In short
Podcast Summary: Modern Wisdom - Episode #1048
Guest Introduction Trevor Wallace - Comedian, writer, and content creator known for transforming internet chaos into comedy.
Episode Description In this episode, Trevor shares his experiences of going viral, discusses trends in internet culture, and dives into topics ranging from autism to the challenges of dating today. The conversation covers a variety of subjects including Trevor's creative process, social media dynamics, and the pressures of performance.
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Key Topics and Discussions
Going Viral
- Trevor describes the sensation of going viral as a regular occurrence, touching on various internet phenomena like "Celsius kids" and "Zyn bros."
- He emphasizes the unpredictability of virality and how it can significantly alter one's perception of self-worth based on engagement metrics.
Autism and Dating
- Trevor provocatively states, "Autism is the new stolen valor," discussing how some individuals claim neurodivergence for social leverage.
- He mentions a trend of men on dating apps seeking partners with a "touch of autism" and reflects on the complexities of modern dating dynamics.
Creative Process
- Trevor shares insights on how he generates content and the importance of passion in relationships.
- He discusses how excitement for a project can diminish if the public response is lackluster, leading to personal disappointment despite initial joy in creation.
The Role of Pressure
- He compares the pressure of live performances to the immediate feedback of video content, noting that audience reactions shape the overall experience of stand-up comedy.
- Trevor stresses the importance of getting a joke out early during performances to establish rapport with the audience.
Reflection on Success
- The conversation touches on the concept of deferred happiness and how individuals often overlook the successes they are achieving in the moment.
- Trevor reflects on his journey, revealing the struggle of continually striving for more while not fully appreciating current accomplishments.
Social Media Dynamics
- Trevor discusses the impact of social media on mental health and creativity, acknowledging the addictive nature of checking engagement metrics.
- He shares his thoughts on the necessity of stepping back from social media to regain perspective and maintain creative flow.
The Paradox of Choice
- The episode explores how an abundance of options in modern life can lead to decision paralysis, making it difficult to appreciate the present or commit to a single path.
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Key Takeaways
- Mindset: Balancing high standards with the ability to enjoy the present is crucial for mental well-being.
- Creativity: Engaging in the creative process without obsessing over public perception can lead to more authentic expression.
- Self-Reflection: Taking time to reflect on accomplishments is important to acknowledge personal growth and success.
- Social Media Impact: Recognizing the emotional rollercoaster of social media engagement can help mitigate its negative effects.
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Conclusion Trevor Wallace's candid insights into the complexities of modern life, creativity, and the pursuit of happiness resonate through this engaging conversation. His humor serves as a vehicle for deeper exploration of societal themes, making this episode both entertaining and thought-provoking.
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Additional Resources
- Follow Chris Williamson on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx) and [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx).
- For more episodes, visit [Modern Wisdom Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast).
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This summary encapsulates the essence of the podcast episode while highlighting major themes and insights shared by Trevor Wallace.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VODating Preferences and Passion
0:45 to 2:56
Discussion on dating preferences and the importance of shared passions.
“Autistic women, like, from my experience, they're just passionate.”
Autism and Dating Culture
2:56 to 6:41
Exploration of autism's portrayal in dating culture and the phenomenon of 'stolen valor'.
“I used to work in a kiosk inside of a Costco.”
Jokes and Fetishization
6:41 to 9:30
Discussion on the delicate balance of jokes about autism and fetishization in dating.
“So I feel like it's almost like a cop out sometimes, but like if you generally, if you do have it, then more power to you.”
Comedy and Career Insights
9:30 to 14:00
Insights into the comedy career, work ethic, and the entertainment industry.
“Initially jokes about tism riz started as a social media trend.”
Comedy Clubs in LA and Set Frequency
14:00 to 14:42
Learn about the frequency of performances and the training involved in comedy.
“because all the comedy clubs in LA are incredible.”
The Success of Controversial Figures
14:42 to 16:48
Explore how public personas can thrive despite negative headlines.
“Almost certainly would be if you're doing this.”
The Fine Line of Talent and Personal Downfalls
16:48 to 18:36
Understand how talent can mitigate personal issues in the public eye.
“But, oh, dude, I mean, yeah, he, he, I would imagine, has good stories.”
Media's Role in Covering Personal Struggles
18:36 to 19:42
Discuss the media's portrayal of celebrities dealing with mental health issues.
“Yeah, I mean, I, as a man who put a Kanye song on my Spotify recently, this doesn't feel good.”
The Fascination with Celebrity Downfalls
19:42 to 21:04
Learn why society is drawn to the downfall of talented individuals.
“That's a good point because if it was somebody, well, I mean, I was going to say if it was somebody that was going through a drug addiction, that wouldn't be tracked.”
Kanye West's Collaborations
22:30 to 22:51
Discuss Kanye's collaborations and their impact on his career.
“It was his song with Rick Ross, Devil in a New Dress.”
Show all 53 chapters
Caffeine Culture and the Rise of Energy Drinks
22:51 to 26:20
Examine the evolution of energy drinks and their place in society.
The Mindset of Creatives in Comedy
26:20 to 28:00
Explore the psychology of comedians and their coping mechanisms in work.
“and then you're leaving this studio leveled.”
Navigating Creative Ruts and Inspiration
28:00 to 29:53
Learn how to manage creative blocks and the importance of acting on inspiration quickly.
“I don't look at any other accomplishments or any other videos I go, but these four videos in the past week ate shit.”
Modeling Success and Work-Life Balance
29:53 to 31:39
Discover the distinction between the journey to success and the results, focusing on work ethic over balance.
“And I've had those moments where I get an idea and I love the idea.”
The Importance of Obsession in Creativity
31:39 to 33:59
Understand how obsession can drive creativity and why it should be harnessed while you can.
“Not what they did when they were at your stage.”
Finding Your Voice in Content Creation
33:59 to 36:07
Explore the evolution of personal style in content creation and the shift in audience expectations.
“You know, I first started, I thought I could write like Bill Burr.”
The Balance Between Professional and Personal Life
38:24 to 42:00
Examine the challenges of maintaining personal relationships while pursuing professional obsessions.
“It's amazing when it comes to refining a bit down.”
The Struggles of Serious Situations
42:00 to 43:38
Discussing the discomfort of serious topics and the desire for humor.
“But if it's like, I should be obsessed over which frame this particular cut needs to be to make it maximally funny or whether it's PayPal or Venmo or Cash App and I need to refine this little piece down.”
The Joy of Solitude and Creativity
43:38 to 45:20
Exploring how solitude fosters creativity and personal reflection.
“Cause I don't want, you know, the thought of, you know, if I see someone in the front row with their arms crossed, you know, now I'm in my head.”
Finding Motivation for Ideas
45:20 to 46:42
Understanding the need for an outlet to retain and express ideas.
“you know, that's when I'm like, whoa, I haven't tapped into my own thoughts in a while.”
The Impact of Self-Doubt on Creativity
46:42 to 48:54
Discussing how self-doubt affects creative endeavors and project execution.
“Or how do I find better ideas or whatever it might be?”
The Casino Effect of Viral Success
48:54 to 51:18
Examining the pressure and expectations that come with viral content.
“So when you haven't done it, it's easier to doubt it because you no doubt you don't know success.”
Touring and Audience Expectations
51:18 to 53:58
Discussing the challenges of touring and meeting audience expectations.
“You should be like, how can I make something that I had that same passion for in that first video?”
Balancing Success and Self-Worth
53:58 to 55:53
Navigating the difficult relationship between creative success and personal value.
“It's like, if this video flops, I feel like a failure, not counting that this year I've had videos that have done 30 million, 40 million views.”
The Journey of Comedy and Feedback
56:00 to 58:20
Discover the dynamics of live comedy and the creative process behind joke crafting.
“But a week later, I look at it, I go, oh, that actually crept up to like 700 ,000 views.”
The Burden of Success and Creativity
58:20 to 1:00:00
Explore the pressures of success and how they affect the creative process.
“Because there's none of the ancillary bullshit.”
Creating Conditions for Creativity
1:01:19 to 1:04:35
Uncover strategies to enhance creativity and the importance of environment.
“So when I'm having these days of all these meetings, instead of like, I'll, I'll be like, okay, guys, let's go to lunch.”
The Cybertruck Observation
1:04:35 to 1:10:00
Delve into the comedic analysis of personality types associated with Cybertruck owners.
“instead of figuring out a new TV show idea, how about I just take an old bit that I've been working on forever, see if there's anything new.”
Creative Flow in Comedy
1:10:00 to 1:10:50
Learn how creative ideas can flow seamlessly during performances.
The Importance of Laughter
1:10:50 to 1:12:00
Discover why incorporating humor is crucial for live performances.
“It was kind of like straight off the bat, straight into ideas.”
Riffing and Spontaneity in Comedy
1:12:00 to 1:13:20
Understand the role of spontaneous humor in engaging audiences.
“their careers and giving them a platform.”
Pressure and Creativity
1:13:20 to 1:14:40
Explore how performing under pressure can enhance creativity.
Warm Up and Crowd Engagement
1:14:40 to 1:17:40
Learn strategies for effectively warming up to engage an audience.
“It was a three minute interaction, whatever it is.”
The Role of Hobbies in Life Satisfaction
1:17:40 to 1:19:00
Discover how hobbies can contribute to a meaningful life.
“It's like you can't cold bar great crowd work.”
Navigating Dead-End Jobs and Finding Passion
1:19:00 to 1:21:00
Understand how to find passion and purpose amidst work challenges.
“thought loop thing to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing.”
Creating Excitement in Daily Life
1:21:00 to 1:24:00
Learn how to find excitement and motivation in everyday tasks.
“Because by definition, people that get to 50 or 70 or 90 are in the smaller percentage than the people that are at the very beginning.”
The Joy of Creativity Under Pressure
1:24:00 to 1:25:12
Learn how time constraints can enhance creativity and productivity.
“She could lomp as Latina if she needed to.”
Nostalgia for the Golden Years
1:25:12 to 1:26:24
Explore the idea that the most challenging times can become cherished memories.
“I wasn't flying around the country playing all of these shows.”
Living in the Golden Years
1:26:24 to 1:27:16
Acknowledge that many people may be living their golden years without realizing it.
“in the Upper East Side and we could hear the pigeons outside, but it was so beautiful and we had Saturday mornings to ourselves and we go to the dog park and blah, blah, blah.”
Deferred Happiness Syndrome
1:30:11 to 1:34:10
Understand the concept of deferred happiness and its impact on life satisfaction.
“It's just like, there's hot women everywhere and there's just temptations everywhere.”
The Paradox of Choice in Modern Life
1:34:10 to 1:35:06
Analyze how too many options can lead to dissatisfaction and indecision.
“I call one guy, he shoots it, he edits it, it's out.”
