Introduction

If you have thoroughly reviewed the information provided in the “Your Best Stand-up Topics Made Easy” course, then you understand that:

When you use your comedy talent offstage you are actually using stand-up comedy tactics and strategies that are specific to you, your sense of humor and how you express your senses of humor.

More importantly, you want to use this same comedy talent that you use offstage when you take the stage as a comedian.

You should also be aware that ANYTIME you are talking with someone and you cause them to laugh (or someone makes you laugh), that topic or subject of conversation becomes a potential candidate as a stand-up topic or bulk comedy material that you can use to develop into tightly structured stand-up comedy material.

Note: It should also be obvious that all of your potential stand-up topics or bulk comedy material should be screened using the guidelines provided in this course before spending the effort for further development as stage ready stand-up material.

So what I want to do in this bonus lesson is provide you with a very easy way to help you identify potential comedy topics and bulk comedy material ideas very naturally and organically doing something that you do all the time which is…

Talk on the phone. With that said, let’s get right to it.

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Taking Advantage Of Your Smartphone

You may not be aware of this, but there are some absolutely fantastic smartphone ACR apps (Automatic Call Recording) that will allow you to automatically record phone conversations that you make.

Now before I continue, here’s a disclaimer:

Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, nor am I providing any sort of legal advice in this lesson. If you choose to use a phone app to automatically record phone conversations that you have without the knowledge of the other person involved, make sure you check out the applicable laws before you do.

Smartphones were not available during my time as an actively performing comedian. So what I am going to do is share with you how I would use a free automatic phone recording app for the purposes of identifying potential comedy topics and bulk material for a stand-up routine.

First of all, I would NEVER share any phone recordings I would make – they would be strictly for personal use ONLY as a reminder as to what was said and how it was said during a conversation that caused laughter to happen.

Secondly, I would only retain those recordings that may be of value when it comes to identifying potential comedy topics or bulk stand-up comedy material.

Probably the biggest advantage of using a smartphone ACR app to automatically record your phone calls is that you don’t have to think about anything while you are simply being yourself on the phone.

The only things that you do need to remember to do is:

1. Delete the phone recordings that you make that don’t have any value as potential stand-up comedy topics or bilk comedy material.
2. Move the recordings you want to keep and refer to off of your phone and onto a storage device.

Note: I would avoid using cloud based storage in the event it could be compromised and result in having your cloud account being hacked and your phone conversation recordings exposed. In a few moments, I will talk about how you can safely store your phone recordings without using a cloud service.

Now I want to talk about what you should look for in a smartphone automatic recording app.

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What To Look For In An ACR App

I have used a number of automatic phone call recording apps for business purposes for years now.

What follows is not a recommendation for a particular app as phone apps can perform differently depending on the phone. For example the automatic call recording (acr) app that I currently use (Cube ACR) is available for Android phones and not iPhones at this time.

So I want to talk about some of the features that you will want to look at when it comes to this sort of app:

Features you should look for:

1. Unlimited (or virtually unlimited) continuous recording time. I have had several ACR apps that would only record 30-45 minutes of a recording then start over breaking up the conversation.

I don’t want to have to guess which recording to keep or delete.

2. Ability to easily access/move phone conversation recordings. I used one ACR app that denied access or the ability to move to access or move the phone recordings I made. Not only that, I could only access the recording outside the phone itself by “sharing” with myself to get it to my computer via email and that was only if it was 15 minutes long or less.

3. The ability to selectively start recording if you have exempted someone from recording. This option may not be available with some ACR apps because some ACR apps only have one setting when it comes to automatically recording phone calls – on or off.

In other words, there may be no option to select who is exempt from conversation recording or to activate recording in the middle of a conversation for someone who is usually exempt from recording depending on the ACR app.

4. Optional: The ability to play the audio at a faster speed or to skip forward or back at a predefined interval. With Cube ACR I can play an audio at up to double speed and skip ahead or back in the audio at 10 second intervals.

This is very handy to quickly find segments of conversations that you want to review for comedy topics, stand-up comedy ideas or bulk comedy material — particularly in longer conversations.

I use the Cube ACR app and it works very well for me. All my phone recordings (up to almost 3 hours long) can be accessed and moved to an external storage device so that I can ultimate get it to my computer for more permanent storage/editing.

Note: There are some very inexpensive smartphone thumb drives (#ad) made specifically for transferring/storing smartphone files (images, videos, audio recordings, etc.).

You will need to know what kind of connection your phone uses – micro USB, Type C or Lighting (Apple). I personally use this 32 GB flash drive (#ad) for my Android phone with a Type C charging/file connection and it cost less than $10.

Also know that if you choose to use an ACR app, you will find that your recordings will accumulate quickly, taking up storage space on your phone.

Also, I can begin recording a conversation immediately with someone on my contact list that I have exempted from recording with just a push of a button on the phone call screen.

Cube ACR also uses a highly compressed AMR file format (Adaptive Multi-Rate audio codec) that works with any audio editor (ie: Audacity) and will save as an mp3 file.

Personally, the Cube ACR app is ideal for what I am presenting in this lesson. But you will need to look for one that meets your needs, especially if you are using an iPhone. And there are plenty to choose from.

With that said, here are a few guidelines you may want to consider if you use this method to identify stand-up comedy topics and bulk comedy material.

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Wrap Up

Anytime you talk represents a potential opportunity to use and express your sense humor. That includes talking on the phone which most people do plenty of with friends, family and coworkers.

And when you talk with others on the phone, it also represents an opportunity for THEM to use and express their sense of humor. That means you may be able to snag what they said as a foundation for comedy topics and bulk comedy material that you can use in addition to your own commentary that makes laughter happen.

Here are some things that I recommend that you do:

Again, make sure you are not violating any laws for stealthily recording people that you talk to on the phone. If you are simply using recordings for your own personal review ONLY, I don’t believe there would be any problems but like I said before, I am not an attorney nor am I in any position to provide any sort of legal advice.

Immediately delete any recordings that offer no potential comedy topics or bulk comedy material for you to work with.

Move any recorded conversations that DO have potential for comedy topics or bulk comedy material off your phone and on to external storage.

Note: Again, I would avoid using cloud based storage for recorded phone calls in the event it could be compromised and result in having your recordings revealed in a nefarious way. Get an inexpensive smartphone thumb drive (#ad) – making sure that the connection is correct for your phone.

I should also mention that you don’t need to use an ACR app – you can simply write down aspects of any conversation after it is over.

But one of the advantages of having the audio recording is that you can review how you said what you said when you caused the person your were talking to to laugh. That is more powerful than the exact words you used by themselves.

Like I have said right from the beginning – you truly have access to more potential stand-up comedy material than you will ever get stage for if you will simply trust yourself and the comedy talent that you use effortlessly on a daily basis.

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