If you have ever caught yourself wondering where jokes come from, you are not alone. Unfortunately, the answer isn’t altogether clear. Some cultures have long standing, rich joke-telling traditions where lay folk routinely engage in some sort of comic creativity. Other cultures, particularly in the West, tend to favor a more imitative approach — allowing professional comedians to seed the content and then take it from there.

In the US, there is a popular tradition that the majority of jokes come from prisons and stockbrokers. Alan Dundes, a University of California at Berkeley professor, once expanded upon this theory saying that “…stockbrokers have time on their hands between sales and a communications network to send jokes around. Prisoners have a lot of spare time and a captive audience.”

“Lately,” Dundes added, “these two theories have merged.”

The jokes that circulate on the Internet today, commonly known as “street” jokes, tend to be knock-offs of popular comic routines. However, the relationship between the comedic source material and the resulting street joke is not always clear. Street joke evolution seems to be analogous to the children’s game of “Telephone.” In it’s final form, fundamental aspects of the joke’s structure, rhythm, even basic themes may be altered substantially.

In 2003, Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire conducted his Laugh Lab experiment, an exhaustive research project designed to find the world’s funniest joke. Wiseman collected over 40,000 jokes from 60 different countries. The jokes were then voted on by 300,000 participants online. The declared winner was a joke about two hunters from New Jersey who go into the woods.

Recently, Wisemen announced that he was able to trace the origin of the joke back to a famous British comedian from the 1950s, Terence Alan Milligan (”Spike”). Although Spike’s version of the joke took place in a house in England, the punch line was essentially untouched.

Unfortunately, Wiseman’s success in tracking down the origin of Laugh Lab’s winning joke will likely remain an anomaly. As Wiseman explains, “Tracking down the origin of jokes is almost impossible. Of all the thousands of jokes that were submitted, the chances of knowing who wrote them, with one of two exceptions, is vanishingly small.”

Every morning I wake up and do a fast scan of my inbox for the proverbial “Oh #$%@!S” You can insert your explicative of choice here. For me, the S word ranks high on the list, closely followed by a slew of other choice words that would make a sailor blush.

After lots of failure and regrouping over the years, the one lesson I have learned better than most is that managing success is easy. The true test of leadership is how well you manage the “Oh #$%@!S”

I would love to say I am the Jedi Master of “Oh #$%@!S” — but alas, up until very recently, I have sucked at it. An unhappy email from an employee, vendor, random family member would send me down a very unproductive trail of self-checks, followed by self-loathing because… yes, usually it is my fault.

I hale from that fine class of entrepreneurs who have clinically diagnosed ADHD. Since childhood, neighbors have quietly thanked their lucky stars that we weren’t their problem… unless we meandered into their yards and ate all their tulips. (Sorry about that Mrs. P.) The upside is that we have a ton of energy and drive; the downside is that we typically move too fast and make more than our fair share of mistakes.

Today, I started the day with not one but two “Oh #$%!S.”  As I started my standard self-check process, I realized that yes (surprise, surprise) they were my fault. However, I then noticed something miraculous. No angst followed! I apologized to the people my mistakes impacted, noted what I would do differently to prevent it in the future, and I MOVED ON!

This may sound so obvious. But for me, this was a revelation. I have been working on “moving on” for no less than five years. Over the last half decade, I have spent a great deal of time in active coaching and leadership training trying to deal with this particular issue. To be able to accept my mistakes and not waste time beating myself up about them was a major milestone.

I used to think the self-flagellation would make me a stronger leader. The sad fact is that it weakened me. My fear of failure would kick in and I would spiral into an eddy of worry and needless anxiety.

How was I supposed to lead others when I was too busy beating myself up for something truly inconsequential?

So, enough said already. I have learned my lesson. It’s time to move on!

In my daily scanning of the various blogs of start-ups, technology, and business strategy, I almost never see the “S” word mentioned: Sales. It’s a dirty word to a good deal of smart people, particularly technical founders. Over the years, I have observed that too many entrepreneurs associate sales with smarmy used car salesmen. Visions of “Glengarry Glen Ross” dance through their heads. When steeped in this stereotype, founders attempt to hire an EVP of Sales quickly and then turn their sites onto “more important” vistas.
Now here’s the rub: Entrepreneurs cannot simply hire sales talent. They need to embody it. Why?

A founder who can sell cannot:

• convince a sales person worth his/her salt to join the team, unless there is gobs of money in the bank or an absolutely killer product (which is generating gobs of money)

• woo VCs, angels, even his rich uncle Freddie into giving him/her gobs of money so they can hire sales talent

• find great sales talent because he/she doesn’t know what he/she is looking for

• keep great sales talent (if they are lucky enough to find it) because they don’t know how to motivate them, compensate them, or, in many cases, even respect their skills

Sadly, entrepreneurs too often discover this recursive problem only after years of trial and error. They have hired sales “talent” that was unable to sell. They pitched angels, family and VC alike without raising a nickel. And perhaps the worst of it, they have racked up terrible amounts of personal debt without ever recognizing that the problem was staring them in the mirror.

To be clear, sales skills transcend than the ability to sell widgets. To sell is to engage in the art of influence. If you are lacking sales acumen as an entrepreneur, it is time to get busy. Like any skill, it can be learned. The good/bad news is that it comes more easily to some than others.

Comic Wonder is right now building a sales team. A sales team for a Web 2.0 play? Yes, a sales team. We have identified a clear market for selling our wares and are assembling an amazing team. Now all we have to do is get busy selling and hope that the market we’ve identified is as receptive as it seems.

In the end, it’s not how amazing the technology may be. It’s how open and receptive the market is. The good news is that a great sales talent can warm up a reluctant market. With that said, it’s only a piece of the puzzle. If the market isn’t ready, even the greatest sales talent will fail you.

So in addition to some serious sales skills, a founder needs to have a good sense of timing and feel for overall market dynamics. If that sounds overwhelming, well it is. Is it any wonder why the vast majority of new companies and products fail?