I define a professional comic as someone that gets paid to do comedy. And an amateur comic as someone who does comedy but doesn’t get paid. I’ve been doing comedy on and off for 12 YEARS and I’m still an amateur comic. Why? Simple, because I haven’t done enough shows.
Like a lot of things in life, success as a comedian is part talent and part practice. Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods have natural talent in their sports. But they didn’t get where they are on talent alone. It was probably 10% talent 90% hard work. The same holds true for comedy.
When I say I’ve been doing comedy “on and off” for twelve years, I mean it. I took 9 months off at one point, then 4 months, then 4 months again, then 2 YEARS off, and 3 1/2 YEARS at another point! That’s about 7 years completely out of the game. During the other 5 YEARS when I was actually trying to get out there and perform, I averaged less than 1 show a month. If I go look at my records, in 12 YEARS I’ve done roughly 50 shows. Sad.
Why did this happen? How did I get here? It all started in 1997 in college when I saw comedian Anthony Clarke perform. I decided right then at that show that I was going to be a comedian no matter what. That was it.
In 1997 I did my first show at the Boston Youth Hostel. I was terrible. But I did get one laugh from a guy in the back on a scooby-doo joke. He even said something to me after I got off stage. Actually there was no stage, so after I stopped standing in the front of the room with a microphone. I remember how awesome it felt connecting with that total stranger on that one joke. I had pretty much 5 laughless minutes. But that one joke made it all worth it. And I LOVED the nervous energy. Even though it went badly it was still a rush having your heart racing then just getting up there with the whole room looking at YOU. I was hooked.
I did 3 more shows in Boston that year. My second show ever was at a bar on Newbury St called Daisy Buchanan’s. After I finished my set a very strange thing happened. A guy approached me and told me he was here with a producer, scouting talent. He liked my set and wanted to know if I’d be interested in going on a TOUR with other comedians performing at colleges. Well heck yeah I would! But he wouldn’t give me any contact info, he only took my info. And I never heard from him again. It was very strange. I can only guess that he liked my set but figured out I didn’t have enough experience/material. Who knows.
My 3rd show was at “The Hong Kong” in Cambridge, MA and also went well. My 4th and final show in Beantown was a 20 minute set in a student talent show for my school at Emerson College. I also remember this show going really well. Especially for being my fourth show ever and for being a long 20 minutes. I don’t remember anything I talked about except a bit about how beer should be a public utility pumped straight to your house like water.
Looking back I’m amazed that 3 out of 4 of the first shows I ever did went really well. I think part of this is because Boston audiences are great. They want to laugh, they’re REAL people, unlike in LA, and they’re intelligent enough to get more obscure jokes with less mass appeal.
The other part is I probably just had GOOD material. Comedy is 1 part talent - how funny you are naturally and how good you are at writing material, 1 part delivery - HOW you tell the joke, and 1 part polish. Polish is how experienced you are and how comfortable you are on stage. Jay Leno for example has loads of polish, but his material is so-so and his delivery is very plain. He still gets laughs just because he’s so polished. I definitely didn’t have polish. And I don’t think my delivery was very dynamic with parts being acted out and different things talking in different voices. I’m guessing the success was based mainly on the merit of the material.
I loved Boston. And my original plan was to stay there after I graduated, get a job and continue doing comedy. My plan from day one as soon as I realized my calling at that Anthony Clarke show was to make it as a comic. But I was going to be smart about it. I was going to establish a solid day-job, a CAREER first and do comedy at night. I didn’t see any need to be a “starving artist” and work at Starbucks for the sake of stand-up. ….this decision would haunt me later.
As much as I loved Boston, I had lived there for 2 of the snowiest winters on record. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had been lifeguarding during the summers on Long Beach Island, NJ. LBI was a narrow strip of land in the Atlantic ocean that just SCREAMED “beach town” all summer. I wanted to find a place that was like LBI, year round. But it also needed to be a big enough metropolis to support a local stand-up comedy scene.
