Ever wondered how to navigate life’s challenges with a smile? Join Gail Zugerman in a hilarious and insightful conversation with Greg Schwem, a well-respected corporate comedian and cruise ship entertainer who has turned life’s gut punches into punchlines. Discover how Greg’s superpower – humor – helped him navigate a gray divorce and a cancer diagnosis, all while keeping his audience laughing. Plus, get ready for some witty insights on online dating, the importance of human connection, and the power of laughter in the face of adversity.
Greg has recently written a book about his personal life called, “Turning Gut Punches Into Punchlines“.
He is on SIRIUS Radio and Comedy Central and has shared the stage with Jay Leno, Celine Dion, and Keith Urban!
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
The Power Of Humor: Navigating Life’s Ups And Downs With Greg Schwem
How To Use Humor To Get Through Life’s Curve Balls
Welcome to the show. This is a show that provides a platform for older people who are growing older in a positive and productive way to come on stage and dispense their wisdom. You can find out more about our show by going to www.GrowingOlderWithGusto.com. We have a very special guest for the holidays from the start of the new year who happens to be a comedian from Chicago. He is navigating the ups and downs of life by utilizing his superpower as a comedian and using his great sense of humor. His name is Greg Schwem. He spends much of his professional time on stage and onboard cruise ships.
The Chicago Tribune has proclaimed him as “The King of the Hill” in the growing world of corporate comedy. He’s been on Sirius Radio and Comedy Central and has shared the stage with the likes of Celine Dion, Jay Leno, and Keith Urban. We’re going to talk to Greg about how changes later in life don’t necessarily have to be as scary as you might think if you find the humor in difficult, challenging, and unfamiliar situations. Greg has also written a very funny book based on his own personal life called Turning Gut Punches into Punch Lines. There’s a lot to talk about with Greg so let’s get going.
Welcome to the show, Greg.
Thank you for having me. Superpowers, I love that. I don’t think I’ve ever been introduced as having superpowers. That’s a lot of pressure.
From Journalist To Comedian: Greg Schwem’s Unlikely Path To Success
Why don’t we begin by having you tell our audience a bit about how you got started as a corporate speaker which the Huffington Post has called you “Your boss’s favorite comedian”?
It’s weird. I quit my job in journalism. I was a newspaper and a TV reporter in West Palm Beach, Florida. I did that for the first five years out of college. I was always a comedian though. I always did it as a hobby. I started doing it in high school. I finally decided after five years in journalism, which doesn’t sound like a lot but it is a lot. It takes a toll on you, particularly with the kind of stories that I was covering which were certainly not funny. They were very depressing. I told a lot of morbid stories. I would do that during the day and then I would go to comedy clubs at night and make people laugh. I eventually decided I liked doing that better so I moved back to Chicago.
I became a club comedian, the guy who goes around to clubs around the country and makes people laugh. Little by little, I started getting approached because of the type of material that I was doing in my standup act. I was doing material about computers, business, meetings, and that kind of stuff. I would have people come up to me afterward and invite me down to their Christmas party, their golf outing, or little stuff like that. That snowballed. The more shows that I did for business groups, the more I got noticed by people who booked those kinds of events on a much larger scale. I was getting approached by corporate speakers bureaus, corporate booking agents, and meeting planners.
It is a word of mouth marketing, so to speak.
I had no idea that this kind of stuff even existed. When you’re a journalist, you don’t get invited to three-day offsite meetings. Your boss does, but not you. Someone’s got to put out the paper. Little by little, I transitioned my whole act. Instead of being a club comedian, I became a corporate humor speaker. That’s really what I’ve been doing for the past couple of years.
That’s an interesting path that you took to that.
It’s very rare. There are few comedians or people who have transitioned into the corporate market. It’s different from working as a club comedian.
Were you a little jokester when you were little?
I was. One of the questions comedians get always asked is, “Were you the class clown?” I always say, “No. I was the class smart ass.” I always say the class clown is always in trouble because he’s always trying to get the other kids in the class to laugh. What I would do is try to get the teacher to laugh. You can’t get mad at somebody when you’re laughing. I figured that out very early. I would sit in the back and pick my spots. I always enjoyed making people laugh and trying to figure out what would entertain them.
You can’t get mad at somebody when you’re laughing.
Navigating The Gray Divorce: Finding Humor In Unexpected Change
To segue into a more serious subject, we hear a lot about the graying of America and the graying generation. There’s a rise in what they’re calling the graying divorce. I know that you have experienced this situation. I’m hoping you can give some wisdom to our audience about how your divorce came about and how you were able to use your superpower of humor to get you through a rough patch in your life.
