Truth Tastes Funny with Hersh Rephun

How do we stay sane, survive, and thrive in today’s world? On the Truth Tastes Funny podcast, writer/comedian Hersh Rephun explores the absurdity of life’s challenges, while engaging with experts who’ve dedicated themselves to finding serious solutions.

Truth Tastes Funny with Hersh Rephun is a business podcast hosted by Hersh Rephun, with 123 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Hersh Rephun hosts Truth Tastes Funny with Hersh Rephun, a business show with 123 episodes published.

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  Episode #179

  Andrew Hurteau: When Does Preparation Become Performance?

  Oct 2, 202649 minS7

  The stakes go up. So you prepare more. Then you prepare some more. And somewhere along the way, you stop sounding like yourself. On this episode of Truth Tastes Funny , Hersh Rephun sits down with performance coach Andrew Hurteau , who has spent 35 years helping actors, speakers, executives, and leaders show up when it matters. His background runs from Shakespeare and stage combat to coaching leaders and teams at organizations including Meta, Dolby, Gartner, The North Face, and Kaiser Permanente. Pasted text The conversation starts with a deceptively simple question: When does preparing to be yourself become performing somebody else? Andrew argues that performance itself isn’t the problem. Athletes perform. Actors perform. Speakers perform. The trouble begins when preparation turns into something so polished, scripted, or memorized that the person disappears behind it. For Andrew, memorization is often the enemy of authenticity. Rehearsal is useful. Familiarity is useful. Preparation is essential. But sounding like you’re reciting something you wrote three weeks ago? Not so much. Pasted text Hersh and Andrew get into acting, stand-up, keynote speaking, trust, authority, audience psychology, and why the best actors can say the same line for the 80th time and still make it sound like they just thought of it. Pasted text They also explore something leaders often get wrong: The audience is not there to watch you demonstrate that you deserve to be in the room. If you already have the stage, a degree of authority has already been granted. Trying too hard to prove it can actually diminish trust. Andrew’s advice is almost the opposite: engage, listen, ask questions, read the room, and make the audience feel like they’re the reason you’re there. Pasted text And that leads to one of the strongest ideas in the conversation: Authenticity doesn’t mean winging it. It doesn’t mean being unprepared, unfocused, or proudly off the cuff. It means preparing in a way that still sounds like you when the moment arrives. Pasted text At its heart, this episode asks: How do you prepare enough to be ready without preparing so much that you disappear? Andrew LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-hurteau-2a812061/ *** Subscribe for exclusive content: https://www.butterfieldspeaks.com/andrew/ *** Butterfield Speaks LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/butterfield-speaks Butterfield Speaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ButterfieldSpeaks -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix . Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

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  Episode #178

  Ross Murker: Who Told You Who You Are?

  Sep 23, 202632 minS7

  For much of his life, Ross Murker had an explanation for why certain things seemed harder for him than they did for other people. He was lazy. He was weird. He didn't have enough persistence or whatever mysterious “oomph” everyone else seemed to possess. Except none of those explanations was particularly good. On Truth Tastes Funny , Hersh Rephun talks with Ross about what happens when somebody else's assessment of you becomes the story you eventually tell yourself. Ross struggled to fit the expectations of school, work and even his own family. Then, at 58, he was diagnosed with autism, ADHD and CPTSD. Suddenly, experiences stretching all the way back to childhood began falling into place. The diagnosis didn't give Ross a new identity. It gave him a different lens through which to understand the one he'd been living all along. And with that understanding came something harder: grief over the person he might have become if he'd had that information and support 40 years earlier. Today, Ross is a certified hypnotherapist who works primarily with neurodivergent clients. But his argument about hypnosis goes considerably wider. We're all absorbing ideas about who we're supposed to be, what success looks like, what's normal and what isn't. Eventually, some of those ideas stop sounding like things we've been told. They start sounding like us . Ross and Hersh talk about conformity, childhood, identity, neurodivergence, the energy we expend trying to appear acceptable, and what can happen when that energy finally becomes available for something else. They also discover a shared appreciation for comedy, including Ross's childhood realization that if he could make the other kids laugh, he wasn't being bullied. Maybe the work isn't becoming somebody new. Maybe it's figuring out which parts of the person you've been told you are were ever yours in the first place. https://linktr.ee/RossMurker -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix . Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the

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  Episode #177

  Daniel A. 'Danny' Bobrow (BOB roe): How Do You Talk to Someone Who Thinks You’re Wrong?

