If you watch clips of comedian Joan Rivers’s stand-up sets or late-night interviews, she comes off as crass, yes.

But also effortlessly quick and conversational.

However, as she described in a 2010 documentary about her life, she was never an improviser.

She was always preparing.

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Using humor as her lens on life, she had a gift for writing jokes constantly in her head.

Somewhere along the line though, she realized she needed a system.

A codification of otherwise ephemeral lines.

A repository of her wisest cracks.

A catalog of her brain’s output.

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So, as she shares in the doc (clip below), she established a discipline of getting her jokes typed up, and filing them in a literal card catalog installed in a wall in her New York penthouse.

Drawers and drawers filled of micro-assets representing her life’s work.

Whether for posterity, inspiration, or eventual monetization, she saw the value of catching those comedic lightbulbs and converting them into a durable, tangible asset before they floated away.

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As you think about the expertise you’ve developed over your corporate and consulting career, how do you access it?

If expertise is your most lucrative asset, how do you manage it?

For most of us, we cross-reference our memory when asked a direct question on a sales call.

We go fishing in our heads when asked to assess a client’s situation as an advisor.

We hunt in real-time for relevant insights and examples to share when guesting on a podcast.

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But what if you had your own ‘joke wall’?

Perhaps not as granular as Joan’s, but rather a growing collection of your synthesized POVs within your domain that you could reference and apply at will?

Better yet, a catalog of frameworks and other visual assets you could share proactively with the market to demonstrate your domain authority, and drive inbound conversations.

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You can.

It just starts with getting those ‘jokes’ down.

In whatever form works for you.

And looking for patterns, before they float away.

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💡

-Wes

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The 1-minute YouTube clip below shows Joan giving herself a chuckle at an off-color joke she probably doesn’t remember she ever wrote.