The Pressure of Performing Live
1:35:06 to 1:37:47
Explore the mental challenges of performing in front of large audiences.
“And I'm like, dude, I got to get to the mic and tell a joke before I start overanalyzing.”
Reflecting on Experiences Post-Performance
1:37:47 to 1:38:00
Learn how reflection on past performances can enhance future enjoyment.
“Cause I'm not, I'm not thinking about the foot.”
Reflecting on Experiences and Enjoyment
1:38:00 to 1:39:25
Explore the disconnect between living in the moment and looking back at experiences.
“Where was I when that thing was happening to me?”
The Illusion of Golden Years
1:39:25 to 1:40:42
Discussing how retrospective views can obscure the struggles of the past.
“And his wife turns to him and goes, what are you talking about?”
The Paradox of High Standards
1:40:42 to 1:42:44
Analyzing the conflict between achieving high standards and enjoying the present.
“If only I refined it this tiny little bit more.”
The Evolution of Goals and Expectations
1:42:44 to 1:44:43
How the habituation to success affects motivation and expectations over time.
“It was when I saw my day job, but I had just quit.”
The Impact of Social Media on Self-Worth
1:44:43 to 1:47:28
Discussing how social media can distort perceptions of success and self-value.
“I know that my body language wasn't perfect.”
The Dilemma of Feedback and Performance
1:47:28 to 1:49:52
Exploring the struggle between seeking audience approval and artistic integrity.
“Was it like, you know, what was the contributing factor and you're going to drive yourself crazy as opposed to really on stage, the reasons that something doesn't work are pretty constrained.”
Navigating the Social Media Landscape
1:49:52 to 1:52:05
The challenge of maintaining creativity amidst social media pressures and trends.
“And it's like, that's not the mind of like a successful CEO.”
Navigating Social Media Dynamics
1:52:05 to 1:54:26
Explore the balance between online presence and content creation.
“You scroll online for long enough and you will come across something every so often.”
The Challenge of Delegation
1:54:26 to 1:57:59
Discuss the fears and strategies around delegating responsibilities in creative work.
“To get away from the noise and to get into the signal.”
Overcoming Hiring Hesitations
1:57:59 to 2:00:16
Learn about the importance of trusting employees and overcoming hiring fears.
“that you get over is part of the selection mechanism of why people don't change.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00That's really, how do I, how do I look? cool silence all right does anybody you have 19 people on set and everyone's like i don't want to tell him it looks like shit yeah see there we go look at this yes dude is that better see now this is the problem now that you've asked for feedback all that you've got all you've got is like neuroticism and judgment okay yeah and can you write some better jokes i'm like i'm on my outfit travel wallace welcome to the show hey thanks for having me chris vogue published an article saying having a boyfriend is embarrassing now. I don't have one. I figured. Meanwhile, men are on dating apps saying that they're looking for a slightly autistic woman.
0:43Swaths of men saying they want a girl with a touch of the tism. Okay, I just want the touch. I don't even care about the tism. You know what I mean? Like, whatever they bring to the table. Well, you know what it is? Autistic women, like, from my experience, they're just passionate. they're just like i just that's all i've ever wanted dating somebody is somebody who's passionate about something whether it's a career or or or you know uh trains like whatever you're passionate on i'm passionate for you well you were saying that about uh hot girls that are just good at anything chess or djing or crochet stitching or something that that is a a niche yeah that and you're right as well i think we like anybody that really loves i just want you to love something yeah i don't care what your career is just love it can that be you can there's something be you what if that what if you are their hobby that part of it sure a part of it sure but like i've been in relationships where somebody didn't have that that that void they wanted to fill of like love and you you almost feel guilty if you're if you're too passionate.
1:51I would come home from like a show or filming something and I had so much fun on this set or filming and I love it. And then they're like, oh, that's nice. And you're like, here we go again. I mean, can we get her a Zen or something like perk up? So you almost feel guilty. So like, I just want to come home and share a communal experience where you're like, how was your day? Oh, I love that. I got to do blah, blah, blah, blah. I love that I get to do this. So I've, I found that, uh, just incredible where you can just both share and not feel this like weird one-sided guilt that i'm doing a thing yeah you don't have a thing to do yeah or a thing to do but they hate it it's like so many people hate their job which is totally fine like so many jobs suck but it kind of puts a dampening on the mood if like i'm happy with what i'm doing and then they're like oh that's cool well my day oh god i wonder whether that's mute i wonder whether that's most people that it's kind of tough because not everyone has the luxury of being able to do a job that they love, but pretty much everybody does have the luxury of being able to get a hobby or an interest or a passion that they love.
2:55That's the other side of it. So many people hate their job. I have plenty of jobs that I hated. I used to work in a kiosk inside of a Costco. I wanted to unalive myself every day, but the chicken, apple sausages samples saved me every single day. Okay. So I've had those jobs where I hated, but when I was at that job, I would write stand-up and that would like make me get through the day like that would excite me so i just find those things that would excite me through it so back to autism i think um whatever your passion is just be passionate about it i've i've i've had i've dated people who have had like uh they've worked in like like their own like they make their own clothes or their own thing and i'm like i'm so happy for that and when they show me a t-shirt or something where they stitched a pocket on in the pockets of a denim shirt is it gonna sell no but she loves it and that's what i love yeah it's the some of the feedback on the autistic dating thing it's possible that some of these men are autistic themselves and merely looking for a like-minded partner but it's more likely that swaths of them are fetishizing neurodivergence autistic sex educator millie evans wait wait what is her title autistic sex educator let's check her hard drive how do you get into that field How do you go to NYU and be like, okay, hold on.
4:08Speaking of trains, let's talk about how they're running them. It's also hard to talk about autism when there's so many cars around me right now. This is the right location to do it. Yeah, you got Nader from cars behind you. You got everything in here is would if I was teed up, which I might be. I have ADHD, I think. I don't know. I did try to take an autism test one day, but there's too many questions. And I think that's my answer. I see. Well, look, autistic sex educator. The way that that's framed, are you somebody who educates autistic people about sex? Or are you somebody who is autistic that is a sex educator?
4:44That one of my friends is the number one incel researcher on the planet. And he had to rechange the way that he introduced himself as I'm the number one researcher of incels on the planet. Dude, there's too many jobs. I'm retracting whatever I said. He loves it. There we go. There we go. He just loves incel. So he's the number one incel. Number one researcher of incels. Which makes him an incel. No, I think, well, research is me-search in many ways. Ooh. But - I like that. I'm sorry, I don't mean to come back to a friend. I've met his girlfriend. He seems to be slinging it around. And he's Irish, so that helps.
5:24But anyway, yeah, autistic sex educator, Millie Evans, has been on dating apps since she was 18. She says it is genuinely wild how often she sees references to autism on people's profiles. I'd like to have a conversation with these people to understand what they're hoping to achieve, she told Dazed. I also, I feel bad for people who are generally autistic right now because I think there's a lot of stolen valor out there. I think there's a lot of people who are kind of just like claiming it because they want to like have something. Like growing up, I wanted to be different so bad in my classroom, I told people I was colorblind.
5:55Because I wanted something different about me. like a teacher would literally point at something blue and i'd be like what is that gray like i would like pretend that was your personality yeah i wanted to be i wanted to have a thing and i think there is so many people who generally have struggles every day about autism and there's some people who are just like i just maybe i'm just autistic no no that's you're just not you're you're using that as a cop-out like you're using that as like a oh well i don't know i'm just like Like it's not, there's a lot of undiagnosed autism, which isn't really diagnosed.
6:28I can't remember who it was that said this to me, but they said like most mental health maladies are both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed at the same time. There's people who don't have it saying they do. And there's people who do have it that don't know that they do. And like those two groups don't, the Venn diagram isn't actually that big of how much crossover. Yeah. So I feel like it's almost like a cop out sometimes, but like if you generally, if you do have it, then more power to you. but I that's interesting people are putting it on dating apps I didn't maybe with love on the spectrum being so big they're like they're like this is my end I do love love on the spectrum that's one of my favorite shows ever I mean unreal but like the passion behind anybody on that show is like like oh I only care about dragons like uh well what about a girlfriend they're like you're not a dragon shut up and then the mom has to be like no you need to get married and then the guy I'd be like, well, does he like dragons?
7:17Yeah, yeah, yeah. James is a great guy on there. They all have swords. And, you know, and dude, they're making alcohol drinks. They're driving cars. I'm like, dude, these guys are living the life. Yep. Not that I didn't think they couldn't do either of those, but a little bit. But I mean, I like love their passion behind it. One of the interesting lines on this was, how do we get to a stage where neurotypical men feel comfortable enough to make jokes about wanting an autistic girlfriend on apps like Hinge. So you have a problem here. If you said, I like autistic girls, that's you fetishizing neurodivergence.
7:56But if you also put no autists, that's you being exclusionary. That's racetism right there.
8:09I don't know. I think you're just not allowed to really have an opinion on it. It's like if you're pro, if you say, I like big girls, you're fetishizing like fat. And if you say like no fatties. Well, you're saying you're Drake. There it is. There it is. You just did a Toronto show. That's a callback. It was his birthday the night that we were there. Oh, wow. It was my show, Drake's thing, and Vibe's cartel all on the same weekend, the night before the Blue Jays play. The biggest, I mean, you know, some say the biggest weekend that Toronto's ever had. It is. And you still sold it out. Yep, still sold it out.
8:41That's beautiful. Thankfully, I listed it a long time before any of that. Right, before they got on the World Series, of course. Fuck, I really wanted to go to Drake's Birthday or Vibes Cartel or the World Series. Fucking tickets to go and see Chris Williamson. I might as well get my money as well. Anyways, if you have, what were you saying? You're saying if you only like one thing. Basically, if you say that this is a preference of mine, you often get accused of fetishizing what that thing is. And if you say that you don't want that thing, then you're being exclusionary. Right. Right? Like the best example of this is the body positivity stuff, which is like, I like big girls is fetishizing fat, but no fatties is you excluding people who are like of a bigger size.
9:22It's really hard to win. So what do you just play the middle or you just don't? Well, I don't know. I mean, I think that you can't win. I think ultimately, ultimately you can't win. Initially jokes about tism riz started as a social media trend. Rizm with the tism. I have seen that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. within the neurodivergent community to describe how their traits have garmed their romantic interests. I think that you might be onto something with the, uh, uh, love on the spectrum. Yeah. I think that that might be, well, honestly, you watch a show and they find such love that like, maybe there's people watching that who resonate with them a little bit where they go like, Oh, I'm awkward and shy and dates too.
9:57Am I autistic? You know, it's, it's not a one for one. And they're not saying like that's cultural approach, like neurodivergent cultural appropriation. It was just the meme community has taken over it. And it's like risen with the tism is a funny line. But like, there's also people out there who are severely autistic and the thought of a date makes them panic and sweat. But then there's a guy or a girl on hinge being like, oh, I'm nervous. I can't make eye contact. No, you're just chronically online and you don't have human contact interactions often. Yeah. You haven't seen a person in a few months.
