Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. I am here with Yvonne Conti. Shelly Hoffman, if you didn't know who I was. But Yvonne, you have so much going on in your life right now, and I thought it would be nice to take an opportunity to really kind of let people know what you have going on. Okay, I'm gonna mention your book right now just in case people quit listening after, like, the 10 seconds.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Okay? Okay.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: But this is your book. Beneath Her Smile. And we will get to this. So you definitely want to stay and hear more about it, but can you tell us a little bit about, like, who you are as a person and why you decided to write this book and do the speaking and stuff that you do?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Okay. Well, first and foremost, I'm a mom.
I have two great kids, one in San Francisco and one here in Syracuse, and some grandchildren. That's my life right there. That's number one.
I'm also a faith filled person, so that's high on the agenda, too. But as a business person, I've been a motivational keynote speaker for over 30 years.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: The topic is the positive power of humor.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: And that's the full 30 years that you've been talking.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. That's all I've done for my.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Was it about humor? I guess that you're like, this is a message that I need to get out that you could actually make a career on it.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: You know, the interesting part about that, and of course I do cover that in the book, is how it happened, because it's not something I sat down and said, oh, I want to be a motivational speaker.
I was selling telephone systems for Tel Plus Communications, and Siemens Corporation bought the company and a lot of us lost our jobs. I was offered a job in Boca Raton, Florida, and I thought, my kids are in school, I have a home. I don't want to leave Syracuse. So I thought, oh, I'll find another job. But I, it's. It was hard because all I knew how to do was sell. And it was a recession. They weren't hiring salespeople. So, long story short, I was in the kitchen crying one day and my son came in at 16 and said, Mommy, what's going on? I said, I, I need to find a job that I really want to go to. You know, not just one that's going to support me, but one I really enjoy. And he said, you should be a comedian, Mom. You're really funny. So I dismissed him as an idiot. You know, and as we sometimes do. As we sometimes do. Yeah.
And I happened to go to my accountant that day to kind of see where's my money? And what he said, you needed to get a job. And I said, I don't know how to do anything but sell. And he said, did you ever think about being a comedian? So two people in the same week.
He introduced me to Bruno Schrippa, who owned Wise Guys at the time.
And I went there and did five minutes on the stage. And I'll tell you something, it never occurred to me to ever use comedy or be funny as a job.
Never.
But standing in front of that audience and having that laughter come from that audience, it was like a big warm hug, you know, And I was addicted in that instant. The first moment that I stood on the stage and heard them laugh, I was ecstatic. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is fantastic. So I studied stand up comedy.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: So I have to ask you, I mean, obviously it wasn't something that you, you had considered. Other people mentioned you. Where did you find your content for the first five minutes? Like, what did you talk about?
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Okay, I sat with one of my best friends and I said, I can't do stand up comedy. I don't know anything about. I've never been in a comedy club in my life.
She said, tell them about your stories. Tell them about your ex husband, tell them about your kids, tell them about, tell them about life. And she was absolutely right. It's a really good stand up comic, or a really good speaker for that matter, doesn't make stuff up.
They talk about the things that happened in their life. They twist it a little bit to make it funny and it's gold.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: Well, and it's your delivery and it's your timing and if you're telling the stories and people are laughing, naturally, and you can take that to the stage. Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's kind of cool.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: But I mean, I studied. I sat in the back of that club for a good three months and just took notes as to what all the big comics did, how much time it was between each laugh. I studied it like it was a science.
And. And then I invited them to my house for dinner on Sunday so I could pick their brain and find out about the business end of it, you know, And I'll tell you, it just skyrocketed. And then one day a lady called me in Rochester. She was from the Rochester area fundraising executives, and she said, I heard you were really funny and I wondered if you could come and talk with our group. And that started me as a speaker.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: I was just going to ask you, what made the change?
Did you do both? Did you do stand up comedy? And then speaking.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: I went and did this one speaking engagement for her.
And because it was a group of. It was 100 people from 100 different organizations that did fundraising. So it was colleges, it was hospitals, it was things like that. And I got business immediately.
In fact, my second job was in Ohio.
And I'm like, how did this happen? And it was a woman in that audience called her father who had five nursing homes in Ohio, and he hired me to come out and speak week for him. So it just exploded. I never went back to stand up.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: What was your. Oh, you never did?
