What Bill Cosby Taught Me About Business: 15 Quotes and a Chicken Heart

The goal of all comedians is to make people laugh, and we all like a good laugh. So why is it that some are so bad we want to cringe, while others absolutely nail it and we become fans for life?

 

Good comedians, like good businesses make it a point of knowing their market inside and out. They understand their buyer persona well, and it’s us.  They speak to us. Their words hit home.  They engage and delight, because although it’s their stories, they’re really ours too.  We relate to them and laugh – both at both the storyteller and at ourselves. We feel   a personal connection, and from that point on, we’re hooked.

 

Take Bill Cosby for example. While there are other extraordinary comedians, Cosby’s special. After about 50 years in the business, he’s still able to span generations, genders and races because he shares stories that are universal and appeal to everyone.  The older I get, the more I realize that his humor provides insights not only on the human condition, but on human business as well.

 

For example, take his classic oldie: ‘The Chicken Heart that Ate New York.’ Remember that one?  It’s a story from his childhood, about how one evening his parents had to go out,  left him in his crib (he was 7 years old at the time), and told him to stay there. The last time they left him alone, the boy slipped out of bed, turned on the radio to listen to “Inner Sanctum”, and scared himself silly.  To protect himself, he smeared jello on the floor, which his father slipped on when they got home. To prevent that from happening again, his mother told him they had scattered invisible snakes all around the crib that would bite him if he dared to leave. So what does a normal 7 year old do? You got it.

 

Did the snakes actually exist?  The young boy started yelling at the snakes to go away. Getting no response, he tentatively offered them a toe to nibble on, just to prove their existence. Realizing it was just a ploy, he hopped out of bed just in time for “Inner Sanctum,’ and the story of ‘The Chicken Heart that Ate New York.’  In a nutshell it’s the story of a chicken heart that was preserved in a jar in a New Jersey lab.  The jar was broken by a clumsy janitor and the beating heart was on the floor. He went to get his cleaning supplies and when he returned, the  chicken heart had grown to be six feet tall, was beating loudly (ba_BUM, ba-BUM), and promptly ate the janitor. The chicken heart then made it’s way out of Jersey and into NY, (still ba-BUMming by the way).  It ate everyone and everything in sight, including the Jersey Turnpike and the Empire State building.  Finally, it reached the block where young Cosby lived.  As it made it’s way down the street, the ‘ba-BUMMING’ got louder and louder and the poor boy, feared it would eat him alive.  He reverted to his usual tactic – and more.  Not only did he smear jello on the floor, but set the couch on fire too.

 

As fate would have it, his parent’s came home.  His father slipped, broke his arm – then there was the question of the burned ouch.  ‘What were you thinking’? Young Cosby explained about the chicken heart on the radio that was going to eat him up.  To which his father replied, ‘Why didn’t you just turn the radio off’? DUH!  It never occurred to him.

 

There alone, we have our takeaways:

 

  • If you always do what you’ve always done, you’re gonna get what you’ve always got.
  • Always test the waters.  If you don’t get a nibble, try something else.
  • The simplest solution is always the best.

 

But there’s more. Regardless of subject, Cosby quotes always hit home and  provide  some valuable insights for our businesses. Here are 15 of them for you to consider. Let me know what you think.

 

  1. I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
  2. People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what’s bitter and move on.
  3. Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.
  4. You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
  5. Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.
  6. Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.
  7. The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now.
  8. I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread.
  9. Old is always fifteen years from now.
  10. There are some people who have trouble recognizing a mess.
  11. There is no labor a person does that is undignified; if they do it right.
  12. There are two sides to every story, and sometimes three, four, and five.
  13. Everybody is not a victim.
  14. I tell stories. Because I believe you can do things that joke tellers can’t do, and that is, bring your audience along.
  15. You don’t reinvent yourself; you get better with what you do.