So in September 1997 after I graduated college and spent the summer lifeguarding, I moved to LA to be warm, to live by the beach and to make it as a comedian. I did a good amount of shows for a few months in LA. But LA is a HORRIBLE, horrible place to build your comic chops. It’s not NORMAL people living there. Everyone is in show business and badly JADED. They are MISERABLE because they haven’t made it, so they don’t want to be supportive of anyone else. On top of that, every comic actor who has a sitcom or hosts a show, or does movies or stars in commercials, also LIVES in LA and routinely performs to stay sharp. So unlinke Orange County, or Boston, or San Fran or any other city where you compete with other local guys for stage time. In LA, a total unknown with no experience is competing with Jay Leno, Drew Carey, Dane Cook for stage time! Those guys all live and work in LA and all perform regularly. Bottom line, LA is a great place to go AFTER you’ve already gotten good somewhere else and want to break into comedy. It’s no place to build your skills.
Doing shows in LA killed my motivation. I came out to California with positve energy determined to make it as a comic and live the good life by the beach with a good day job. But after 9 months of performing in coffee houses for 11 other comics (who absolutely would not laugh) and 3 audience members if I was lucky, I started to question what I was doing and why I was doing it.
I HATED LA. Not just the comedy scene, the traffic, the smog, the shallow women I’d meet in bars that were more interested in what kind of car I drove than who I was and who I wanted to be. And where was the damn beach?? I lived in Westwood and Hollywood when I was there. This was a far, far cry from the “beach town” feel of LBI. The only thing LA gave me that year was a break from winter. I needed to get out. My job was crap and easy to quit. So after a mere 9 months I got on a plane and flew to New Jersey to lifeguard LBI for one more summer. It was awesome. I had the time of my life that summer, with amazing friends. I made memories I will NEVER forget.
In September 1998 after that summer, I moved BACK to California, but this time to Isla Vista, a partying college town just north of Santa Barbara, far, far away from the rat-race of LA. And with virtually ZERO local comedy. I planned on getting back into comedy eventually, but not right now. That “not right now” can be a slippery slope… I knew I needed to limit this life in Isla Vista to a year or so, so I started sending out resumes to Orange County. Orange county gave me the California beach-town lifestyle I wanted, that Santa Barabara had, but it was also big enough of a metropolis to support a local stand-up comedy scene.
In July 1999 after sending out a ton of resumes I finnally got a bite and took a job as a Web Designer in Orange County. Sweet! After about a year in LA and a year in Santa Barbara my day job career had finally taken off. And I got to move to the beach and get the lifestyle I wanted. I was home. And I absolutely LOVED Orange County. This was paradise. This is where I am suppossed to be.
But taking a year off of comedy between “one last hurrah” on LBI and blowing off life in Santa Barbara did turn into a slippery slope. I settled into my job and apartment in Newport Beach. I made new friends. I got a girlfriend, got complacent and didn’t get back into comedy for 3 and a half YEARS.
In 2002 I decided I needed to get back into it, and did roughly 20 shows in 2002-2003. Things were going well. I built up lots of new jokes. I taped EVERYTHING. Every show I did. And I watched those tapes and learned and grew. I watched DVDs of professional comics once as an audience member and laughed. Then I’d watch the same DVD again and again as a comic and analyze what they were doing. I wanted to figure out how Brian Regan could be so funny. And Pablo Francisco. And EARLY Dane Cook when he was still funny. WHAT were they doing that I wasn’t? I started getting more physical with my bits. I started telling the joke, and then acting it out. I started making inanimate objects talk in my stories. I got better. But 20 shows in 2 YEARS is not enough. It was enough to make progress and build up a solid 10 minute set. But not enough to cross over from amateur to professional.