My divorce was no different from a lot of divorces. Gray divorce is defined as people over 50, certainly how long you’ve been married but how old you are physically. It is the only demographic where the divorce rate is on the rise. A lot of it is attributed to couples who stayed together and raised their kids and all of a sudden, the kids are gone. They’re creating their own lives. The couples look at each other and go, “Now what?” There was a little of that involved in mind. There were other issues as well. I certainly realized at one point that it wasn’t going to happen. You could say, “Did you go to therapy or so forth?”
We’ll get into that later.
That’s fine. That’s a whole nother episode.
We’re going to talk about it.
That’s me. It’s scary. For people in this age group, when they make the decision to get divorced, they’re only thinking about the positives. They’re like, “Finally,” probably men especially. They’re like, “I supported my family. I did this. I paid the mortgage. I mowed the lawn. I did all this. Now, finally, I can focus on myself.” That’s very common and it’s natural to think that way. What you don’t think is that you have been married for a very long amount of time. For me, that’s half my life. I was married for 29 years.
When you are in that situation, you become a little bit complacent. I don’t use that in a negative term. You’re like, “This is what I get. This is what I’ve gotten used to, my house and this. I come home and I sit in front of the fire. Every Christmas, we do this. Every Thanksgiving, we do this,” and so forth. All of a sudden, that’s all gone. You have to reinvent yourself. That’s something people don’t think about.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a reason not to get divorced if you’re not happy, but it’s something you should probably plot out. As I talked about in the book, I have not paid bills in 25 years. My ex-wife did that. There were a lot of things. That’s what the responsibilities are. That doesn’t even cover things like, “How do I meet people now?” I’ve had the same friends for 25 years, but I don’t have those friends anymore. How am I going to meet people?
How did you use your humor during your separation and then your divorce? I know you did use your humor to deflect some of these other feelings that cropped up for you.
That’s natural as a comedian. That’s what comedians do. We are always looking for humor in everyday situations. It doesn’t necessarily matter if those situations are funny from the start or serious. That’s also why people always go to see comedians because they want to laugh at something that may be going on in their lives. Nothing makes me happier when I’m on stage or when I’m delivering some material about a particular topic and I see people in the audience nodding in agreement and looking at one another because I know I’ve hit on something here. They’re like, “He’s saying what I’ve been thinking.” It was natural to do that. Laughing is a way to get through the day.
I’ve heard that it’s also really healthy from a physical point of view.
Online Dating After Divorce: Keeping A Sense of Humor
Sometimes, you have to. You can get as frustrated as you want with lawyers and unfortunately the bad parts of divorce, the lawyers, moving out, and restarting your life. You’re going to come into something that’s funny and it’s how you deal with that. I had always planned to write a funny book about divorce. I thought that would be a good thing for me to do. I’ve written a couple of books before, but to write things down and journal my thoughts and maybe some of it will end up in my standup act on stage. As we’ll probably talk about, there was a little twist in there that’s something different.
I want to talk to you a little bit about online dating. How do you do this passage? What are your ways of navigating these ups and downs of Greg Schwem’s life?
What would you like to know about online dating? Is it about how you do it?
How can you keep a sense of humor while you are finding a date?
Reading other people’s profiles can be very funny. Trying to create your own can be funny. How funny do you want to be when you’re creating it? What are your ultimate goals? I put down that I was looking for people my age. To be honest, when I entered online dating, it was more of a fact-finding mission for me. I knew that I was moving to Chicago, the city. I was moving out of the suburbs.
Before I committed to that, I wanted to meet women my age who were also in the city to find out if they thought it was a good move. Was there enough to do? Was it more difficult to meet people? How easy is it to get around with transportation? All of that kind of stuff. I was very clear about that. In my profile, I said, “Right now, I’m looking for friends. Would you please be my friend, you over 55 ladies?” That’s what it was for the first few months. Once you get a little more comfortable, you think, “I met somebody or I’ve seen somebody. It’s time to see if we can have a new relationship,” which we know from someone who’s been married for a long time, that’s scary too.
Did you ever have any instances where maybe somebody’s profile didn’t match up to what you met, saw, and interacted with?
Everybody leaves something out of their profile. It’s not necessarily that it didn’t match up. I found a lot of humor in women’s profile pictures because that’s the first thing you see. I was amazed at how many profile pictures from women involved them holding a glass of wine. I don’t know why. What’s with the wine? These are all different sizes too. There were some that a fish could swim in the goblet they were holding. I found that to be funny. It’s like, “What are you trying to portray with this particular photo?” That became, for me, an icebreaker. When I would reach out to somebody, I would make a comment about their photo, not a mean-spirited one.