[00:05:27] Speaker B: No.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: What was your message then? If you go back to that time in Rochester, you know, because when you. When you are a keynote speaker, there's. There's a message that goes. That goes along with it. So what was your message?
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Well, the title is the Positive Power of Humor. And the message is that if you dwell on what is negative in your life, you will produce more negativity. It's common sense.
You know, I often laugh. I'm like, I can't believe these people pay me to tell them something they should already know.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: But people don't know.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: But people really don't think about it.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: No, they don't.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: They don't think about it.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: And they wallow. And they wallow. Yeah. And it's like if you don't get yourself out of it.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Yeah, right, Exactly. Be grateful for what you do have and more good things will happen. It's a hundred percent that way.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: You know, for a long time, I had a journal that I kept near my bed. And every night before I went to bed, I would write five things that happened that day that I should be grateful for. And they could be huge or they could be little. It could be, man, my coffee came out perfect this morning. You know, that goes on my list.
Or it could be I got a great gig for ten grand in Florida or whatever.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Did you ever struggle with the day to come with up with five?
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Never. No, no, because. And that's the point.
Nobody on this earth can't find five good things it could be. I woke up this morning. That's good.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: I'm breathing.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: I'm breathing. I can walk. You know, my sister called to see how I was doing. It could be simple things. We don't have to only be grateful for the big deals in our life.
We need to be grateful for every little thing that happens that works out, you know, and sometimes. And I found this to be so true. Especially. I took five years to write this book, and in those five years, I had to look at my life, and I thought, wow, if that didn't happen, that one thing that I thought was so bad, this good thing would have never taken place.
You know, oftentimes the things that happen to us that are the most difficult are the ones that bring us to a place where we can really shine.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: So the name of this podcast is ever changing and evolving, and that was just something that came to me because I was kind of forced into a change. To your point, if it never would have happened, I wouldn't be sitting. I wouldn't have met you.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Exactly right. Yeah.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: For as bad as I thought it was going through, you know, and just, you kind of have to embrace things as they come exactly the most out of it.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And. And that also goes back to.
I realized in writing this that at 8 years old, I learned that being able to make a person laugh was the greatest gift that you could give them.
My mother had some difficulties in her life, and she seemed so sad. She went from being a perfect mom, always happy, always reading and laughing and all that, and then all of a sudden, she was unhappy. And I didn't understand it, but I realized if I could imitate Topo Gigio, the Italian mouse, she was in hysterics. And I thought, oh, I want to
[00:08:41] Speaker A: do that, you know?
[00:08:43] Speaker B: But it's so funny to me that why didn't I think of that when I was trying to find a career for myself? It never dawned on me, but, wow, it's such an important thing to be able to make someone else laugh.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: So you said it took five years
[00:08:57] Speaker B: to write this book.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: I mean, it seems like you kind of jump into things. I know you said you studied comedy and stuff, but you jump into thing. Why do you think it took five years to put this book together?
[00:09:06] Speaker B: Because it was so personal. You know, when people think of me, they think, oh, she's happy all the time, you know, And I am.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: But there was a sadness inside of me that I never fixed. I just hid it. Which? The title, beneath her smile. Because everybody thinks of me with that clown nose and the big smile.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: And I made a career out of that. But there were a lot of places within me that I just never healed. I instead thought, I'm not going to dwell on the negative. I'm going to move on, which is good.
But sometimes you do need to think about, why did this happen?
What did I contribute to it or not contribute to It. And how can I move forward from that? And for me, it was being able to forgive myself and others from my childhood and understand them. I've always been the kind of person that you can't just tell me to do something. I gotta understand why I am that way too.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: Yes. Yep. And it's annoying to some people.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: It is. But I think it's a smart way to be. Why do something if you don't understand why you're doing it? I remember one time I was going to church with my mother, my sister, and. And it was Ash Wednesday, and I said to my mother, mom, why do we get ashes on her forehead? She said, because you're Catholic. I was like, that's not a good reason, you know, So I had to research that to figure out why. But, yeah, I've always been a YYY girl. And I came across some information in my life that made everything I questioned in my life, childhood, fall right into place. And so then I had to really work on trying to figure it all out.