Then I stopped AGAIN for all of 2004-2005. Not ONE show! Why would I give up on my dream like that? Where did the focus go? The simple answer is, I didn’t want it badly enough. The more complicated answer is, I had gotten TOO successful in my non-comedy life. My web design career was SCREAMING at full speed. I’d gotten $30,000 in raises in the short time I’d been there. I was making good money AND I had no wife, no kids, no mortgage. I rented and I drove a 10 year old car. So I had LOADS of disposable income. I could routinely blow $50 a night on booze and not even think about it. I went to Vegas or Havasu every other month. I wasn’t in LA with a bunch of miserable women. I wasn’t freezing my ass off in Boston. I was in Orange County, CA surrounded by some of the most beautiful women in th world. And for the first time in my life I wasn’t on a budget, I had money to play. And play I did. I fully enjoyed Orange County. I dated the hottest women I’ve ever dated. When I was single I went out 4-5 nights a week drinking, partying and meeting girls. When I had a girlfriend I still went out 3 or 4 nights a week with the girlfriend. And the girlfriend liked to bring girls home with us occassionally. What would YOU do??! Go spend 3 hours watching 10 comics bomb at an open mic night so you can get up and do your 6 minutes? Or go out with your kinky girlfriend and see what might happen. Come on! ;-) I think the distraction from my comedy goals was inevitable. And on top of all that I’d started a side business making T-shirts. It ultimately failed, but during it’s 3 year run, it distracted me from doing shows.
In January 2006 I got back into it just like I did in January 2002. I average 1 show every 2 months for 3 years. And I got a little better. I got a little more comfortable on stage. There were 2 things I learned in this time. 1) Slow Down! I finally learned to take my time with my material. When an audience doesn’t laugh at a bit, your natural inclination is to get nervous and go FASTER so the painful moment can be over faster. But that doesn’t help. What helps is to slow down. Go slower so they have time to digest what you’re saying and get it.
2008 rolled around and EVERYTHING changed. I’d learned the importance of slowing down, but there was still something missing. There had ALWAYS been something missing, something I didn’t “get” my entire comedy career. I wasn’t comfortable on stage the way I was when I was joking around with my friends. Maybe it’s because my friends knew me. No. That can’t be because I could meet total strangers in a bar and have them laughing their ASS off in 30 seconds. Why couldn’t I do that on stage?? I was missing something. I’d even said that in conversations with people about it. How one day I was going to look back and realize what I wasn’t doing. It’s weird I KNEW I had a piece missing even before I figured out what that piece was. It’s like I had hindsight ahead of time. I prayed about this and asked God to show me WHAT the #$@ I was missing! And a week later he did. I BOMBED horribly. Part of it was opening with some new material that just wasn’t that funny, but part of it was A+ stuff that should have done great. WHY did it bomb? It had gotten huge laughs before. 2 other comics got great laughs in this room so it wasn’t the audience. That meant it was me! Fuck! What was I doing wrong??
After about a month I finally got it. I was doing my set AT my audience, not with them. I would just get up there and start doing my material. I NEVER acknowledged the audience or anything in the present situation. So I never won the audience over. Now sometimes you and the audience just “click” and you can get away with that. But you’re really just getting lucky. I realized what you have to do is TALK to a couple of people in the audience when you first get on stage. Tease them if you can. Lightheartedly give them a hard time. Talk about something in the CURRENT environment. That means make a joke about the shitty ceiling in the venue, don’t just start immediately telling a story about your old apartment and how the heat didn’t work. You can’t do that UNTIL YOU WIN THEM OVER. This is the piece I was missing. This is why I ran so hot and cold. Why I’d have GREAT shows and then SHIT shows. With the same damn material! This was the missing piece. And I thanked God for answering my prayer and showing it to me. After all if he has a plan for me and wants me to do this, I’m gonna’ assume he wants me to succeed. 
When you think about it it’s the same rule we all just intrinsically KNOW in regular conversation. When you meet someone or a group of people out at a bar (or any social situation) you don’t just start throwing stories at them. You strike up a converastion about something in the environment and then you transition to stories from your life. It’s the same thing with an audience. Talk WITH them, not at them. This is why I’d make total stranger in the bar laugh in a conversation but couldn’t always do that on stage. Because I won them over with NORMAL conversation before launching into stories. I wasn’t doing this on stage.