10:28Right. I mean, I just think that the meme community has kind of taken over. This is like the first, and what would you call autism? Because it's not a disease. What would you say? This is like the first, what would you? It's like a neurodivergent profile. But it's like kind of the first human condition that has been really memed. And everyone's like, people aren't doing the same thing with HIV. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. What would that be?
11:02Risen with the hivum? Yeah. I was trying to think. Get laid with the AIDS.
11:11I don't know. Charlie Sheen seems to be doing pretty well. Yeah. He's crushing it. He's doing great. Did you watch that documentary with him? I did. Dude. I thought that was one of the best things that I've seen. That story at the very beginning where he's absolutely hammered and the pilot. The pilot. Hey, come and sit down. Wouldn't it be funny if I put your uniform on? Wouldn't it be funny if I did? It's like, honestly, he was one step away from, wouldn't it be funny if we just like, you know, blew each other? Oh, I thought you were going a different direction. I thought you were going more New York with that.
11:39but um yeah one thing i yeah i mean like watching that documentary was so cool i love watching uh just like the upbringing of people's success stories like i used to in college go on like every famous person i admired like wikipedia and i would just be like how did they get from a to b to c to d like how did they become who they are and i'd be fascinated so seeing all this and finding out that charlie sheen was a nepo baby uh blew my mind i'm like oh your dad was a famous actor you're best friends with, you know, the guy growing up. I'm like, dude, you had no choice but to be an actor. Sean Penn.
12:16Sean Penn. Yeah. But I mean, all bits aside, I thought it was really cool just like watching his upbringing and how he got like, what he got offered, Karate Kid or something. Yeah, and he'd already made some commitment. Yeah. You've got to stick to your word with this thing. And I don't know. I mean, Charlie Sheen is a really good example of someone who, I mean, he says it himself, basically. He learned the lesson that actions don't have consequences, that he can kind of implode, torpedo the situation, and usually end up not only landing on his feet, but landing on his feet like three fucking levels higher than he was previously.
12:57Yeah, he was failing forward in a lot of this. Correct. Where, and that's what all of his co-stars would say. It's like he would get on this like crazy rehab path, bounce back and then come back even more famous than ever i'm thinking about picking up kratom is what i'm trying to say you know i'm i feel like i'm like you know i need to bring my career yeah i need something how do i sell at madison square garden let me get a needle there's got to be one in this garage uh yeah i i think it's fascinating seeing somebody who how hard do people work like you know you with how obsessive you are about bits and and and drilling your sets and working and then we're going to you know release it at this date and it's social campaign to build up and do all the rest of this stuff in a desperate attempt to try and gain little one percent here and now even half percent you know like if you think how many shows would you reckon that you do including spots would you do over a 12 month period from like special to special oh damn 200 300 i mean just this past week i did nine sets and that was over two nights five shows one night four shows on Saturday, Tuesday, five, Saturday, four, which I'm fortunate enough to be able to do because all the comedy clubs in LA are incredible.
14:08And, um, I've just been working at it for, you know, a decade and they're, you know, they're like, all right, cool. You're one of our regulars whenever, yeah. Whenever you need, we got you. Here's this. So I can kind of time it out where I'm doing a show at the laugh factor. Then I go to the comedy store and then I go to the improv, then back to laugh factor for the late show. And it's like, I've got it all dialed in, But I love doing that. I say the sets in town are like gym reps. And then on the road is when you're out there doing the Ironman and all that. So in a year, I mean, I really wish I had an answer.
14:41It could be like 500. It could be more than 500. Yeah. Almost certainly would be if you're doing this. There's definitely more than there is days in the year. Right. Okay. So let's say that you do like 400, right? You keep it on the lower. So, and you need to get 60 minutes by the end of the year. so you're talking about like not far off what's that like 15 seconds a night is what you're developing oh i see what you're saying right so it's such a tiny proportion of the overall thing each individual rep contributes this like weeny weeny weeny bit and then you have somebody like charlie sheen who just seems to maybe by virtue of his talent or time i don't think it's timing in because you'd say oh it you know he timed the market it's coincidence whatever you can't do that for a whole career you can't write off fluke and chance and coincidence for a four decade five decade career like that's impossible so i'm just i'm kind of fascinated by people who if you were to take the headlines of how they've behaved should not have ended up being particularly successful.
15:46Like you should have kamikaze Harry carried your own career like seven times over by the age of 40. I think it's buzz meets talent. The buzz of the headlines where you're like, who is this guy? Because if you see he's out of rehab, you're going to want to watch his first show back. You're going to want to watch the first episode and be like, dude, how is this guy? And then you flip it on and he's an incredible actor. And you're like, oh, I guess he's still got it. And then it's rotation of always being in the news, whether it's for partying too hard, whether it's for dating somebody who's too famous or going to rehab that first episode out he's the more you're in the headlines the more your name is just relevant and then when that show or the movie drops you're like dude it's fucking charlie sheen he's a party i gotta watch this guy so it's kind of like he's staying relevant even on the screens and off the screens and you're just fascinated by his life there's certain people that i look forward to watching their instagram stories because i know they're clinically insane and i go this is going to be good live a king I don't follow him anymore.
16:44I don't know if I ever did. I haven't for a while. It's been a couple of years since I watched it. It made me uncomfortable. But, oh, dude, I mean, yeah, he, he, I would imagine, has good stories. Well, have you seen him recently? It's like a descent into what appears to be meth-fueled, like, insanity. Oh. Absolute insanity. Okay, he's the light-up king. He's still, like, because he went to Austin, he got arrested for bringing a gun, saying he was going to fight Joe Rogan. And then, yeah, it's actually kind of uncomfortable. It's like uncomfortable. But that's kind of the Charlie Sheen approach.
17:16Because that first podcast back, he did. Yeah, so. But he's also, yeah. What you saw with Charlie, that I think is like a really cool lesson here, it worked as long as ultimately the thing that he did was good. But then when he did the live tour that was a mess, and he was still a mess, and he was in the middle of his Tiger Bloods, like, you know, winning era. and they tracked him around that outside of the shows. I'm sure that some people enjoyed it, right? Because they just wanted to be in the aura of Charlie Sheen. But a lot of people outside, like that was the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.
17:51That was a total catastrophe. You wasted money, overpriced, underdelivered. So this lesson that I've seen for ages is people will forgive pretty much anything as long as you're still good at the main thing that you do. if Kanye drops an absolute fucking slammer of her next album, people will still listen to it. And in a weird way, it kind of forgives tons of the sins that he's committed. Does that make sense? Yeah. Whereas if he falls off, all of the criticism personally, privately, culturally gets legitimized. Stays at the top. Yes, through his lack of professional success. But I think we just, we revere talent and success so much that we're just happy to forgive pretty much anything as long as someone is kind of good at what they do.
18:48Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, as a man who put a Kanye song on my Spotify recently, this doesn't feel good. This doesn't feel good. But, you know, he's also just like clinically like insane. Like that's I don't like when the media will like film him and be like, Kanye crashed. I'm like, yeah, he's fucking off the rocker. He's in the years in 2007. Correct. Correct. Britney scene with a new haircut. She's schizophrenic. She shaved her head and she has an umbrella. It's 98 degrees outside. Like, I don't like when news articles post that like it like it's like they're not insane. and they're like, oh, Kanye's having a weird day.
19:33He's fucked in the head. It's just like, it's crazy that we just film everybody doing this and then like, who's actually helping these people? That's a good point because if it was somebody, well, I mean, I was going to say if it was somebody that was going through a drug addiction, that wouldn't be tracked. But then you look at Kate Moss, you look at a Pete Doherty from back in the day, you look at an Amy Winehouse. The downfall of talented people, the potential downfall, and basically kind of like watching a car go toward another car and going like, are they going to hit? Is that going to happen?
20:06Or are they going to be able to miss it and then turn around and then they go again and then, oh, they can fix them, so on and so forth. It is more amusing to watch. And listen, there's thousands of people that probably try to help Kanye on a day-to-day basis. But to your point, it is more interesting to watch somebody, like the car crash analogy. You're like, are they going to land this plane? Are they going to? Is Kanye going to figure this one out? or is he going to release a new album and it's all in German?
20:37Featuring Elon Musk. Have you interviewed Elon? No, not yet. We considered, we were talking to his team a little while ago. I think, is that a busy period of the last 12 months? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's naming his kids QR codes and shit.
20:58Listen, I'm Jewish, so those two guys are pressing my people. Well, you say that, but you added him to your Spotify. We should cut to an ad. In other news, I've been drinking AG1 every morning for years. Dude, you tried to fastball me that. That was down the plate, and I've just Shohei Otani'd it. I've been drinking AG1 for as long as I can remember. It is the best all-in-one drink that I've ever found, and that's why I'm such a fan of them, and that's why I partnered with them as well. I have got my mom to start taking it, My dad to start taking it and all of my friends as well. And if I found anything better, I would switch, but I haven't.
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22:28Thank you. But, you know, Kanye was only a feature on the song. It wasn't his full. It was his song with Rick Ross, Devil in a New Dress. I mean, have you heard this song? Rick Ross's verse carries the whole thing. Okay. And back from the commercial break. I don't care. Keep it all in. Pull the fucking ejector seat button. I don't care. Keep it in. I need to talk about how much he drinks Celsius. let's talk about it yeah it's too much do i drink a lot of it i you know you talk about it it's your go-to it's like the canonical i'm i need caffeine i talk about this drink drink uh we got a cease and desist from a large energy company um because of something that my co-founder said for the co-founder for this thing um what did they say uh they said that we made wings uh they may have said that what he said was this and we have this like i'm gonna it's printed off and framed um like as is seen in exhibit 9.3.2 uh your uh mr smith said that our clients drink quote tastes like piss and is quote consumed by chronic masturbators um are we still talking about the incel guy anyway i want to get you off please yeah send me send me these yeah you need more you need something um yeah celsius i mean it's just like the energy during game is i mean dude they're they're super charging they're spiking panera lemonades what's that panera do you know panera bread you don't know panera bread holy shit you're rich panera bread is like uh french subway do you know what subway is i went into one panera so they put out this like lemonade a chart double charged lemonade has 400 milligrams of caffeine okay was this something killed two people yes yes yes yes i have seen it i don't know if it was kid but it did kill two people okay that's which that's america correct i mean they were they were gonna die from that broccoli cheddar cheese soup anyways and to the families of those people i'm sorry but i mean I think they got a refill I think that's where it was you could have unlimited refill so they had like 800 I believe so well it shows it's tasty yeah if you're going to consume two big gulps of that also not rich British there's a difference okay we have Gregg's are you familiar with Gregg's who Gregg's what is that Gregg's is a bakery in the UK it makes probably the best sausage rolls on the planet some may say is there a competition for that kind of The UK is basically split into North and South.