And that's what. And my. My mom passed away in 219. And when she passed away, that's when I thought, I need to write this down to honor her. Yeah, in a way. Yeah.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: You know, you said, like, finding the jokes and finding joy.
But it is true. A lot of times people that smile the most, they do have something that, you know, they're hiding. They haven't. Process, Process.
I had somebody tell me one time that you really need to sit in the pain to get past it. And that is a really uncomfortable place to be. But it's.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: But it's. Right. That's right. And it's interesting that you say that about, you know, because I read a lot about comics that, you know, it's. It's part of my life. I've read every book that they've written about comedy for comics or, you know, whatever, and oftentimes they say the real good comics come from a place of pain. And I've always rejected that. I'm like, well, I never had any pain, you know. Yeah, I was so not even giving it any kind of, you know, So I. I always said that. I said, well, I never had any problems as a child, you know, until you start looking at it, then you realize why you're such a messed up person, you know, so.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: Well, when you said at 8, you learned if you make someone smile, like, clearly that was.
You wouldn't know that at 8, right? No, but clearly that's coming from a place of sadness, from at least Somebody that you admire.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: And you want them to be happy.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: So I. I kind of grew up feeling as if I wasn't important to my mother.
I had a sister, my older sister, she was a year and a half older than me, was very sick. And so my mom was always taking care of her. My father was.
I wouldn't say he was an invalid, although he was 100, disabled veteran. So she had to dress him. She had to, you know, comb his hair. Take care of him. Yeah. Get him ready for work. She was busy, my mother.
And I was 100% healthy, so it was like I couldn't catch a cold to save my life, you know? I remember one time I. I went and I. I happened to touch the radiator, and I'm like, oh, that radiator's hot. So I put my forehead on the radiator to try to get a fever, and I waited till it was so hot I couldn't stand it anymore. And I went downstairs and I said, mom, I don't feel good. And she looked at me, she said, come here. What is going on? So she came over and realized what I had done. She started laughing, and I said, why are you laughing? I'm sick. She goes, oh, my God, Yvonne, look in the mirror. She put me in front of the mirror. I had three lines on my forehead where I burned my forehead. So why would you ever do such a thing?
[00:13:38] Speaker A: That is funny, you're saying. Yeah.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: As you're saying.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Yeah. I thought you were going to give yourself a burn to get attention.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: I didn't know I was trying to get a fever.
Oh, golly.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: So with the, you know, obviously stand up comedy, then you went to motivational speaker, right?
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: Had you ever thought about writing a book?
[00:13:57] Speaker B: Never.
I was working for a woman in Chicago, and she said to me the night before I was about to fly out, do you need a table for your books?
And I thought, oh, I should have a book.
I said, actually, I'm not going to be bringing them this time, but thank you anyway. And I remember after I hung up with her, I stood up and I was, like, looking around my living room going, I need to write a book.
Oh, yeah, I need to write a book.
All speakers have books, you know. So I had my talk.
I had 12 pieces of paper that kind of reminded me what I need to talk about.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: I took it to Kinko's at the
[00:14:39] Speaker A: time, if people even know what Kinko.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: I know. And I may. I made.
I made. I think it was 15 little booklets with those 12 pages in them. Okay. And they had little pictures that prompted what I had to say.
And I remember I put on the top of it with masking tape, $5. And I sold every one of them at this conference. And I'm like, oh, this was in 2000. What, like 2000?
No, it was earlier than that.
1995 is when I started. So maybe like 1998 or 9.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Or 2000.
Yeah.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Actually, those people. It was a.
It was a women's finance group, and they hired me for their first meeting, and then 20 years later, they hired me for their 20th meeting.
And so it had to be at least.
Yeah. Had to be at the beginning of my career.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: So that was your first book?
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Because my first book I wrote in 1998, so it had to be before that. Yeah. And so that was my first. So then I said, oh, I gotta start writing this book right away. And I did.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: And, man, it was amazing how interesting it is that people think just because you wrote a book, now you're an expert.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: I've heard that. Yep.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: It's the truth. Yeah, it is.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Well, so those books are different than this book, though, right?
