Bonita JOY Yoder is a speaker, emcee and edutainer who brings humor into her presentations with the help of her ventriloquism puppet friends, who love to co-emcee and keep the energy up by cracking jokes along the way. Beyond Bonita’s passion in sharing magic and ventriloquism shows, she also has over 25 years of experience in law practice, is the author of an award-winning book, “The Heart and Soul of Real Estate”, and is a former syndicated magazine columnist.

In this episode we discuss: 

• Using humor as a “gateway drug” to joy 
• Searching for happiness in all the wrong places 
• How a puppet could help you find your own voice 
• Finding – and sharing – joy in unexpected places 
• Building rapport and making an impact with comedy

Pick up your own  complimentary Humor Journal to recognize the fun and funny in your life, to use humor in your presentations and convert more leads, at https://joy.funandfunnier.com 

Susi: Welcome back for another short and sweet installment from Podapalooza. I am here in the poditorium with Bonita Joy Yoder. We have shared some zoom rooms before, and I’m excited to have to have the opportunity to share the stage with this lovely lady. She’s got a diverse set of skills. Let me give you a quick bird’s-eye view and then we’ll jump in.

As a recovering attorney who entertains Bonita Joy Yoder known as the court jester Bonita Joy Yoder now speaks, MCs and edutains. She brings humor into her presentations through her ventriloquism puppet friends who love to co emcee and comment on situational humor that happen in the present moment. 

Her vision is to bring more of her middle name, joy to help lighten up the world, especially during serious times. Her experience includes magic and ventriloquism shows over 25 years of law practice and real estate investments. She’s the author of the award-winning book, the heart and the soul of real estate, and is also a former syndicated magazine columnist.

We’re just scratching the surface. I love renaissance people who bring all of their diverse talents to what they do. 

Bonita: Now, I thought you talked to gen X, not Renaissance. I, this is Sammy. Who’s this? This is Susi. Hi Susi. 

Susi: He looks like an ex-pat from Fraggle rock. That’s more my era.

Bonita: What kind of a vine are you? That’s her name. Well, as long as it’s not a weed… that’s illegal.

Susi: I love it. And I, I love bringing your wing man with you, having some compadres to hop up on stage. Tell us a little bit about how you get to edutain and how you like to connect with people. 

Bonita: Ah, I think that’s her job, her right. 

Susi: Passing the mic already. 

Bonita: Right? 

Right. I’m one of the world’s few ventriloquist turned lawyers turned ventriloquist because when I was about five years old at a family reunion, my older cousin, Clinton Detweiler who later became famous for making ventriloquist puppets,

He went up front with a wooden doll named Woody. Put the doll on his lap. I’m about five years old and here’s this grown man putting a doll in his lap. And he starts talking to him and the doll talks back and people are laughing and I’m like, what’s going on? Very intriguing. That stayed with me for years. And when I was 16, I checked out a book from the library, “Ventriloquism for fun and profit”. 

Hey, I haven’t made any money yet. Okay. This is Ruby

Ruby. We were talking. Yeah, I know. So I’m I, okay. I got this book for the library and I practiced for hours in front of the mirror. 

It was a reflection on you –

And I started doing parties for magic and ventriloquism shows, you know, birthday parties when I was young. Anyway, I ended up going to law school and becoming a liar, not a liar, a lawyer, a lawyer. Well, what’s the. Now, Ruby only knows what I need. I could tell. 

Susi: Everybody’s a critic.

Bonita: So I began, I opened my own law practice and I basically put my ventriloquism on the back shelf because there were very few women at that time. This was in late seventies. You’re that old? Late 1970s. And I was concerned. I wouldn’t be taken seriously to begin with as a woman, let alone a dummy. A ventriloquist.

How do you say it? It’s the V word. So I practiced law and after many years of law practice and see people get divorced and all kinds of other things. And I met people in some of their hardest times of life. Should I say some of their most challenging times of life. And after years of that, I decided let’s focus on the joy because that’s my middle name.