I remember there was one woman who I was a little interested in. She was on a paddleboard and there was this brilliant red sunset. I said something like, “I noticed your profile photo. Are you almost done recording your album?” It looked like the cover of an album or a CD. She thought that was very funny. There were a couple of women who I did meet who, all of a sudden, dropped a little bit of a bomb on me like, “Now that I’ve got him in the Starbucks I’m going to casually mention my sobriety or my ex abusive husband,” or something like that. You got to like, “Now you’re here. I have to deal with that. Am I ready to?”
Therapy And Reinvention: Embracing New Experiences
It’s not easy. That might send somebody, not you per se, but anybody going through a divorce or something like that into therapy. I know that you mentioned in your book that almost everybody these days does have a therapist, including your therapist. I was wondering if you would reflect back on your experience in getting through this gray divorce. How would you do things differently? How did therapy play into it?
How would I do things differently in my marriage?
No, in handling the divorce or getting through this.
I don’t know if I would handle it differently. I handled it very well. If I didn’t eventually go talk to an independent third party, I don’t think that would’ve been a good way to handle it. I was always anti-therapy.
What brought you over that hurdle?
Running out of people to talk to. This is something that another podcast host told me off-air. He had me on his show. He was divorced too. He said, “You realize you’re going to have to make new friends because your old friends knew you as a couple. You’re no longer a couple.” As much as I could say, “These are good friends of mine. We used to hang out at 4th of July picnics,” sadly, with the exception of a few, that is what happened. You can be mad about it or be upset and you can question whether they were ever your friends in the first place but I don’t think that does you any good.
Everybody has their own reasons. It might be uncomfortable. It might be that your friends are no longer comfortable talking to you. They question. Getting back to therapy, that’s eventually what got me into therapy because you have all these questions like, “Why aren’t people reaching out to me? What did I do? Am I suddenly a bad guy?” That’s one of the reasons.
Were you able to use your humor superpower as a way to overcome any bitterness that you might have? That is very common among people who either lose somebody because of a divorce or a death.
Bitterness, that word can go a lot of different ways. I have tried very hard to not bring my personal life and any issues that I might have with my ex into either my act or my book. I don’t think that gets you anywhere.
I was saying if somebody, not you per se, but anybody out there tuning in feels they’ve been shortchanged because they were a couple and they’re no longer a couple. Their friends are no longer who they think they were or were they ever their friends. Somebody can get over that by maybe finding a sense of humor in everything.
It’s good but you have to be very careful because your attempts at humor, and this is true on stage too, can be perceived in very different ways. It could come off as sarcasm. It could come off as bitterness. I’ve been a comedian for 30 years. I know how to read the room better than some people. Some people, when they try to maybe either reconnect with their children after a divorce, might think they’re being funny and lighthearted but they might not realize how it sounds to the other person. It’s a very slippery slope. What got me through it is I knew that other people were going through it too. If I could make them laugh and find things on stage and get that nodding response from people, then that was probably more therapeutic for me than going to a therapist. A lot of people helped me too.
You have to be very careful because your attempts at humor can be perceived in very different ways.
I want to say this. One thing I found out about people who are divorced is I realized we’re all on the same team. Whether this was on a cruise ship, random, or maybe I met somebody in a restaurant or something, nobody jumped in and said, “Let me tell you about my divorce. Do you think yours is bad? Wait until you hear this.” I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to hear the particulars. I always say it’s like your delayed flight. It’s different from my delayed flight. I found that people were not doing that. They weren’t trying to top you or turn the discussion to them. Everybody who I broached this subject with said, “It sucks but you’re going to get through it. You’re going to feel better when you come out on the other side.” That was enough for me.
Divorce sucks, but you’re going to get through it and you’re going to feel better when you come out on the other side.
The Double C: Finding Laughter In The Face Of Cancer
That is a good way of putting it. That’s very wise. My next topic is also not particularly uplifting, but I really admire you and everything that you’ve been through. Another life hurdle was while you were going through the divorce, y ou heard the C word, which is one nobody wants to hear. You experienced this right in the middle of your divorce. Tell our audience. How did your natural sense of humor get through your diagnosis and your treatment?
It was the double C. It was Colon Cancer. It certainly sent the book in a different direction. I had planned to write a funny book about divorce, and then this happened. I approached it the way that we’ve been talking about, which is about trying to laugh at something and trying to find humor. I am a big observer of people. That’s what comedians do. People say, “Your business is about jokes.” It’s really not. A comedian’s business is people, observing, and listening because that’s what ends up on stage. We have to see something and then we poke fun at it or make light of it. That’s the way our minds are always working.