And the irony is, this is where I SHINE! This is the talent part, whether you are naturally funny or not. I’m great at making casual conversation with people and having it JUST BE funny without trying. This is why people who are naturally funny mistakenly think stand-up must be easy. “Oh I could do stand up!” If it was just talent, sure you could. But it’s also delivery and most importantly polish. This part is coming into the venue, looking around and then making funny observations about people in the audience or things in the current environment. So you’re doing it either improv right on stage, or coming up with something in the time you wait to get on stage. GREAT! This is freaking EASY for me.
And this is why I’m going to succeed. Comedy is talent, delivery and polish. Delivery and polish you can work on. Talent you can’t. You either have it or you don’t. I KNOW I have more talent than most comics out there. So if I work my ASS off I’ll make it. It’s that simple. There’s no doubt in my mind. There’s no “I hope I make it at comedy.” I WILL make it. But ONLY if I work hard enough to develop the delivery and polish. As awesome as raw talent is. Raw talent doesn’t make a good comedian. POLISH makes a good comedian. There is a nervousness on stage that won’t go away until you are performing consistently. I still have that nervousness. And I will continue to have it if I keep performing at a rate of less than one show a month. I need to get to 2-3 shows a week before I’ll finally shake off my amateur rattle.
A couple other awesome things happened in 2008. I got laid off from my easy-money, cushy job. This was the best thing to EVER happen to me. Because it forced me to be introspective and spend MONTHS soul-searching to find out what I TRULY want in life. You can’t do this when you’re just “going to work” everyday. You have to get out of the grind. Yeah it’s freakin SCARY not having money coming in. But I walked away with enough of a severance (and savings) to be Ok for a while. I pushed on lots of mental doors, briefly explored different paths and decided I HAVE TO do comedy. I have to do whatever it takes to make it or I won’t be happy. Yeah I need money to pay the bills, but I don’t want be a web designer or run a T-shirt company. Those things are satisfying, but they aren’t my passion.
And it was during this time I realized that the ONLY way to make it in comedy is to DO MORE SHOWS. You’ll never make it doing a show a month. No matter how much raw talent you have. It has to be a minimum of a couple shows a week. At a normal job you do your job 5 days a week. Sure you have weekends off and vacation. But if you’re going to be good at something you need repetition. It’s the same thing with comedy. I think you could make it to professional level on 2-3 shows a week, but 5 shows a week would be ideal.
The reason I didn’t see this for so long and the reason so many amateur comics don’t ever see this and never make the transition to professional is easy. You don’t get PAID in the beginning! In a normal job in corporate America, if you work hard you can climb the ladder and make a great life for yourself. But the whole time you’re climbing reaching for your goal, you’re getting PAID. Even if you think you are underpaid, you’re making a living. In the comedy world, you work for FREE for YEARS before you get paid. So it’s easy to get distracted. It was easy for me to dedicate 40 hours a week to my web design job and not nearly enough hours to comedy because the web design job brought me a paycheck every week. If I have the talent, and I absolutely do! the only thing holding me back is polish. I have to do a couple shows a week for as long as it takes me to get polish. And in that time I will automatically build up my material from the 10-15 A+ minutes I have now to the Hour + I will need to headline. That will just happen as a side-effect of workin on the polish.
The other amazing thing that happened in 2008 is I quit drinking back in August. I was a HEAVY drinker for 16 years. Sure I never crashed a car, got a DUI or lost a job. But I had a drinking problem. Towards the end of my drinking “career” I was getting black-out drunk about once a week. I’d tried to cut back or quit about 20 different times and FAILED miserably every time. I always found a reason to go back to drinking. After waking up hung over for the umpteenth time I did a Google search and found and read a marvelous book called “The Easy Way to Stop Drinking” by Allen Carr. I finished the book and quit! Just like that. It’s freakin’ AMAZING. I never would have thought that was possible. Even when I picked up the book I was thinking “I hope this helps me cut back”. I WANTED to quit. I hated that I had to get drunk to have fun, that I was dependent on this crutch. But I just didn’t think it was possible. How am I going to work up the nerve to meet really, really hot girls without being drunk? How am I going to dance sober!? How will I enjoy Vegas?? Or Havasu?? I just absolutely could NOT see it. The only thing in my mind worse than having a drinking problem and getting blackout drunk once a week, was being the party-pooper in AA that had to go to meetings!