25:05North is Greg's, South is Pret-a-Manger. And that's kind of like the - I think Pret-a-Manger is in this drink. Okay, so there's a pig in a blanket? That's what we call it, America. They do that sort of stuff. Oh, really? No, sausage roll would be wrapped in pastry rather than like, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a little - And it's a sausage? Yes. Do you give it a name? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, but - Panera Bread. What's that? Panera Bread. But like the energy - I mean, I remember when Red Bull came out, it was like revolutionary. In sixth grade, this kid, Josh Fleming, took a sip of one at a bowling alley.
25:39And I remember he took one sip and started sprinting. Like, it was very performative. And we're all in sixth grade. We're like, why is this crazy amounts of caffeine? And you thought he was black because you're colorblind. I was colorblind. And he, fun fact, is Korean. But he is mixed. I believe his dad is black. But we thought 98 grams of caffeine was crazy. and now Celsius is 200, but now there's drinks out there with like 300 and 400 and it's, what's the barometer? I think a cup of coffee is like 120. We need to ask Huberman. Huberman's in later on. We can ask him. Oh, you're going from me to Huberman.
26:14That's great. Yeah, correct. I mean, the amount of brain cells, you're losing a bunch of brain cells and you're gaining a bag with Huberman and then you're leaving this studio leveled. You seem like a pretty positive guy overall. I think? I'd say so. I mean, I don't know how much of it is, you know comedic persona versus sort of genuine disposition at least in my experience like having spent a good bit of time around comedians most most people's comedic personas are just kind of like a tuned up version of who they are yeah very few of them are a total u-turn like someone who's crazy extroverted and outgoing on stage but is like doesn't have any of that energy internally because i i don't think that the depth of insight you i don't think that people would be able to get that like jimmy carr is a great example of this like jimmy is just more jimmy on stage and less jimmy when he's in private um but i see a good bit of sort of cynicism on the internet and a good few reasons to be cynical there's lots of stuff that's hard and fucking people have got bullshit jobs and neurodivergence and the world's going to shit and all this stuff i'm interested in where that positivity like how you combat cynicism even in the world of comedy like there's a lot of cynicism, backbiting, like drama-y stuff.
27:28And I just think it's a, like that kind of resilience seems to be pretty good for you. As long as I'm working, I'm pretty happy. I, I find happiness in work. I find happiness in being productive. Um, where I get down in my head is when all this work I'm doing feels like it's for nothing. When I hit a streak and there's a streak of videos that are all eating shit and I'm going, but I'm working so hard and it's not doing well. That's when I can really, that's when my like, uh, you know, toxic trade is I hone in only on that week. I don't look at anything else I've done. I don't look at any other accomplishments or any other videos I go, but these four videos in the past week ate shit.
28:06Does that mean I'm shit? And I get super in my head about that. But, but now it's like, and kind of catch that and go, okay, well, you're probably overworked because this didn't bother you in the past. It's like, okay, well, when was the last time I got any exercise? When was I someone to the gym? When I, when did I do anything for myself to get out of this rut so that's when i can kind of like catch it but as far as positivity it's like there's just i just love what i do so much that by doing this it's i'm living my dream every day so it's like why wouldn't i be happy the the times i get mad is when i'm on some bullshit general meeting with tubi and they're like so what's your show idea fuck you how about that because it's not going to happen we're gonna i'm gonna pitch a show you're going to give your shit notes i'm going to give my notes and then it just stays in this rut for hours i love the internet because i can have an idea right now i can leave here film it upload it connect my people and like there's no middle ground there's no gatekeeper no there's so many gatekeepers in in uh the industry and i just feel like creativity is a rare feeling and you have to strike on it when it hits and and what's funny today might not be funny tomorrow might not be funny in a year might not be funny in five years 10 years whatever it is so when creativity hits it's a blessing and you can't block it you can't like if you're feeling creative make that video if you're if you don't be like well make it some morning we have more free time it's like no because you're going to get to the next morning and you're going to be like what was that how did i end that again what was it and you're not going to feel that spark so when you're hitting this creativity just that's like that's your sign that's the creative gods being like go make this Let's go make this.
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29:41And where I found the stress to be is I'm like, hey, guys, I'm feeling this creative energy. Let's do this thing. And they're like, wow, we can set you up with it. There's red tape. You can't do it when you want. Here's some bureaucracy. So I don't know how I got on that. That's perfect. There's an idea from Naval Ravikant. He says, inspiration is perishable. Act on it immediately. Yeah. Same thing. And I've had those moments where I get an idea and I love the idea. And I go, oh, I need to shoot this. I need to shoot this. And then I sit on it. And then, you know, I open my phone one day and then somebody makes an idea like that.
30:11I go, I had that idea. I should. And then you like want to mess that person. Dude, I had that idea too. And they're like, okay. You didn't ship it. Didn't see it. Yeah. Yeah. And I've also sat on videos that I didn't edit. I shot them. I didn't edit them. I didn't get them done. And then somebody does the same thing and I go, oh, I should have, but I didn't. So one of the most common questions, there's a Q and a thing at the end of the live show. and one of the most common questions that people are asking is something to the effect of I'm 23 and I'm working real hard at this job that I do or this career that I'm in or this business that I'm building but I know that work-life balance is kind of important and I don't want to I don't going to waste all of my time, uh, not like being present or like being mindful or whatever it might be.
31:02And, um, one of the issues with that, that I see is a lot of the people who have a platform, like a big enough platform to be able to talk about how they got to the place that they're at. Let's say it's, it's Rogan or Tom Segura or yourself or whatever. Most of the guys are a little bit older than you are. And by that point they are in the work-life balance mode. They are talking about, I like to spend time with my kids and this is important, but that's not how they got there. Right, right, right, right, right. So the rule is model the rise, not the result. Ooh, I like that. So do we put that on a shirt?
31:33Model the rise, not the result, because if you ask somebody like, how did you get to where you are? A lot of the time people talk about what they do now. Yeah. Not what they did when they were at your stage. My point is when people say I'm 23, I'm crushing it at this thing, but I think I should do work life balance. I think they're taking the wrong message for the wrong time. And what you're saying here is you have the freest discipline ever because it doesn't take any discipline for you to go and do nine spots in two nights. It's just obsession, right? So if you think about obsession, discipline, and motivation.
32:09So motivation is I want to go and do the thing. Discipline is I tell myself to go and do the thing. And obsession is I can't not do the thing, right? So it's like you're ripped forward by this. What I'm seeing to try and tie this up fucking big mess I've made up into a bow, people who are obsessive are basically questioning, should I purposefully not use all of this free fuel that I'm getting to try and make some shit happen in the world in order to do the work-life balance thing? What they don't realize is that obsession will wane over time. That is going to be a sort of depreciating fuel source.
32:47I'm like, dude, this is the freest motivation and discipline that you're ever going to get because you literally can't not do the thing. So you might as well just completely fucking like send it, take a flamethrower to the candle, like forget burning it at both ends, kind of the same way that you are. Because in 10 years time, maybe it's going to be tougher for you to like force yourself to do nine sets in two nights. Well, maybe you can't, maybe you've got restrictions or responsibilities or some other bullshit going on. And you think, fuck, I wish I'd really sent it when it was there, when the fuel source was free.
33:19And also that's when you accumulate the skills that allow you to kind of ride the wave going forward, because you do have to earn your keep. You've got to accumulate the skills and the talents and the experience. You go, I might as well do that again when it's freest, easiest, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, this obsession thing, obsession, motivation, discipline I've been playing with for a while. And I think it relates at least a little bit to what you're talking about. Yeah. Sorry. I just heard an airplane and I'm severely autistic. no I totally agree and I mean as as I'm a sucker for a motivational podcast quote I'm a sucker for anything that kind of sparks that and the the overarching thing you see in a lot of these is like just start but so many people go like well what if it's not my passion all right fuck it don't do it oh what if I don't like then don't like try all these things the amount of different types of videos I tried before I found like what my own voice was very similar to stand-up I think everybody starts stand-up with their favorite comedians in the back of their head, influencing how they write.
34:16You know, I first started, I thought I could write like Bill Burr. I'm like, I'm not a guy from Boston. I don't, I'm not him. I'm not, I'm nowhere near, anywhere near as good as this guy. And like, but you watch and you're influenced and then you like chisel away and you go, okay, well now I'm watching more of this guy. And then now I'm watching some of her. And then you like kind of just form. So over time you find what your passion is. You find your voice. And it's just about the journey so going back to what you were saying with the rise of it it's like i put everything aside when i was coming up because i couldn't wait to be done with my nine to five when i'd be done by nine to five at 5 p.m i would drive to an open mic and go do that so week weekdays was open mics and then saturday i'd shoot a sketch sunday i'd post it or sorry saturday i'd shoot it sunday i'd edit monday i'd post it and that was every week that was my that was when it was slower this was pre-vertical videos this is horizontal this is when youtube platform is this youtube right this is this is like 2017 to 2019 this was like right before kind of pandemic when everything started taking off vertically vertically it's a new it's it's a new game like when i got in one video a week was like good that was like fine and i was like whew one sketch a week and now dude now it's like i'm i'll talk to my like instagram or tiktok reps and like Like, yeah, you should be posting like three to four times a day.
35:37That sounds annoying. That's too much. So it's a different ballgame getting in now. But there's also less care about production. There's less care about, I say that when there's 19 cinema cameras around me. There's less care. I think if I posted a clip of you saying something on my iPhone and then just one of these from this camera, there's just as good of a chance that the iPhone. I think the iPhone one wins. It might. I think it does. But when people are watching more long form content, they're going to want this camera, they're going to want the sound. But everything on my page is either shot on an iPhone or a cinema camera.
36:13It's always constantly changing. I'll upload a sketch from a ring camera and I'm being dead serious because I just want to switch it up. I just want to try everything. I'm constantly - But you could just use Sora for that. Apparently the fucking - It's getting close. Yeah. It's getting close. I've tried to use it a few times and it's like, I'm such a hands-on guy when it comes editing that I want to be like do you still edit your own stuff no but I'm just hands-on with it like I meet with my editors shoulder of yeah yeah I meet with my editors a lot and I'm just like like there'll be times a lot I'm giving notes over my computer my editor lives like 10 minutes from me shout out John the best guy in the biz and I'm like dude just come over it's 1am and we're like just just trim that we just trim that one word right there and just just I'm super hands-on with it which is a blessing and a curse I think it slows down production a little bit because I I won't post it because I'm like, well, you misspelled this or I wish it opened on this frame right here.