  Sep 14, 202657 minS7

  Everybody wants to be understood. Things get trickier when we have to understand somebody else first. On Truth Tastes Funny , Hersh Rephun sits down with persuasion expert Danny Bobrow for a conversation about what happens when two people can look at the same facts and inhabit completely different realities. Danny has spent more than four decades working in communication, sales and marketing. His Persuasion Blueprint is built around three ideas: caring, connection and collaboration. But this conversation quickly moves beyond business. What do you do when someone you care about believes something you find impossible to understand? Can you acknowledge another person's reality without agreeing with them? And what if the goal of a difficult conversation isn't changing anybody's mind, but preserving enough humanity to keep talking? Danny and Hersh get into sales, family, social media, politics, Israel and the Middle East, and the strange way human beings can turn disagreement into a threat almost instantaneously. Danny also introduces what he calls the “care gap” : the distance between how much we believe we care and how much of that caring the other person can actually perceive. That leads to one of the simplest ideas in the episode: before someone is likely to hear what you have to say, they need some indication that you've heard them. Sometimes persuasion means changing a mind. Sometimes success is leaving the relationship intact. And sometimes the smartest thing you can say is: Tell me how you got there. www.linkedin.com/in/dannybobrow www.instagram.com/danielabobrow https://www.youtube.com/@DannyBobrow/shorts www.Facebook.com/danielabobrow -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix . Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

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  Episode #176

  Joey Chandler: When Everyone Still Thinks You’re the Old You

  Sep 9, 202630 minS7

  You change. Unfortunately, nobody sends your friends and family the software update. On this episode of Truth Tastes Funny , Hersh Rephun sits down with Joey Chandler to explore the strange gap between who we're becoming and who everybody else still thinks we are. Joey approaches growth through personal values. Hersh comes at it through perception and interpretation. But they quickly find themselves in the same territory: relationships, divorce, parenthood, business, identity, and the sometimes awkward business of introducing the current version of yourself to people who remember all the previous ones. Joey shares what happened after divorce and burnout forced him to confront an exhausting realization: he could only be himself. The problem was figuring out who that actually was. That led him to three core values: connection, curiosity and fun. They've since become less of a personal-development exercise and more of a practical compass. Joey tells a terrific story about lying in an ER with his leg broken in three places when his 16-year-old son looked at him and asked, “Dad, which of your core values is missing right now?” Annoying? Absolutely. Also exactly the question he needed. Hersh and Joey get into the things we don't say in relationships, the little problems we step over until they've quietly become big ones, and whether becoming more ourselves sometimes requires grieving the choices we didn't make earlier. Then Joey introduces a deceptively simple experiment he's been trying: instead of waking up determined to be better , ask: How can I make today better than yesterday? Maybe it's dinner with your family. Calling a friend. Going outside. Having more fun. The point isn't relentless self-improvement. It's removing some of the pressure and getting curious about what would make today a little better. At its heart, this episode asks: What happens when you've changed, but the people around you haven't changed their idea of you yet? www.certaingrowth.com @joeychandler70 -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix . Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

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  Episode #175

  Desislava Dimitrova: The Courage to Question Your Own Story

  Sep 2, 20261h 4mS7

  How much of what you believe about yourself did you actually choose? On this episode of Truth Tastes Funny , Hersh Rephun is joined by meditation teacher, spiritual life coach, and healer Desislava Dimitrova for a wide-ranging conversation about identity, intuition, fear, healing, self-trust, and the stories we repeat until they begin to feel like truth. Desi knows something about having those stories disrupted. Growing up in an environment where she was taught to be quiet and not question authority, she spent years disconnected from parts of herself she would eventually come to see as essential. Then, at 37, doctors discovered a rare tumor in her spinal cord. Surgery was unavoidable. Recovery meant learning how to walk again, living with the fear that the tumor could return, and spending years rebuilding herself physically and emotionally. Meditation became part of that recovery, but the deeper transformation involved finding her voice, establishing boundaries, understanding what love meant to her, and developing the confidence to build a life around work her own family didn't necessarily understand. Hersh and Desi explore the difference between instinct and intuition, why first impressions tell us as much about ourselves as the people we're judging, how fear can make an unhappy situation feel safer than change, and why knowing yourself may require challenging some of the beliefs you've carried the longest. They also find an unexpected intersection between Desi's spiritual work and Hersh's work around first contact: a label can be accurate and still be incomplete. "Meditation teacher" may describe something Desi does. It doesn't necessarily tell you what happens when someone works with her. And that raises a question that applies to all of us: how much do people actually understand when they think they've figured us out? At its heart, this episode asks: What becomes possible when you stop treating the story you've always told yourself as the only story available? www.desi-divine.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/desislava-dimitrova-30271293 Instagram : desisdivine -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix . Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

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