I don’t think there’s any reason that you can’t let your mind work that way even when you are faced with a disease or an unexpected diagnosis where you’re not sure where that’s going to end up. It came naturally to me. It didn’t mean that I was going into every doctor’s appointment going, “How’s it going, everybody?” I’m not going to be on stage. If I could get the nurses to laugh or the doctors to laugh, to me, that was like, “If you can get them to laugh, they’re going to maybe take more of an interest in your case.”
I remember when my surgeon came in. He was telling me where my tumor was. It was right where there was a bend in my colon. He was like, “We’re going to take out the 90-degree angle and then I’m going to put those two back together.” I go, “How do you take this part and this part and put them together?” He goes, “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” I was like, “I like this guy.” He laughed and I laughed. I knew I was in the right hands.
That’s great.
Humor As A Coping Mechanism: Finding Light In The Darkness
That doesn’t mean it was a yuk a minute, certainly not with the recovery or anything like that, but I do believe that there is the ability to find humor in any subject.
There’s so much craziness going on in the world. Do you see humor as a coping mechanism? If so, how can you recommend to our audience how they can cultivate that? Maybe somebody’s taking life too seriously.
I can only see it as a coping mechanism, and it always has been. This has become a topic of one of my corporate presentations. The title is Humor is Serious Business But We Should Still Be Laughing. I’ve given that talk to corporations before. What’s happening is we’re so busy trying to answer the question, “What is funny?” There is no answer to that. We need to start admitting that. Nothing is universally funny. To try and put rules on what is funny and what is not is doing us no good at all.
Comedy clubs are doing very well. They ebb and flow, but they do well when we are in a strange time or a very unknown situation of what’s going to happen. Everybody’s a little bit anxious as to what the future’s going to hold so people look to comedy as escapism. That’s why clubs are doing well. I’ve had a real renaissance in getting on stage. It’s not that I ever disliked it, but with all that has happened to me and what’s going on in the world, I’m enjoying the chance to make people of all ages laugh probably a lot more. Remember, we’re coming out of COVID where there was no laughter because there was no place other than the internet and to sit by yourself with your phone in your room and try to make yourself laugh. We went from that to all of a sudden, “It’s okay to go outside now. Let’s start laughing again.”
Turning Gut Punches Into Punchlines: A Comedian’s Journey
I’m thinking about your book.
You mentioned the title. The subtitle though is what I really like. It’s Turning Gut Punches Into Punch Lines: A Comedian’s Journey through Cancer, Divorce, and Other Hilarious Stuff.
That is quite a mouthful.
It’s a mouthful but that’s the part that makes people laugh, and that’s what I wanted. I wanted it because it shows what we’ve been talking about. You can laugh at subjects that aren’t considered universally funny.
That’s correct. What was your favorite section of the book? I know I had mine.
It’s divided into three parts. The first part was the reality of, “I’m getting divorced. I have to reinvent myself. I have to move out. I have to find a therapist.” The second part was about reinvention and trying new things. I tried things more for communication. I went to work for Amazon during the Christmas break. I don’t need to work for Amazon. I’m doing okay, but I happened to see an advertisement saying, “We need help for Christmas.” December is usually a month in corporate comedy that is pretty slow. I thought, “I’ll try this.” I drove for Uber to try and get material, meet people, and hear their stories.
The last part of the book is all about the future. My favorite chapter is the last one because, in the last one, I went on a journey. I wanted to engage particularly with younger people because they’re the future. I wanted to know what they thought of things and how they felt about things like marriage, divorce, and therapy. I was talking to people of my own generation for the whole time but I thought, “It would be a good twist to meet younger people because they’re going to be faced with these challenges too. Maybe they have ideas that I didn’t know about.” I looked at a lot of social media of people who were trying to answer the question of what it is to be happy. There’s some funny stuff out there. That’s probably my favorite chapter. What’s yours?
I had a couple. One was entitled Single Rizzable Male. Can you quickly tell some people who might not be in the know about what rizz means?
Rizz was the Oxford University Word of the Year. They had the vote. We’re doing this in late December 2024. I read about what it was this 2024. They voted on this word. In 2023, the word was rizz. Rizz is a take on charisma. The younger generation, if they can figure out a way to shorten anything and spend less time, which in this case, talking, they’re going to do it. Rizz is like an attraction. You give off magnetism. That’s where rizzable came in. That is the chapter that deals with online dating, filling up profiles, and the hits and misses of these people I met. I’m glad you liked that one.