37:06So some people are like, you know, make your sacrifices and be like, I just post it. Now I can focus on something else. But I'm the guy who's up at crack of dawn or like three in the morning, like just trying to chisel away at something because I'm like, this is how it should be. Before we continue, if your sleep's been off, taking ages to fall asleep, waking up at random times or feeling groggy in the morning, Momentus' sleep packs. are here to help. They're not your typical knock-you-out supplement just overloaded with melatonin, just the most evidence-based ingredients at perfect doses to help you fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep throughout the night, and wake up feeling more rested and revitalized in the morning.
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38:24Winning in the weeds with stuff like that, it's interesting that you said the sort of dark sides and light sides to that. It's amazing when it comes to refining a bit down. There's this great video of Mark Norman talking about the, I met a girl on that Jewish dating app, what's it called? PayPal. And it's a video of him from when he first has the idea and he sat in his car. And then it, I don't know what, I don't think he has a video guy that follows him all the time, but he must have done for this. and it's him iterating and iterating and iterating and he like tried venmo and he tried like cash app and he tried paypal and on the timing and everything and you watch the you know whatever it is 15 seconds per night change like slowly incrementally over time and um that is another type of obsession you can't not do it i can't not think about this joke i can't not think about this podcast i can't not think about for me some of the ideas i've got i just going to bed trying to fucking get my brain to chill out.
39:22I can't. I'll be laying there. I'm obsessing. Roll over to my notes app. My eyes are closed. But that's part of the obsession. Yes. Because I'm like very, very staunch with phone can't be in bedroom. My solution for this has been, I leave my AirPods out of the case on the bedside table next to me. And then I put them in and it goes, ba-ding. I go, tomorrow, 10 a.m. Remind me an unteachable lesson is you should lie in a hammock more or whatever. But then it tries to transcribe it. And I wake up the next day and at least 50 % of the time, it's fucking gibberish. Yeah, you should lay in a hamcock more.
39:56And you're like, is that what they're selling at Gregg's these days? I'm like, oh, fuck. But anyway, you're right. And I think it's brilliant and is lauded, quite rightly so, seeing someone that's a craftsman. But I love it, yeah. The guy that owns this place, it's evident that he really fucking cares about the cars and he's tinkering with them, working on it. Isn't that fucking cool? But also, when you try and have that in your private life... No? Sorry, what was it? The battery's dead. Just for the Ferrari. It was in Ferris Bueller. I don't know if you know that. It's mine. That obsession stuff is great in your professional life, but really shit in your personal life.
40:37Awful. It's like, I've told everyone I've ever dated, I'm like, I don't think it's fun dating me. Cause it's like, I just love work so much that it like, it's hard for me to be really present. Everything I'm doing, whether I, even when I'm not working, I'm working, I'm watching a show, we're at dinner. It's like, I was at a lunch yesterday with my girlfriend and this high school couple starts arguing next to us. And I immediately pull up my notes app and I go, okay, what's, what's the end of this? What's the end of this? What's the end of this? But she's great too. And she's very funny. And she's like, also like, okay, what if you write this down?
41:11So I'm always on, but if you see it as not like disrespect, disrespect of you and you're like, dude, this is how his brain works. Then I think it's fun. Then everyone can get in on it. She's in on it. Oh, she's great. Or your friends are in on it. Like for instance, a couple of my friends that, a few were writers. I live with one of them, George. And he'll see shit that's amazing, but just not quite right for him. And I just get, it must be like going out and partying with Dan Bilzerian back in the day. The like trickle down effect. Yeah. Of being around him. There's a blast radius of like good shit that he's raised.
41:43I do this story from Winston Churchill. I can't use it, but it's going to fucking destroy on the pod. So he'll send me stuff in the same way. We'll be out at dinner and I'll be, I'm trying to think that I'm trying to work this idea out. I think, I think there's something that it's like obsession, motivation, discipline. Oh, well, why don't we, you know, we'll come up with a name for it. We can do this. That's sick. I love it. But if it's like, I should be obsessed over which frame this particular cut needs to be to make it maximally funny or whether it's PayPal or Venmo or Cash App and I need to refine this little piece down.
42:13But if it's trying to like optimize your relationship or pay too much attention, be obsessive about your relationship in a way that's like, Ryan Long taught me this, that we love and lord in ourselves like the attention that we pay and the amount of detail, like the resolution we're like, oh wow, I'm so locked in. You want to be able to turn it off when it comes to like your relationship with your parents, but that's not the way it works. You don't get to compartmentalize. I feel not like myself when I turn it off. When I'm like being too serious or talking to anybody and I'm like, I'm not being my true self.
42:45I'm like, this is boring. Like when I feel like I have to like downplay it. Like I had a meeting to write a will. Like my dad's like, you need an estate plan. You need to write a will. I mean, I was in that. I wanted to be like, kill me now. Like this is the one. I don't care who. I'm dead. I don't give a shit. The guys are like, well, do you want to be an organ donor? And there's levels of the organ donor that can like gouge your eyes out. I don't care. I don't care. I want to upload a video that might bomb. I just want to be anywhere but here. And it's so serious and it's so boring. And I'm just like, is this how you, there's no fun in this office.
43:15The sterile lighting. We have a Keurig in the corner. If I hear another Keurig coffee, I will put a gun in my mouth. I just, I can't like anybody that takes away from me wanting to be me. I'm like, this is miserable. This is not what I want to be. That's why stand-up comedy is like the most beautiful form of entertainment in the world. It's like, it's just, you're just, there's really no limitations on it. You can just be yourself. And I have to blind myself up there. Cause I don't want, you know, the thought of, you know, if I see someone in the front row with their arms crossed, you know, now I'm in my head.
43:49Now it's like chipping away at like being myself, but I just love standup so much because you can just be yourself and you're not like trying to form to like something where I like hate is like just a small talk at like a wedding or just small talk in general i'm like i'm not gonna give you my personality i'm not i'm just like yeah it just feels like so ping pong back and forth so boring anything i can do to not be in that and whether it's i'm i'm constantly just talking to myself because that's where i know i can bounce ideas off myself instead of like we're talking to some random guy at a wedding i'm like what's funny i'm writing down myself because I can be funny to myself and I can like talk to myself.
44:29It's cool to enjoy the landscape of your own mind and to be like, oh, I don't have anything to do on a plane and the Wi-Fi is broken. Dude, I love being alone for that reason. This is cool. I can actually sit with my thoughts and I know that I'm not going to get distracted and I can do a little bit of - Dude, I come up with the most ideas when I'm just by myself, either in conversation with people or it's like I usually travel with a few people for shows and whatnot, but like if I'm doing a college gig, I'll just fly out by myself. It's, there's no glitz and glam. It's like I show up to Rowan University in Philadelphia by myself.
45:02I do that. I get out of there. But those like 48 hours of traveling by myself. I mean, that's what I'm thinking about the most stuff because so much of my days on meetings or calls or talking to people, doing stuff, giving notes on editing. I'm never really truly alone. And even when I'm alone at home, I'm tired from the full day. So when I'm just like on an airplane by myself, like you said, and the wifi is out or, you you know, that's when I'm like, whoa, I haven't tapped into my own thoughts in a while. What's going on? What's funny to me? Nothing is funnier than I love making myself laugh where it's like, I'm just at the airport and I see somebody just doing something so bizarre.
45:37And I'm like, I wish I had somebody to tell it to, but instead I'm like, oh, what's funny here? And I like, almost like having this conversation with myself to find the funny. This is something that I, another question that comes up at the live shows is, uh, how do you retain what you learn. I'm not particularly good at it. I think I've just like been exposed to a lot. You'll be episode 1020 of the show or something. So even if I took, you know, 1 % from every episode, it's still tons of stuff. I think one of the things that people struggle with that you've identified there is if you don't have an outlet, there is very little motivation for why you're looking for stuff.
46:17You're not scavenging for ideas if there isn't some publish that's happening. If you're not going to turn it into a song or draw it in an illustration. Some expression. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or talk about it on a podcast or write about it in a blog post or put it on stage for a comedy special or whatever. If you don't have a reason to do it, for the most part, you're probably not going to be as motivated to really, really seek this stuff out. And I think it's a good, I couldn't agree more about the no gatekeeper frictionless thing. That's why a sub stack so great like nobody needs to understand how to build a website or have a lead magnet or a fucking capture form it's like social media blogging go on i i have an idea and if it's good there's an ecosystem of people there that will go this is great and they'll reshare it and now you're a writer you're like nobody stops you from being a writer anymore you can be a writer like tomorrow yeah but if you don't have some sort of an outlet and this is one of the sort of commonalities that I've seen with people that ask like, how do I retain what I learn?
47:18Or how do I find better ideas or whatever it might be? So, well, is there, have you got a reason for it other than just, I want to have better ideas? So, because I want my blog to be better or my podcast or my music or my drawing or my illustrations or my fucking comedy. Oh, well, if you've got that, that's going to be the North star that you're going to be working toward. But without that, there's no reason when you're in that. Right. Because you feel like you're just kind of aimlessly shooting something or recording something or writing something. You're like, what is this for though? Yeah. Or maybe you're not even recording it or writing it or shooting something.
47:46You're just like wanting to hold on to, I'm just going to be funnier around the water cooler or whatever. Like that's not, I think that's enough motivation. yeah well yeah i think oftentimes people settle they go well that's good enough or they go they immediately get shot down they go yeah but then where would that go but then where would they like question they doubt themselves right out the gates they go ah this is a good uh food recipe but who would want to read that who would want to so it's like the self-doubt is so strong and i mean i face that all the time too it's like you know i i pitch an idea to myself and i go or even an idea it's like i want to do more stuff in the traditional side of things and it's like yeah i really want to do this show but then i gotta get a producer and director right then so it's like it doesn't even make it out it makes it outside of my mouth but that's about it and it's like i shoot it down before i even have done it because i haven't done it if you've made a tv show every time you've made a show it gets easier and easier but since i've never made a tv show and only done like sketches and stuff like that, to me, I'm like, yeah, but then I'd have to find a budget and then find a good producer.
48:50But once you've done it a bunch, you're like, it's actually really easy. It's actually like I hit up this person, that person, this person, that person. It's actually quite straightforward. So when you haven't done it, it's easier to doubt it because you no doubt you don't know success. Am I cooking? Yeah, you are. Holy shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's, and you were talking about knowing like what you retain from stuff. I heard somewhere that it's like your brain defaults to negativity because it's a safer place, even though the outcome isn't, but like it's, it's, it's a more familiar place than it is success.
49:22So it's like, if you swing about 10 times and you miss nine, your brain's just kind of thinking, well, why would I step up to the mountain? I'm just going to miss, but that one out of 10 crank it out. So that, that's why I go. That's why I post videos. Cause for that one out of 10 is like that, like that, I think like whatever, I think once you go viral, it's like a blessing and a curse. Cause then it's like a drug. It's like when you go to a casino and you hit a slot for the first time i don't know what you guys call in the uk sleuths but when you the first time something else oh there we go she's on your shirt just kidding that's a nice lady but i remember when i went to this casino when i was 18 it's um they give you a punch card or they give you like a 50 free card and i think they load it up i think it's ricked i mean it's a casino oh like that thing about uh tiktok where one in the first five things that a new account puts up will have a little bit of virality correct because then And it's like, I've never done heroin, but you know how they say you're chasing the dragon or whatever?
