Funny You Should Say That Jon Selig

Episode 19 : Transform Your Side Hustle Into An Income

Jon Selig, comedian, founder of Comedy Abroad, and more recently sales trainer, found in entrepreneurship a way to live of his passion for comedy writing. Being a natural with people and words, Jon was a successful salesman in I.T., but quickly realized he had no passion or interest for these corporate worlds. See how he first recycled his sales abilities in stand-up comedy, to later bring his comedy writing skills to create a sales training program that teaches sales team a more human and natural approach to cold calling, public speaking, networking. You'll see that, as Jon says, being able to connect with others by making them laugh can go a long way!

Jon's Growth Story Book Title:

"Teenage Spurt"

I was 6'4 by the time I was 15, so that's really when I grew so much. Then another spurt at 18. So there, growth for me happened in two spurts and we'll stick with that.

What you'll learn:

• Jon started doing stand-up comedy as a hobby. He was looking for some kind of creative activity he could do without being dependent on other people's collaboration like he experienced with improv or jamming.
• Comedians are a terrible audience as they are very critical and analytical of everything about their own performance, and other comedians too!
• Not having a strong memory was one of Jon main challenge starting out in comedy.

Notable quotes:

• "Something I learned is to trust your instinct. And my instinct was that this isn't for me. And they were telling me that in so many words, and I was realizing very quickly that these personalities weren't people I wanted to work for." – Jon about interviewing for jobs in the world of finances and the importance of trusting your instinct in these decisions .
• "It involved a lot of rejection and frustration, but you soak up so much knowledge because they were selling to every department of every business. "  – About one of his first jobs, cold calling business people to sell ERP systems.
• " We all kind of start to have some regrets. You start to realize, is this what I want to do with the rest of my life? "  – The kind of questions that led him to reconsider other career/life avenue.
• "I didn't want my brain thinking about their problems. I didn't care about their problems. I cared about a bunch of stupid and nonsense things like making people laugh and playing music." – Jon realizing he was kind of disengaged at his job and didn't really have a passion for his work.
• "I'm getting up there trying to sell my ideas, you're either laughing – and buying it – or you don't." – Jon finding how similar his comedy writing class was to sales.

Show notes:

03:30 – David mentions the training "Funny You Should Say That" Jon just gave to Proforce's sales team. You can find the info at www.jonselig.com

04:00 – Jon founded Comedy Abroad to raise money for several central America NGOs by performing stand up comedy fundraisers – while escaping Montreal winter weather.

07:20 – Jon has a bachelor's degree in business from McGill University .

09:30 – Jon mentions a professor from McGill who changed his life, Reuven Brenner , who taught economics, but by focusing on concepts such as opportunity cost . He was teaching how to learn and to understand rather than just memorizing by heart.

14:17 – Jon's first job in the 90s was in Internet marketing, which Jon was very excited about. He learned how to code HTML. After 6 weeks he was let go and was devastated.

15:40 – Pressured by his family to get a graduate degree, Jon applied to McMaster MBA in Hamilton, Ontario . He chose this program because they offered work experience through the COOP-program .

16:20 – During his MBA, Jon got to work for Royal Bank and work on many exciting projects related to marketing.

21:30 – Jon got a business development consultant job at Oracle , big software company at the time and had great success, but was never thriving in that type of sales-oriented environment.

43:00 – Even if Montreal hosts the biggest comedy festival , the year-round audience is not sufficient to make a great living out of comedy, with about 750 000 English speaking people, VS Toronto with 5 million English speakers.

50:00 – For a few months now, Jon has been working on adding a video dimension to grow Comedy Abroad and it's been working great!

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Source: https://www.growthstory.ca/episode-19-jon-selig-comedy-abroad/

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