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Books did you write? And what was the meaning of those initial.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Okay. The first eight books I've written were all about what I do as a living, for a living. It was about why laughter is important. The medical and physical realities of what happens to your body and soul when you laugh. And it had lots of stories that clients have told me about how laughter, you know, helped them through going to a funeral or whatever it might be. And.
And also one of the books has exercises and how you can add more laughter to your life. Another one is called Bits of Joy. Every page is a different idea of things to do. Blah, blah, blah. This is not that way. This reads like.
Like a fiction book. It reads like a. What do you call a.
Just a. A story. Yeah, it's the story of my life. It's. The book starts with my mother as a child because I realized how important it was to understand what she had to give up in order to be married to my dad.
My mother was on the verge of becoming famous. Really? Yeah. She sang for the Harry James Orchestra. Nobody's gonna know who that is because it was 1946. But anyway, it was a famous orchestra, and I don't. He was married to Betty Grable, if anybody knows who she is. Okay. So when she. She was, like, at the top of her career as a vocalist, and she met and married my Father. And two days later, her father said to her, being from Italy and a, you know, the, the boss of the family, you will not be doing any more singing. You're married now. You will be a wife and soon you will be a mother. That's the end of this singing. Wow. And that was it.
And I thought to myself, wow, she was a married woman and she still had to do what her father said. I didn't do what my father said when I was 12, you know what I mean?
But I realized how brokenhearted she was just to lose her singing career. I mean, I don't know if I could have done that.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: No. It's a different time back then, though.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: Of course, of course. But I felt that was important to understand the losses that she went through.
And then, you know, it continued. She continued to have losses in her life that caused her to change her whole personality.
And I never knew what they were until I was in my late 50s, early 60s.
So.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: And that. And you said, so telling the story of your life, you're really also telling the story of your mom's a little bit, aren't you?
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it starts with my mom, the first chapter. And then it goes into my life as a child and what I had been went through. And then how I tried so desperately to get her attention.
Once I was a teenager, the comedy didn't work with her that much. So I started being bad. I thought, well, that'll do it. I'll be a bad kid.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Attention seeking. Yeah.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: And you know, I'm very sorry that I was such a bad kid, but I realize my mother never held that against me. She forgave me for those things, you know, long before she passed away.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: Well, and that also is a part of who you are now. Like going back to what we say. If you didn't go through what you went through, you wouldn't be right.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Absolutely.
I remember when she passed away, my brother in law had given me this big box full of papers. It was nothing but papers. And I looked through it and most of it was, you know, just garbage. You see, she saved a recipe from a magazine or whatever, but then there was a whole big, huge envelope and it had every single magazine article, newspaper article, anything that was written about me was in that folder. And I'm like, wow. She saved every single thing she had things that I'd never even seen.
And I'm like, she was proud of me, even though she wasn't one to, you know, like, I, I go to my daughter, I'm like, I'm So proud of you. You are the best. You're so beautiful. I just adore you.
My mother was not that way. She was rather reserved. No, she was very reserved.
And so I wasn't sure just how much she knew about what I have accomplished, but she did. She knew everything she got.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Isn't it a shame some. You hear that a lot. That. That you really don't know until the person passes and it feels like it's almost.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: I know.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Too late. But at least you did know and you learned.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Well, she can't. I went to college as an adult. I decided at 44 to go to school, and so I did, and I graduated, and I was on. I was in some kind of honor society. I don't even know what it was about something. Anyway, she came to. Not only she. She came to my graduation, but she also came to this honor banquet that I was honored at. And. And that's a big deal, because I don't think my mother even knew where my high school was. I mean, she never came to any kind of school things, ever.
I actually went to 12 different schools from kindergarten to senior year.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: I kept getting expelled.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: I thought I was gonna say my daughter would tell you we moved a lot.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: No, we never moved. It was about me. It was about me.
Yeah. I even got expelled from a school I didn't go to. And that's in the book, which is an interesting story. So please read the book.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: So.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: So obviously, marketing. This book is a little bit different. The. The first eight that you said.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Totally different.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: You. You would get invited into a speaking event.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: A lot of times people would. They'd want to stay connected to you after the event.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: With.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: With this book, the marketing is different. So how are you going about that?