But this book showed me those aren’t the only two choices. There is a third option. Not drinking and still having fun. Regaining that ability children have to have fun when they WANT, not when they’re drunk! Children don’t do Jager shots then play, they just play. In AA, you WANT to drink, but you know it’s bad for you so you don’t. So you either fail over and over like I did. Or you live your whole life feeling deprived! What kind of life is that?? AFter you read this book, you don’t want to drink anymore. That’s the difference. It works! I went from 4-5 nights a week heavy drinking to not drinking at all. And I’m not tempted because I don’t WANT to be drunk anymore. It’s freakin’ amazing.
So how does this relate to stand up comedy? Well booze takes a lot of things from you, but the number one thing it takes is TIME. Think of how many hours a heavy drinker spends drinking and drunk. Pretty much all weekend every weekend. And all night any night during the week that I went out. Time and time again, I would chose “Go out with my friends and get drunk” over going to do a comedy show.
For a few months after quitting drinking I kept going out partying. Partying but sober. I had to relearn how to have a good time. How to socialize, talk to really hot women, dance, have fun. All SOBER. That was hugely important. My self confidence SOARED during this time period because I learned to do it all sober and face those fears. It’s just FEAR that prevents you from having fun. Fear of rejection from attractive women. Fear of looking like an idiot dancing. I faced these fears HEAD ON, instead of working AROUND them with booze and I’m a much stronger person now because of it. I’ve got BALLS I never had before.
The last step in 2008 after I conquored bars and clubs and reclaimed my social life, but now as a sober person, was to let it all go! It’s GREAT that I can do that. Great that I can go out with my friends and meet new women and have fun and do it all sober. That really is a huge accomplishment. I spent 16 years ON the booze crutch. I’m amazed I could get off it in just 5 months. But I made a decision to let it all go. When the choice is presented “go out with your friends” or “go do a comedy show” I will go do the comedy show. EVERY time. It’s not that I can’t go out with my friends and go to bars. It’s that this will now be the second choice. Only AFTER I’ve done the show. My dating life may take a small hit, because lets face it, single women don’t come knocking on your door, they are OUT at the bars. That’s why we go out. ;-) But I’m willing to take the hit. And honestly what’s hotter than ambition anyway?? I’m going out LESS so I can pursue my dream. That’s hot. I think I want to have sex with myself.
Towards the end of my soul-searching journey in late December 2008, I watched Jerrry Seinfeld’s documentary, “Comedian” which confirmed my newfound belief that you get good by repetition, and confirmed what God showed me about comedy, “establish yourself, establish the audience.” Those were Jerry’s words exactly. It also reminded me to never open or close with new material. Stick it in the middle. I KNEW that but it’s easy to forget and violate that rule. I’d done so 2 months prior during that horrible show where I inexplicably (at the time) bombed.
And that brings us to today. All the pieces have lined up for a spectacluar 2009. I’m refocused, I’m sober, I’m not wasting ALL my free time partying with friends and chasing girls. I KNOW what I have to do. How many people in life want something but don’t know how to get it? How many more don’t even know what they want? I know exactly what I want AND how to get it! I am truly blessed. I prayed about all of this over the past year and I truly believe this is what God WANTS me to do. This is the path he has for me. This is what I’m supposed to do in life! How awesome is that? Now I just have to do whatever it takes to make it happen.
The other thing that I think is interesting is that multiple times in my life I’ve been out in social situations meeting new people and one of them will say to me, “You should be famous” or “You should have your own show” or “You should be on TV, you have the personality for it”. I don’t think that’s a fluke, and I don’t think everybody hears that at multiple times in their life. I thik I’m hearing it because that’s what I need to do.
So that’s my story. If you want to read what happens next, go to the “Stand up Journal” link where I write down how it goes after each show.