50:17It's like that with social media. If you have a video that hits a million views, it's almost like you can't even enjoy that million because you're quickly going like, what can I do next? What can I do next? Or you get in your head, you're like, well, the next thing I do isn't going to be as good as that. Now I get trapped. It's like I had this video in college. I was on Vine and I had this video do like 14 or 15 million like what was it ReVines? ReLoops? I never watched it. I never used it. I forget what it's called. Whatever it is. Plays. But I froze because I was like I don't know what to make I don't know what to make like nothing I make is going to be as good as this all these new fans that are seeing this fans I had like 10 ,000 on the time I was like all these new people are going to see this and be like ah it's not as good as the last one and I froze and I didn't do anything and then I didn't post anything and the next video I did ate shit because I lost all the momentum.
51:09So it's like blessing and a curse type of thing where it's like, fuck yeah, all this video is doing great. And then you're like, how do I beat it? That's not what you should be thinking. You should be like, how can I make something that I had that same passion for in that first video? How can I find that same excitement? But you're chasing that. So I think to the casino effect, you get views and now you're like, oh, it's proof that I can do it. how do I keep doing it? But the problem is that has now set a standard that you can meet or that you can fail at meeting. Right. The very beginning of doing something is brilliant because it's all upside.
51:47Yeah. You can't eat shit. You haven't done anything before. So the higher that you climb, the further there is to fall. And I've thought about this. I've thought about this with the live stuff. So I'm in the middle of tour at the moment. And, um, you know, this is the first America headline, America and Canada headline tour that I've done North America. That's what you guys call it right totally so yeah come double them together so you don't have to go like yeah uh it's the first one that i've done and now i'm thinking well if i don't sell out the town hall in new york again next year that means as opposed to being on the come up and getting your first debut show in manhattan to be 1500 people oh that's you've fallen off when there's so much else that also factors into it yeah of course the timing of when's the show what is it drake's birthday and vibes cartel and the fucking world series happening at the same time on the same well i mean it's yeah it's also every year you go on tour the economy is in a different place and it's never in a great place but it's definitely not i started touring really heavy right out of the pandemic and there were so many people that were like dude we've been locked up for all these years we want to go to something live holy shit trevor's finally coming to my town we gotta go and those tickets easy so flew off the shelf i mean like i i like before i even left for the tour I think 70 % of the shows were all sold out.
53:05And now I'm touring again and, and I'm using those metrics on those shows. And I'm like, let's go bigger in those venues. And I'm feeling like, okay, we're taking some really big swings. Some cities like Toronto hit it straight. Yeah. What is it about the Canadian audience? They just want to buy shit straight away. We love you. They want to see how insane Americans are. They want to be like, is this Trump democracy really getting with them? You know, I don't know. Um, but there's just certain markets and you could talk to any comedian in the world or, really entertainer. There's just some markets you just don't sell well.
53:36Chicago, I did 3 ,000. Milwaukee couldn't fill a 900 seat room. Now, they're like an hour-ish from each other. Did that play into it? I don't know. Are more people from that area going to be like, well, let's drive to Chicago for a weekend to go to the big show than to go to this Milwaukee one. There's just so many factors in it. That sense, right? Oh, I've had to pull back. Yeah, of course. It's like to your point i i i did the will turn twice on the size tour and it's in boston beautiful venue and i am doing it twice again this tour but there's definitely a thought when i put the first one sale like if i'm only doing one does that mean i'm not this as relevant or i i did um somewhere in charleston south carolina to start this tour off onto a right now and i got there and i saw my name on the on the stone because i performed there and on it said two sold out shows but the last time i went there recently i only did one and it's this weird like why can't i just be happy with one sold out show still because you're equating it to this and it's the same i'm hyper fixating on one show the same way i hyper fixate on one video it's tunnel vision where you're like as opposed to three weeks ago this one was a new record or this one was just really great or yeah or the fact that when you were here last time it was out of a pandemic you had a saturday night you had an 8 p.m now you're doing a thursday at 7 p.m and it's whatever is going on with it but um it's it's so hard i was just talking about this yesterday for like an hour of like it's so hard to not equate the most recent thing you've done for work in any field as your whole worth, not just entertainment, any field.
55:25So true. It's like, if this video flops, I feel like a failure, not counting that this year I've had videos that have done 30 million, 40 million views. I've done three movies. I've done shows. I've opened for massive arena acts. And it's like, but when something is not working, that's all you are focusing on. I'm a piece of shit right now. Right now. Right this second. Right now I'm a piece of shit. And it's also like. I, but it's like all I hyper-focus on. It's the same thing with like a, like if a hate comment, you get 100 positive comments, you get one bad comment, you only start at that one comment, but also if a video is flopping like, like, I hyper - I'm in my head, I'm down bad.
56:24But a week later, I look at it, I go, oh, that actually crept up to like 700 ,000 views. That's pretty good. Yeah, it like, over time it grew. So now I'm like looking at a seed in the ground. I'm like, why aren't you a tree yet? And I'm getting mad at myself because I'm not giving it time to find its audience, time to grow. That's a great, that is the great thing about doing live that the feedback is immediate. If what you've done is good, you know within 0.5 seconds, if it's good. A stand-up comedy is the best form of entertainment and it's hands down for that reason. If stand-up, you got a response the same way the algorithm did, it would be like one person would laugh and then 30 people would laugh and then two and then a hundred.
57:06And then a week later, someone's like, ta-ha. Like it's so delayed that it almost takes the excitement out of it. That's why stand-up is so great because trying a new bit, you immediately know like that's good, that's bad. and then you you get a pop on it you go boom add it to the repertoire and you do it on a second show and it doesn't get as good of a laugh and you go oh was this like a first you know was this a first bit kind of luck type thing and but then you obsess and you're fascinated oh what did i do on the first show you listen to the audio back what i do on the first show that was different than the second show let me try another third show and that's where i get super like kind of you're talking about with the mark stuff where you keep trying and tweaking you go it worked on this show so i know it is funny for a fact where do i find the funny and then that's when i start doing like editing in my head, I go, well, you know, this three minute bit really is just a big payoff at the end.
57:55Do I need this two minutes in the front or do I take this one minute and then actually tack it onto the fact of this old joke? So now you're like, that's where I love that. Where we start mixing and matching and nobody has any idea and you're doing this in live time. That's the best. That's the obsession again, right? Yeah. Like that's what, that's what that is. And i do think there's a weird sort of beauty at the beginning of everybody's journey where the the fact that there's no pressure on you means that you can just yeah it's so easy the bar is pretty low nothing's popped off yet no i don't have any obligations i don't have meetings with fucking tubi and spotify and like all of this you know we love you tubi um but there's just no you don't do much of the stuff that isn't the thing.
58:45Because there's none of the ancillary bullshit. There's no hiring and firing and team management and fucking invoices and like, oh God, the show in Milwaukee has been moved because of such and such a thing. So the whole routing has got to change. It's like, no, I just go and do my little spots. And I just do the thing. I do the awful. I'm just writing on Substack. Oh, well, now you've got a book deal. Oh, well, now you're going to have to deal with the publisher and you've got timelines and you've got a research assistant. You've got to manage the research assistant. The research assistant is going to go away for two weeks.
59:11So you've got to get somebody else in, but they're not as good and they're not going to be and you're like like i came here to do this thing and now i'm doing all of this stuff that isn't the thing i have so many more days sorry to catch what we're saying no no that's it i have so many more days where i feel like i left my day job so i could do comedy full time like seven years ago and it's there's so many days where i'm more administrative more like sitting down you were in your day job yeah and i'm like dude i'll just be in the middle of like i'm like sitting there with my assistant i'm like she's like okay then you have a two o 'clock you have a 3 30 and then i'm like what for what all i want to do is make funny every meeting i take takes away from the funny and there's so many days where i'm just doing all this admin shit and i go like can i just shoot a fucking tiktok and then i filmed that with the stressed out brain and then the video flops and we're down to the races yeah so for me it's all about like finding those you can't create creativity but you can set yourself up for creativity.
1:00:08So it's like, I might be like, okay, this Saturday, I want to write. What are the things that make me feel good? So I could have a chance of getting creativity. Oh, that's good. Creative. So. A quick aside, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus, and your performance. But most people have no idea where those are or what to do if something's off, which is why I partnered with Function because I wanted a smarter, more comprehensive way to understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over a hundred biomarkers and their team of expert physicians analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan.
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1:01:24Really, rest is the biggest thing. Sleep, good sleep, working out in the morning, and um just working out like when those endorphins it's like like i'm i'm pretty like in my head most of the day but like if i like work out and i'm like i've had a coffee and i'm and i'm by myself like i'm like walking around i'm like singing to myself i'm like that's we're on the verge of something well we're feeling good but for me it's like i i can't structurally write where it's like okay you have a uh you have a 2 p.m meeting and a 3 3 3 30 meeting but but at three you should write i'm like that doesn't work for me where i'm like okay work you know like let time be funny like you can't force funny for me some people set hours every day that are like every day at 11 i write for an hour and you're allowing yourself to be creative in those moments but for me it's like I can't structurally do that.
1:02:20So when I'm having these days of all these meetings, instead of like, I'll, I'll be like, okay, guys, let's go to lunch. Let's, let's step out of this office. Let's kind of get reset. Yeah. Let's reset. Let's submerge. Let's be around some people. That's when ideas start flying up for me. It's like, there's ideas everywhere. Whether it's a fashion trend, somebody's wearing, how somebody is talking to the barista or something. It's just like, but when I'm in this stress brain, it's like, it's almost like I have like, do not disturb on for ideas where I'm like stressed. It's like, like all these ideas are right in front of me, but when I'm like relaxed or like kind of out of the work brain a little bit, like more like fun kind of stuff, it's so much easier for me to make these observations to make fun of where if I'm stressed, I'm there's funny all around me, but I'm not noticing it.
1:03:08So similar to what I do and not for the funny bit, but for the, Oh, that's like two ideas that I haven't realized that that come together. And I've been hearing a lot of people talk about obsession at the moment. And Zach Pogrobs just started this new running club in New York, and it's all about obsession. And, well, I did this bit about motivation and discipline, but I never wrote about it. I never published it. So I wonder if obsessions are part of the motivation discipline. But without, you're so right. If you're in admin mode, that stuff just, it can't penetrate at all. Mike Isretel did this really wonderful episode about rest ethics stuff with me.