[00:22:07] Speaker B: You know, that's a good question.
That's why I'm doing your podcast. Because I. Yeah, in the past, I just wrote the book, published the book, and then I sold them at my events. This is different.
I. I will certainly bring this to my events, but I don't know. I don't really know how to sell this book. I know that it's a wonderful story, and I know that it will help people to heal.
Basically, it's about healing and forgiveness. At the end of the day, what my daughter said. Because I said to my daughter, I go, I have no idea how to even sell this book. And she goes, mom, that's not important.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: What's important is this. Yeah. It cost a fortune for you to publish this book.
But you would have spent more than that if you had to go to therapy, because you're a different person now than you were six years ago before you started this. Yeah. She goes, mom, the difference is amazing.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: What is the difference?
[00:23:06] Speaker B: I'm at peace.
I'm at peace. Like, you know, I don't have to be the center of attention anymore.
I can just sit back and enjoy other people, which has been kind of an issue with me.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Well, and again, just in the short time we've been talking, you can kind of tell that getting expelled from school is really about attention.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Trying to get so. So that. That's interesting. And that all came from really sitting in that pain like we talked about and getting it out.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And also, too, when you write a book about yourself, if you're not honest about all of it, it's not worth writing.
And there were some things in this book that I. I sat and thought about, do I want that out in the world? Do I want people to know that about me or about my dad or about my mom or whatever? And I thought, if I don't, then what's the point of the book?
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: You know, you can't leave out the things that hurt you. Otherwise it's useless. It's, you know, so.
And in doing so, it really, truly helped me to understand.
I suggest anybody, if you don't want to write a book about yourself, at least write a journal for yourself so that you can heal. Yeah.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And we talk about that. And even just, like, the five Things of gratitude. The woman who I know helps people write books, Amy. She was on this podcast a little while ago.
Her first book was Gratitude. And it was basically, she was in a bad place and she was trying to get out of it, and she just started writing what she was grateful for.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: And having gratitude, I mean, that can really get you motivated and out of, like, kind of the funk.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: And so she never really thought it was going to be a book. But you take that like your first book, which I'm laughing about, like your 12 points.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: I know, right?
[00:25:02] Speaker A: And put it together.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: That's incredible.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah. I do think. I mean, I don't know who I would be if I couldn't write. I've been a writer since I was a little kid. I was always writing stories.
And this is.
I am most proud of this. Of anything I've done in my life, other than my two children.
I was a single mom from the time my children were babies, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done. But I look at them now and I think, wow, you know, they're kind, they're considerate, they're compassionate. I don't think I could ask for anything more than that.
But this is the thing I am most proud of in my work life, of course, because.
Because it's done so much for me as a human being just to write it. So.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: So where can. So, a couple different things. Obviously, you're starting to promote this out and about.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: Why you're here.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: But you have a couple events and things that are coming up.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: I do. I do. If you're interested in buying this book, you can buy it anywhere. It's. It's available anywhere books are sold, Amazon, wherever. But if you want me to autograph it for you, which I would love to do, if you're local, I will be at Whitty wicks in Township 5 in Camillus on May 17 from noon until 3.
And I'd love to meet you and talk with you about the book.
I'm also going to be teaching a speaker class. I do it once a year. I only take 15 students.
It's going to be May 7th. Let's see, May 12th.
And it's going to be at Pinnacle Employee Services. And that's on Eventbrite. You can find it there. The name of it is Speak with Confidence and Impact. It's not just for people who want to be motivational speakers.
It's for about. It's for anyone in business or in politics or whatever who needs to get up in front of people and speak.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: And speak with confidence.
[00:27:00] Speaker B: With confidence. Yeah. And impact.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Well, I. I appreciate all the information, everything you shared. Thank you. Anything that I didn't ask you or that you want to throw out to people.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: I don't know why, but this came to mind.
If you want to be successful in your life, help as many people as you can to be successful in their life.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: And it will happen to you automatically. No.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: That is a really great way to end this podcast.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Well, like I said, go. And you want to get her book. You want to meet her? She's an amazing human being. We sat here for a little bit before the podcast because I was fumbling and she's very patient. So she might be my favorite person of the day today.
Again, thank you very much.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: You're so welcome. Thank you.