Yeah. And joy is so needed. It’s an inner state, but in these serious times, I think it’s really important. And humor is a gateway drug to joy,

Susi: Hmm, no limitations on that one. Are there, I don’t think that’s in any of the books,

Bonita: But joy is an inner state and people think of it as oh you know, I’m going to be happy when I get this mate or this relationship or this whatever money or this house. And it’s really an internal state of being that, no matter what the circumstances, if you could find that place within that will lead you to a centered state.

Like what state, California. Not that kind of state. The state of being. Oh, well I’m a living doll, does that count? Something like that.

With puppets, you can say about anything and get by with it. Who’s your puppet, Susi?

Susi: Well, my husband isn’t in the room, so… 

Bonita: I know you put words in his mouth, 

Susi: But it makes me think when you’re talking about humor being the gateway drug and, and that pursuit of joy looking outside of ourselves, that’s what I wanted to come back to, how much trouble people tend to find in that pursuit when they’re looking in all the wrong places.

Right. And I feel like that’s something that you kind of got a firsthand look at through your years in practice.

Bonita: Oh yes. Yes. That’s a good way of saying it, looking at all the wrong places. Like under our rock. No, that’s just you know, what was interesting to me was when people would come to me who were in the appearance of like the happy marriage, there’d be the white picket fence, the kids, the two car garage, or now three cars, I guess.

And they were not happy, but it was a, it was an appearance. I mean, think about prince Charles and Diana when they were married. And there was this appearance of the fairytale wedding, but underneath it was so different. Yeah. And in fact, sometimes I would have, usually it was women who would come with this circumstance where they would plan their divorce, maybe two years in advance.

You know, I remember somebody coming in and saying, I want to file for divorce on like June fourth, whatever year. I’m like, why then? Well, she’d gone back to college to get her degree. Her last kid was going to be graduating from high school. She was going to have her college degree. She had an all time that she was, you know, then ready.

And I saw that so often where people would wait until the last kid was out of high school and then get divorced 

Susi: And put that kind of like deadlines, or start date on happiness and pursuing what really calls them. 

Bonita: Yeah, it’s interesting. I always wondered what is that like to be, you know, sleeping with somebody when you know, you’re going to be divorced in two years for living with them, sharing a life,

And it’s, it’s interesting. I remember one time somebody, a man planned to file for divorce, like the day after they got back from vacation. I mean, I actually filed before they went and then it was going to have the paper served the day after. And I’m like, it’s, it’s just it’s an interesting life to live that kind of dual reality of appearance and – And the real thing.

Susi: Right. Well, and I’m thinking too, and as, as you’re sharing and all of these stories that you, you were privy to through the course of your career people living out of alignment, people not being honest with themselves or finally when they were not really the people around them. And do you have any suggestions or advice for people who might be in that position?

Like you were for so many years putting on the professional persona, we’re getting ready to go to work as a liar -I mean, a lawyer and, and waiting until. The time felt right or safer to, to bring back everything that you enjoyed and embraced with this whole performance personality that you had put on. Huh? 

Bonita: Well, it’s interesting because it is definitely, the identity of an attorney is more quote acceptable, I suppose, than a ventriloquist, although that’s a very unique thing too. But for somebody who is having a dream of doing something other than they’re doing, the first thing is to recognize it. And it’s interesting because I’m actually working on a book with ventriloquism, writing a book with ventriloquism as a metaphor for life. And one of the things I talk about an error is speaking the truth and, you know, puppets can say they could be truth-tellers.

Right. We’re not liars. So that’s kind of a metaphor of getting a touch with your own truth and your own alignment. And so that’s, it’s funny that you bring that up because I actually talk about that in the book, you know, who pulls your strings, finding your own voice. Yeah. 

Susi: Oh, I love it. I’m so excited that you’ve got this book coming out because I think that’s absolutely true.

We, we look for ways in which we feel safe, you know, the man behind the curtain, right. Pulling the levers and 

Bonita: Behind our masks – Yeah, there’s a lot of masks out there today, or there were.