I did. Also, the one about your trip to Denmark and your discovery of hygge.
This is part of the last chapter. It’s very popular. It’s a word for happiness. I was in Denmark. I was in Copenhagen. I saw a tour on TripAdvisor called The Happiness Tour and Learning About the Power of Hygge. I thought, “That’s exactly what I’m looking for. I want to see that.” There were about 10 of us. Our guide, who was about 38 talked, about hygge.
What it involves is being present or being in the moment and listening to who you are with. You could use hygge as a noun or a verb. He said something like, “Why don’t we go hygge in the park today? If you do go hygge in the park, you leave your phone at home because if you are on your phone, you are not in the moment. You are not as interested in that person who invited you that you’re hygge-ing with.” I found that very fascinating.
What was really interesting was when I was in Denmark, I observed there was a school group on a field trip. I was looking at these kids, probably anywhere from 8 to 14. They had no phones, not one. Can you imagine that in this country? No. They were commiserating with one another. They were listening to what was being told to them about whatever it was they were seeing. I found that to be really refreshing.
What has gotten me through this is communicating, listening to other people, and hearing their stories no matter what age they are. I’m very intrigued with people. It’s people that get you through tough times. It’s not your phone. It’s not necessarily your therapist. Your therapist can be great at dispensing advice, but that’s for an hour. You leave and you’ve got the rest of the day or the evening to figure out what you’re going to do. I have decided that people entertain me and fascinate me and I want to find out about everybody.
Any other experiences that came out of writing your book that you didn’t expect perhaps?
I didn’t expect people to be as forthcoming as they were. I’ve been a solo traveler on business. I eat by myself. You’re in a strange city. I’ve had no problem sitting at bars or brewpubs and ordering, trying to talk to other people, and so forth because that, to me, is more than just sitting there, eating by yourself, and then scrolling your phone every now and then.
I was amazed at how forthcoming people were to talk because that is something that COVID took away from us. COVID seems very far away but it will always be there. It will always be because it changed everything. It changed marriages. It changed how people work. It changed how people get educated. It will always be a part of our lives. That’s another thing when I drove for Uber. It was amazing how much they would keep going if you got people to start talking. I find that to be very refreshing. I wasn’t expecting that.
Words Of Wisdom: Embracing Change And Finding New Beginnings
You seem like an easy person to talk to and easy for people to open up to, which is nice. That is another superpower. I hope this will air and drop before the end of 2024, but if it doesn’t, even for the new year. Any words of wisdom that you can give to anyone who has lost a spouse from their passing away or through divorce in a long-term relationship? Is there anything that they can do as far as keeping their sense of hor and getting through this?
I’m willing to give people the same advice that was dished out to me about how it sucks but you’re going to get through it. Maybe not for someone who has lost a spouse but certainly for people who are getting divorced, you could sit there, curl up in a ball, and say, “My life will never be the same. I lost my companion of this long.” You can do that but at some point, you have to pick yourself up and say, “There’s something new. What haven’t I done? What have I always wanted to try?” That could be something like a cooking class. It could be a support group. I’ve always said it’s never too late to learn a different skill or educate yourself about something. That’s what I’ve tried to do. It’s easier said than done. Everybody is going to have to do that at their own pace.
It’s never too late to learn a different skill or educate yourself about something.
When you do those things, you meet people. That’s what it’s all about, right?
Yes. You might meet somebody who’s going through the exact same thing as you and you probably up until then thought you were the only person going through this and were very lonely as a result. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Is there anything else you want to tell us about your book or anything in general?
I do hope people purchase the book. It is on Amazon. People who are maybe living in active retirement communities, I’ve started doing shows in active retirement communities. That demographic loves to laugh and they love to laugh at themselves. Sometimes, we aren’t good at laughing at ourselves. When I do shows for maybe an over 55 group, how easy they are at laughing at their health problems, their sex lives, their lack of sex lives, and everything like that. You might as well laugh at getting old because it’s going to happen.
It’s a gift.
You might as well find something like that to laugh at. I’d be more than happy to come to any place that you think needs some laughter.
If somebody wants to contact you, what’s the best way?
My website. It’s GregSchwem.com. Tell me about your event and I would be more than happy to come and entertain you.
That sounds great. Thank you so much. This has been so much fun. For all our readers, please join the show by going to www.GrowingOlderWithGusto.com and share with your friends or whoever you think will enjoy the episode. This one I know you’re going to share because it was great. Thank you very much. Stay connected and curious.
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