1:03:41Just fucking sick line. He says, you can't white knuckle creativity. Like you can't fucking grip it. like this and be like, hey, be creative. Right, right, right. Most things, you know, if it's answering emails, you can kind of like white knuckle email answering. Of course. And you can white knuckle like fucking admin and responding to texts and, you know, like sort of low level executive function stuff, organizing a schedule or whatever, making phone calls. You can't do that with creativity because it kind of just like arrives and you've got to be sat back. Yeah, and there's days where I try to force creativity and it doesn't hit.
1:04:17Yeah. whether I'm like tired and I go, well, I got to just work out. Workout usually helps with creativity. And then I work out and I'm sitting and I'm trying to write or I'm trying to come up with something and I'm just getting, I'm drawing blanks. And sometimes that's just the nature of the game. You can't create creativity, but you can try. And you can maybe, instead of saying, well, instead of figuring out a new TV show idea, how about I just take an old bit that I've been working on forever, see if there's anything new. It's like, you don't have to come up with your biggest idea then. You can still kind of like, like, okay, okay, I'm not feeling as creative.
1:04:48What's a old joke I've been doing. How can I punch that up a little bit? Or how can I just listen to some stuff back to kind of like put you in that right zone? But you're really right. It's you can't white knuckle through it. And that's why I think also setting alone time for yourself, me personally, is when so many people have so many creative thoughts in the shower. Shower thoughts and toilet thoughts, dude. Shower, toilet, and also driving because you're just, you're not staring at a screen. You're zoned out. So finding those moments where even if I'm feeling not creative, I just go, let me just go to a mall.
1:05:21Let me just get out. Let me go get it. Let me not make a coffee here. You're not going to be around people at a mall. Let me go get a coffee. Let me, instead of making one. And it's not for the coffee. It's for the fact of like, well, what's out there? Change of environment. Creativity is like fishing. You're like, what's out there? If I go to a farmer's market, am I going to get any, am I going to catch anything? And you might think you have something. And you're like, oh, dude, look, look, look, what's this guy over here? He's got like a weird, like quilt on his head. What's this? You know, and you're like, you're trying to, you're, you're getting like sparks of creativity and you're, and you're looking around and, oh, is this, is everyone wearing Birkenstocks?
1:05:54Oh, is that a video idea? And you're in, but you're just, you're piecing it together. You can't just sit at home and be like, what's funny. What's funny. I mean, you can, you obviously can, but for me, I gotta, I gotta feel connected. I get to feel something. People will pitch me ideas all the time. and I go like, I see why that's funny, but like, I don't have an emotional connection to it. But then, you know, I get cut off by a cyber truck and do you have one? No. No, of course not. Chris, you have the build of a guy who would have a cyber truck. What is that? Give me the archetype of the cyber truck owner.
1:06:28You. Why? What's that? What is this? British. Austin, Texas. Okay. Well, the British thing I think is a front. How long - It is a fake accent. You moved here from Dayton, Ohio. how long in what's your best American accent there isn't one sorry you can't get an American accent out of me you can do lots of British accents but you can do a British accent because it's an accent to you that's true boom USA my Instagram bio is fake British accent perfect the average Cybertruck owner is a guy with a Patagonia vest he's like a tech guy who got kind of like not the respect he wanted okay and a truck to him is too expensive to fill up the gas.
1:07:07And he goes like, I want to be the badass at work, but like, I also want to be the tech guy. They want to bridge the gap. So it's like the, it's like the midlife crisis sports car dude, but for the like iPhone 17 generation. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So there's a lot of compensation. So you're saying I'm compensating. Correct. Okay. No, I'm not saying you're compensating at all, but you said you, you live in Austin, Texas. Sorry to dox you. What's your home address? but Austin, Texas is the hub of this. There's a lot of Cybertrucks. So I could feel, what do you drive? Camaro, 6.2 liter V8 Camaro. Yeah, compensating still, just in a different direction, different fucking fuel source.
1:07:49Beautiful car, beautiful car. I don't think you drive a Cybertruck, but if you did, I would say, eh, check it out. You got cut off by a Cybertruck. It's like, I have to feel an emotional connection to the creativity and i need a why i get caught up by a cybershop piss me off why and then i catch up and i see the guy and i go well that's why it's this guy who got this car and now he thinks he's some status guy he thinks he's like elite he thinks he's like futuristic and it's like then i everything i make fun of isn't even about like is that the genesis of the cybertruck bit did you get cut off by a cybertruck yeah you did a video about the cybertruck well you know what it was is i was um i i was i uh was in a he had a cyber truck right and i was in it and just like how he was like describing it and he's like yeah it's got air conditioning i'm like yeah of course it is air conditioning yeah it's got a reverse camera every kia sorrento has reverse and how he was talking about it is like it's just so futuristic and i just was like you're a different person after getting this car well yeah but like he just was a different person like i think he had a three series before that and then he gets this guy and he's like this now he's like a tech guy and now he's like telling me about like the dow jones i'm like what do you know about any of this so it's just like that persona and then i kind of start seeing them everywhere and then i go dude there's a kind of a theme every time you see a cyber truck it's kind of in and around the same guy yeah so that's when i get excited and that's when the mental editing comes up and i go okay okay, Cybertruck's very popular.
1:09:25This has great SEO online. People know about Cybertrucks. I can make fun of this. What's the type of guy? I love making fun of a thing or like an object or like a car because now the shareability is crazy because then everyone goes, oh. This is just like John. John, you have a Cybertruck. Mark, you have a Cybertruck. And it's like, what's going to make people either share it because it's funny or share it because it's relatable to somebody they know? So for me, that's what my brain, I like love that when I like am onto something and you go like because sometimes i'm spitballing i go ah what about this car no what about this car no and then i then like the cybertrick comes around like and i can picture the like character i'd play with the video and i go yes yes and it's like it's like i just it just flows when when a good idea connects you might have one box unchecked but for the most part you're like and he's gonna dress like this and we can shoot it here and we can in it like it just it has forcing it yeah it has this like synchronicity to it is that the right word synchronicity synchronicity sorry i need to finish this drink but it it like it you feel it come together and there's jokes that i have that come to me so easy that i go like this has to be somebody else's joke because this came to me so easy but it's a but it's an experience that happened to me so i know it's not somebody else's i mean but it comes to you so easy you're like this is this like this is just a blessing from the creative gods yeah i mean again i have the most uh fucking playmobile my first live show sort of equivalent of this but uh i know that in order to make the live show that i'm doing at the moment the self-discovery show energized there needs to be funny bits not just at the start which was to kind of like release tension of course everyone yeah because when i went in and the first version of the show that I did two years ago, there was no laugh.
1:11:16It was kind of like straight off the bat, straight into ideas. And people were 10 minutes in and there was tension in the room because they were like, am I supposed to laugh? Do I clap? Yeah. What do I do here? What am I supposed to do? So I'm like, okay, if we just fucking work the tension out in the room. Anyway, there's a bit, I'm using Lizzo as an example for people whose opinions and deeds are far apart. Online, people can say that they're real charitable, caring, philanthropic, empathetic, whilst not actually having to do it because you're able to say a thing whilst doing something else.
1:11:50The distance between opinions and deeds has never been greater. I'm like Lizzo. When I was in Australia, I was just talking about the fact that she was helping these bigger girls by pushing their careers and giving them a platform. As I said that, I was presumably a structurally reinforced platform. And that's like one of the biggest out of nowhere bits of the night, because people don't see it coming because I didn't see it coming. And I'm like, I just say the thing that I said, because it came to my mind while I was in fucking Melbourne or fucking Brisbane or whenever I was a year ago. And that's still a part of the set now moving forward.
1:12:30So I'm like, oh fuck, like that's really cool. So the fact that you feel like, oh this was just given to me like where the fuck did that come from dude when i riff i don't even like that's the funniest shit comes to me riffing on stage and i have no idea where it came from or in filming videos um this guy churdlies who i've made so many videos with throughout the years done a lot of sketch it's like there's just certain people that bring the riff out of you and there's certain crowds that bring the riff out of you and when him and i would film videos together it's like we would go in there with like a premise of like okay we should make a video where you know here's the end goal and how we get there is different it's really kind of like reno 9-1-1 and like seinfeld a lot of those shows or like um how larry david likes to shoot it's like just get to the end goal of you're mad at her because she did this and then you just when you're around the right crowds the right people they just bring and you don't even know where they're coming from how did you think of that i'm like i don't know when i watched you and you especially uh jimmy car as well and uh matt rife when i watch you guys riff on stage it is like how the living fuck does that come spontaneously who's that who's that really famous freestyle rap guy harry mac harry mac i know it's like watching harry mac yeah yeah this is the most high wire act because if you don't say something funny after you've just popped some guy in the front row and you're like oh what's going on man oh okay and the oh okay that's the like starter pistols got fired if like i'm gonna fuck with you now and if you don't do it he kind of wins right and you kind of look like a fool or a bully or someone that's not cool and you're like oh fuck now i've got to win the crowd back yeah so the doing that under pressure under tension um it's just super fucking impressive it's really really really impressive but we did the first show i told you first show in um in new york we had some problems getting people in they were doing like extra bag checks at the start so you have one of those crowds no bring a lot of guns no it's just i don't know something was going on and fucking alex is running around trying to fix shit and um my uh warm-up that i brought with me plays music for 30 minutes fucking unbelievable like country blues stuff he's dialed this set in like perfectly and he knows it from start to finish without looking at a clock for like 29 minutes 30 seconds like done and he's off and then i'm up and he just gets like a little message from on his stage where she's going hey man we just need you to extend by 15 minutes he's like it's the first show of tour it's the it's the biggest show that we're doing it's a town hall on a thursday in the middle of manhattan it's sold out everyone's looking at me he's like yeah we need you to extend by 15 minutes he's like and he just did like just pulled out like fucking unreal songs out of nowhere that he hadn't practiced he hadn't prepped like not knowing the tuning of his guitar not knowing this it was so cool well i love being put on the spot I think that's why crowd work sometimes I'll like, and listen, there's so, and the parts that I don't say to them back are funny.
1:15:29Those get edited out. I post a minute 30 clip. It was a three minute interaction, whatever it is. But those parts that I like, when you're being put on pressure, that's when like your body is in like fight or flight. And it takes all of its creative juices and all of its years of training comedically to be like, just what, you know, and you're not thinking about anything else. You're not thinking about a doctor's appointment. You got to go. You're not thinking about what time you're flying. You're just, you're so present. And when you're present, that's when you're just, I just love that feeling when, when everything creatively just leads to that moment because you're just responding, but you're just present.
1:16:06Without thinking, really. Well, yeah. I mean, it's like, I remember I did improv classes when I first moved to LA. Hey now. And they like, anytime I would like think of a joke to say, it would always bomb. Cause it like, like I would just respond. Bink. Yeah. Those are always the funniest. But like, if you had like a joke loaded up, time goes by and maybe the joke was funny 10 seconds ago, but you, but then it's not talking yet. Or, or you said something funny and I go, oh, I got something to say, but you keep talking. It's like the funnier thing is to respond what they finished with, not what they interjected with, what, what, what like middle through.