Susi: I love it. And is there let us let our audience know how they can connect with you. Stay tuned in and keep up to speed on the book that’s coming out and any other performances or offerings that you share. 

Bonita: Something that I have to give away is a complimentary humor journal. It has 10 writing prompts that helped you recognize a humorous thing to your day to day life.

And that is available at joy.Funandfunnier.com.  joy.funandfunnier.com. 

Susi: Love it. 

Bonita: Also, my email. bonitajoyspeaker@gmail.com. We, we, the proverbially we, my different puppets. I have a number of different puppets. We’d love to co MC events, virtual or live.

One of my favorite things to do is ad lib actually

Susi: Well done, Ruby you’re right on point. 

Bonita: Yeah. And there’s a saying in comedy, that truth is funnier than anything you could make up. So I encourage people to find the fun and funny in their own lives. And then if they’re putting together a presentation or if they, for a job or business, if they have marketing or something, rather than go to a joke book, tell a real situation that actually happened to you.

Yeah, for example, I went to, I was going through the courthouse one time and they had three uniform formed officers at security, and I make some comment as I’m going through going, Do you really need to be, we really need to spend taxpayer’s money on three of you? And this one middle age uniformed officer looks at me and says, it takes three of us to corral you Benita. That’s for sure. 

Now I use that story when I’m speaking, but share about how you can breathe humor in the serious situations. Here we are. I’m a lawyer that was a law enforcement officer in uniform at a courthouse. I mean, how much more serious can you get than that? I asked them if they gave them humor training in law enforcement, he said, no, but if you use humor, it breaks the ice with a suspect and they open up. It builds rapport and they tell you more. I mean, I said, you just gave the point of my talk builds connection and rapport. Now isn’t that interesting. The idea of using humor and law enforcement, who would think as a suspect that that might be something someone’s doing on purpose.

Susi: I love it. That’s a really powerful tip. And I’ve, I love that example too, because there’s always with. If we’re looking around, if we’re open to that inspiration to bring a little bit of humor in. And think about how many days those guys had to stand there with everyone and their serious faces coming in and out of that courthouse, very few people go there happy to be there,

And the impact that you were able to make because you did take those opportunities to share a little bit of humor, to connect with them personally made you more memorable and really stand out. And I’m sure they enjoyed seeing you come in and wondered what quip they were going to catch today. 

Bonita: Yeah, that particular officer is there, we have a nice rapport, if I see him, 

I’ve got to tell you one funny story though. This was pre pre COVID. I was going through airport security and Burbank, and you know, in Burbank, California they have a lot of different top celebrity and actors and entertainers in that area. 

But the, I don’t think they called them TSA then, but the security people stop me to go through my stuff because they saw a, they thought there was a child’s body in the suitcase.

It’s gone through the conveyor belt, they opened it up and it was a ventriloquist figure. And I explained, I did ventriloquism. So they said, well, can you do something? And I actually did some standing there, you know, all these, several people were there and there we were having fun. They thought I might be, I don’t know, a kidnapper or criminal or, who knows.

Yeah. That’s kind of funny. Yeah, it could’ve been me.

Susi: Exactly. You gotta be ready, Ruby. You never know when you’re going to hit the stage. 

Bonita: Yeah, there’s a stage leaving town in an hour. I don’t think she means that kind of stage.

Susi: Well, marvelous. I’m so glad that you joined me. Thank you for dropping in. Glad we got matched up in the poditorium. I hope you had a lot of fun today. I’m grateful for you to bringing some humor and levity to our audience, and I hope they take this inspiration and start seeking new opportunities to,

Bonita: And they can go to joy.funandfunnier.com for a complimentary humor journal. 

Susi: Beautiful. I love it. We need these sparks. Thank you so much. Bonita Joy. Thank you, Ruby. Thank you to your first wingman, who’s already off stage. It’s been a treat. Y’all take good care.