Skip to main content

My Chris Rock Moment (sort of)

Is humour important in business?

Oh yes certainly! Humour is a great way to break the ice, get people to relax, and build rapport. These are very relevant to salespeople as well are always meeting new people during sales pitches, conferences, cocktails or other events.

This week I made an attempt to see how funny I was in front of an audience... luckily it was the very empathetic group of fellow toastmasters and not the Apollo theater. However there were a number of CEOs, senior executives, and businessmen/women there so the jokes could not be that pedestrian.



This was my first time to try the jokesmaster role, and I intend to keep taking it up more to polish up on my punchline delivery and deadpan face (Martin Freeman from office UK is my role model and suits my geeky self).

If you would like to know more about toastmastsers and how it can help improve on your communication and leadership skills visit the website or attend a meeting

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Differences between a Business Name (Sole-Proprietorship / Partnership) and a Limited Liability Company

While consulting for our online company registration service, Incorporator I find myself answering the question "What is the difference between a sole-proprietorship and a company?" Anybody who is considering starting a business must consider what type of business structure is needed for his or her particular situation. In Kenya there are three types of structures that one can use to start their business. 1. An LLC, or Limited Liability Company 2. A sole proprietorship 3. A Partnership A Sole-proprietorship and a Partnership are registered through the same manner (Form BN/2) with the exception that a partnership has more than one owner and although not necessary, entrepreneurs are advised to register a partnership deed as well. In this article all references to sole-proprietorship also include partnership. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of each structure is important when deciding which one you want to use for your company.

Cyber Cafe with an EDGE

Followed up from Laying the Groundwork for a rural cyber I've finally got around to writing this. Thanks for you all who patiently waited. Although I approached the project as an "internet consultant", I soon realised I would need to implement the whole spectrum of tasks required to get the cyber running. I spent almost a week laying the structured cabling, installing the software, and configuring the network. Most of the work I was doing for the first time (e.g. drilling holes in concrete to fix the trunking screws) and most of it was hard, but all of it was enjoyable. I needed to prove the project was implementable with minimal human resources (if it was going to work elsewhere). With an eye on both troubleshooting by the owner and future projects I prepared detailed How To manuals for most of the tasks. So the day finally arrived, November 17th I connected all the PCs to the internet. The results were incredible, the speeds were nearly as good as my 256K broadband conn

Selling stuff online to Kenyans

You might not know this but my love of entrepreneurship is fuelled majorly by my love of computer programming. My first exposure to computers was in 1988 when I played shuffleboard on an Atari. Having been raised in the boondocks I was utterly spellbound with the concept of a video game. In 'shags' we hardly ever got toys from the shops; instead we would create our own toys using locally available material. For toy cars we twisted and shaped wire coat hangers and cut out rubber tires from old (and sometimes mom's new) bathroom slippers. For planes, we stuck a stalk of grass through a dried maize leaf and made our 'propellers' rotate by holding them out in front and running into the wind (incidentally this was my all-time favourite). For marbles we hunted for used and discarded bottle-tops (beer bottle-tops were coveted). In fact we had so many toys that our game time never felt inadequate. That was until I discovered video games. Hard as I thought I didn't see