments, Charities and NGOs like the United Nations - depending on their Goals & Objectives - make money by successfully and continually address Problems Worth Solving, Jobs-to-be-Done, and Functions-Worth-Delivering better than their competition. 

Trump VS Clinton (Political), Apple VS Samsung (Technological), Fiat VS Bitcoin (Economic)...you get the idea.

Deciphering the Four Industrial Revolutions

Fortunately, you now also have the tools to understand the Creative Forces underlying each of the Four Industrial Revolutions. To predict the Future is to understand how the Fourth Industrial Revolution is going to disruptively revolutionize the world by the way it influences The Six Environments.

Each of the Industrial Revolution can be seen as a Radical Emergence that changes the course of the entire Biosphere. Now, were these Radical Emergences predictable based on the Mathematical Need to Grow Our Cities to keep in lock-step with Physic-al laws? If you understand what I mean there, we should probably connect. As we become more Electric as Beings, we reflect that which underlies the Electricity, Life's Scaling Laws and Euclid's Elements and the Lightning Flash of [you know what], etc.

Now that you understand the difference between the things you can control and the things you can't control, it's time to help you Start the Startup or Generate Job Offers.

I just needed to level set a bit, ya know?