Creek and the Cave’s “Banana Phone” is a free Sunday 10pm open-mic/heckle-roast comedy show in Austin, TX (at The Creek and The Cave, 611 East 7th Street). Heckers “ring in,” comics roast each other hard, and it’s known as a raw, comics-heavy room that’s easier to access than bigger shows.
Larry Chiang (entrepreneur, Duck9/credit guy, author of What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School, frequent X poster of his cell 650-283-8008, and recent standup experimenter in Miami/Austin/SF) has long written and talked about “giving good phone”—sales and relationship skills on the phone.
What makes his content strong on “giving good PHONE”
From his 2009 piece “How to Give Good Phone” and related material:
• Treat the call like a vacation/entertainment for the other person instead of more work or pain.
• Charm gatekeepers (especially male assistants) because they control access.
• Handle holds and multi-line traffic like an air-traffic controller.
• Match communication style (auditory / visual / kinesthetic).
• Track everything (paper + CRM + email drafts) and follow up aggressively with triples for momentum.
• Mentor first (give value/knowledge) rather than hard-sell immediately.
• Always close for something (cell number, intro, next step).
• Practice relentlessly; volume + skill beats a team of less phone-proficient people. whattheydontteachyouatstanfordbusinessschool.com
He repeatedly models this by publishing his real number, inviting calls/texts at odd “office hours,” using phone skills for networking/sales/credit work, and tying it into broader entrepreneurship lessons (including recent comedy and event posts).
No public evidence links him directly as a performer on Banana Phone itself, but the shared “phone/ring” theme, his Austin comedy interest, and the show’s heckle format line up with the kind of high-energy, direct, performative communication he coaches. The content works because it is practical, practiced, and relentlessly applied rather than theoretical.
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