There was an article that appeared yesterday on FoxCities Hub about Bill Cosby, Bill Cosby relishes his life as a storyteller. He’s doing two shows there this Saturday. Wouldn’t that be fun to attend? He’s 72 years old and has been touring since 1962. That’s 47 years. And he still loves it. The epitome of living your passion that Gary Vaynerchuck talks about in Crush It!.
He still gets a kick from getting up in front of the audience and telling stories. I can remember his first comedy albums. What wonderful stories they were. We would listen to them for hours on end and hoot and holler. It helped too, having seen him on TV, because you could visualize all those faces he would make of the characters who populated the worlds of his storytelling.
I got to meet him and get to know him a little bit in the mid 1970s. He was filming the Ford and Jello commercials that he was doing at the time in a studio nearby a Sea Pines residential community where I was the tennis pro. Those of you who are old enough, do you remember those faces he used to make with the kids as he told Jello’s story during those commercials? I can picture those like it was yesterday. And they still bring a smile to my face.
One of the producers arranged for him to play tennis with me whenever he was in town filming. That picture is of the two of us after out first meeting. Word spread quickly that first time he came to play. By the time we finished playing, we had most of the community, and quite a few guests, watching. Everyone was hoping for a performance, a little bit of showmanship from him. Maybe a quick little story or two on changeovers.
He cracked a few witticisms, but he took his tennis seriously, so people looking for a show outside of his tennis were a little disappointed. He had played basketball at Temple and was quite a good athlete. And a pretty darn good tennis player too.
I learned a lot from him after we finished playing each time. As we sat around cooling off, he was always generous in sharing his stories, and how he told them, and where and how some of those characters that we are all so familiar with, came into his life. He understood how to tell bite sized stories too. He rarely did long narratives. His stories have always been about people of course, and as such, are timeless, but I have a feeling that his ability to tell them and keep them short might be why he’s still so well received in this day and age of text messaging and micro blogging.
If you are looking for a model for telling your company and business stories, his would be a good one to follow and emulate. Do you have any employees or customers who are real “characters”? People who you could use to help you tell your stories who could make us laugh and cry?
Can you think of any others to emulate? Storytellers, or entertainers if you wish, like Bill Cosby, who manage to capture the magic of story the way he does? If so, please share them with us in the comments if you can. Robin Williams comes immediately to mind for me now that I’ve written that.
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Hi Gregg!
So glad I finally had the chance to read this post that I’ve been eying for the past couple of days! You have posted that picture before and I wondered what the story was behind it. I didn’t expect it to be Bill Cosby. Thanks for sharing and for the consistently great content you post here and on Twitter. I am learning a lot from you! Enjoy your weekend.
Hi Anj!
That’s so nice of you to say. Thank you! That picture was a loooong time ago. He’s just as funny. I’m just older.
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