1:16:38So I think to the effect of crowd work, it's like, you're just, you're, you're present. I'm, I mean, like it, it's also like, I'm, I've been doing, I'm on, let's say I'm on stage for like 30 minutes. I'm like, I'm fired up. I'm, I'm warmed up. I'm, I'm fully in. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm dialed in. If crowd work happens right in the beginning of the show, it takes me a second to be like, wait, what? Hold on. Because there's no, like, there's no stakes established yet in the show yet. Sometimes there is, but like, sometimes I'm like, it's like, sometimes I'm like, let me just, let me get comfortable in this room first.
1:17:09Somebody might yell something crazy in the beginning. I'll be like, what did you say? Okay. Kind of dab with it. Start cooking with the crowd going off my like guided material. And then 20 minutes later, I'll be like, hold on. You said you had a bow constrictor as your first blowjob, and then I'll bring it back. Because I'm like, let me warm up real quick. You can't just start yelling this shit. It's like, because I want to feel, it's like working out. I don't want to just go and hit my PR right off the bat. It's like, let me kind of like, let me do some lunges real quick. A good term for that is called cold barring.
1:17:37So you go into the gym and the bar is still cold, and you try and cold bar your one rep max. It's like you can't cold bar great crowd work. Like you need to actually get into it a little bit. But I think to go back to what you said at the very beginning, which is we love people that love something like somebody that's got a passion and i think part of the reason is that person probably gets into a flow state at some point they're writing music yeah and they're just like obsessing and maybe they're not even right maybe they're just editing the song and they're trying to find like what's the perfect fucking kick drum like i need to like i need to lose a little bit at this low end here or it's someone that's drawing and time just stops and they're just it's them and whatever it is that they're trying to create or someone's writing a comedy bit or they're doing this on stage or, you know, playing fucking pickleball, whatever it is.
1:18:19Like, this is why hobbies are cool and compelling. And the fact that increasingly people don't have pursuits that make them feel like that. I think it's like a real, you can relate at the feet of bullshit jobs and cost of living and the fucking dopamine and the world's news and all the rest of it. That's true. But if you don't have at least like one thing, And I guess that could even be probably like playing with your kids, being like, fuck, like I'm just so like in the zone with my kids and having such a good time and time's completely stopped here. But if you don't have anything, I think it's going to be really tough to feel like, oh, I live a meaningful life.
1:18:56If you're kind of just moving from neurotic, obsessive, echo, fucking self-reinforcing thought loop thing to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing. It's like, well, at what point are you just there and you're kind of out of your own head and just doing the thing? so what do you tell people that feel like they're working a dead-end job and they're like i don't know if i have any hobbies and i just i don't have any time to work life balance it's rough man i mean there's material constraints to what people can do and and this is always the issue of trying to talk about this sort of stuff online that the well easy for you to that is the sort of immediate response and in some ways like rightly so because if you are a person who doesn't have the opportunity to you've got to work two jobs and raise a kid and fucking do the rest of it trying to get some sort of a qualification like that sucks but your goal presumably is not to do that forever your goal is to be able to do that to reach escape velocity so that you can have this opportunity this is why i think people that criticize or people that have an issue with anyone talking about how to manage money or move up the property ladder or whatever it might be.
1:20:12They're like, well, this is completely out of touch. And he goes, well, it's only out of touch with the stage that you're at now, because presumably your goal from the stage you're at now is to get to the stage where this sort of conversation is of use to you. So I'm kind of skeptical. It makes me sad when I see cynicism or criticism on the internet of people talking about how to go from 50 to 60, as opposed to always just going from 0 to 1 or 0 to 10. Like not everybody's at the beginning of their journey. And if you want to learn about, okay, what do you do when you actually get a little bit of momentum under your wings?
1:20:48Like there's a very different problem being at the start of your journey and being like, it's all upside. I can't fail as opposed to going, hmm, what's it going to be like the first time that you eat shit or get a demotion or you don't hit your target in your sales job or you release a blog post that eats shit compared to the last one whatever it might be oh well actually that is a really challenging uh um hurdle to try and overcome it just feels a little bit less sort of like underdog philanthropy like we're raising up the fucking like the people that are struggling because as you get further and further up any sort of a journey, there's fewer and fewer people like it, right?
1:21:31Because by definition, people that get to 50 or 70 or 90 are in the smaller percentage than the people that are at the very beginning. To me, that would be pretty interesting too, because it's saying, hey, I know that you might be at this stage, but watch out because this thing's coming, right? You haven't had a video take off or you haven't had a blog post take off or you haven't managed to change careers to the one that you want to. But when you do, you're going to encounter this thing and this thing is going to be hard in a really different way. So you're going to feel like, Oh, what if I dropped off?
1:21:59What if my self-worth has changed now? What if I can't be as creative as I used to be in the past? Those things are, they're useful to see, but the, the only solution that I think that makes any sense is like, even, even if you only had 20 minutes or 30 minutes today, what is something that if you knew it was on your calendar for the day, it would make getting out of bed way easier it'll excite you you're like fuck like i can't wait so for instance today i had a good night's sleep last night even though i've been flying a lot again as you know like tours not exactly great on the like sleep pattern stuff yeah um and i woke up this morning and i was like fucking trevor and huberman back to back and all my friends two alpha males two yeah two sigmas uh this is fucking sick yeah like this is a good day i'm like okay i i can deal with the admin i deal with the emails i can deal with the bullshit episode on tucker carlson just went out like as we're doing this episode i assume that i'm canceled by like by now um but i'm just like i'm fired up to do this thing and if you can find half an hour of your day where you're like pickleball is a kind of an example because people get obsessed with it like if you fucking love that and you know that monday is going to be pickleball day and you get up on the morning and you're working the kiosk in a uh fucking where was it costco you're like oh god but tonight i get to go Monday pickleball.
1:23:20And maybe I see that hot girl again that I've been talking to or maybe I get to get better at my day. I miss that feeling. Dude, I had a Spanish class with this girl and her name was Bailey. And I would get so excited on Monday just in hopes that she'd ask me about my weekend. Oh God. She has like three kids now, but somebody beat me to it. Probably multiple people. She has three baby guys. Was she Spanish? If she's Mexican, that fertility explains a lot. No, she was a white girl, but kind of went the stolen valor route. She'd kind of pencil in her eyebrows and she thought she was Latina. But honestly, dude, I mean, she had a, she had an ass.
1:23:59So yeah, you could, yeah. She could lomp as Latina if she needed to. Yeah, yeah. She could, yeah. Possibly. Yeah, she could pass. But she was, oh man. But that feeling of like, oh, I'll see her Monday morning in Spanish class. maybe that's why it felt like she might be a little latina spanish class but to your point i would get excited at my day job for lunch because everybody in the office would go out to lunch and i would say oh cool i can now go to the break room and edit my videos freely so i would get excited for people to leave i would get like fine and it was a 20 to 30 minute window where i could like go oh if i edit now then i can go to open mic later and i like i've always been like a, a Google calendar guy in my head where I'm just, it's all blocks where I go, okay, if we'll, if I do 20 minutes now, then I have that free.
1:24:48And I, but like, I would obsess over like, when can I, when can I film this week? When can I edit this week? I would sneak away and, and shoot a video upstairs, my old day job. And then I would be like in my lunch break, I would turn my laptop against a wall. So nobody else in the bedroom could see it. And it would look like I'm working. Nobody ever in the office ever saw me work as hard as I did when I was editing, because I had like a 20 minute constraint, same to the pressure thing. it's like if I have a whole week to get a video done I'm gonna dilly-dally around the whole week and I'll probably finish it Sunday night uh at midnight with when if there's like a deadline I was the same way with papers in college I didn't give a shit until there was a deadline so also giving yourself a deadline for goals of saying like okay yeah you work from uh 5 p.m to midnight and you go okay well I have up until 4 p.m to get this done because I got to do a closing shift tonight like that that deadline mentality that really i gave myself a small goal of one video a week and i like would obsess over that and i i just i loved it i would find time to to think it's what i said before look at how much reverence and enjoyment you have for what should be the shittest period of your career where you're like nobody knew who i was i had a couple of videos that had blown up.
1:26:04I didn't have the following. I wasn't flying around the country playing all of these shows. I certainly wasn't selling out the fucking Beacon Theater in New York. This is, and it's kind of hard to say, it's a bit of an unteachable lesson that the golden years are often the first ones, but you're going to look back on the start of this relationship. Do you remember before we had kids or we lived in that pokey apartment in the Upper East Side and we could hear the pigeons outside, but it was so beautiful and we had Saturday mornings to ourselves and we go to the dog park and blah, blah, blah. Or do you remember when we first founded the business and we didn't have any idea what we were doing and we had that pitch meeting and we crushed it, but we slept under the desk the night before and we ordered Domino.
1:26:44Those are the golden years. Yeah. There's a good chance a lot of people listening to this right now are in their golden years, but they're so stressed about the future, they don't realize it. Yes. Yes. So true. Morgan Housel has this fucking unreal article. He says, golden years only exist in the past. Nobody ever believes they're living through a golden era yeah there's a good chance i'm in my golden years right now but i'm just like well why can't i say well well seattle sold out but why isn't portland you know like there's so many there's so many things that can take you away from it and it's almost good that it takes you away from it i'm not a big reflect guy like sure i'll do the beacon on saturday and i'll be like yeah cool but this youtube short bomb yeah yeah or it's like okay cool but what's the next show so like city how's that selling i don't i don't my mom asked me if i ever am enjoying anything that i'm doing because I've done a lot of really cool shit.
1:27:34And she goes, do you enjoy this? And I go, I enjoy it months later. I go like, I shot my special in Austin and I did three shows at the Paramount and I was like, unreal, so happy with it. And then like, there's a photo in my kitchen of the last night in the Paramount. And like, I walked past it every day. And then like a couple months later, I looked at it, I was like, holy shit, man. I can't believe it. I did that. But for me, I can't in the moment feel it. I walk into it. I'll walk into the beacon on Saturday. I'll look at it. I say, ah, this is fucking beautiful. Now it's time to worry about my set.
1:28:07You know, it won't be until months later that I'm just sitting there like, dude, the beacon. I fucking did that. Yeah. But I, and I don't know what that is because I'm just always worried about the future. So being in these golden years thing, it's like, dude, I mean, listen, I'll probably be 62 performing at a loony bin in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Be like, you're working for chicken tenders and a shot of Jack Daniels. like I did the beacon back in the day. I'll be thinking about how good it currently is right now, but I don't realize it right now. I am doing it right now. And I'm, I feel like I'm not, I feel like I'm still like, does anybody care?
1:28:46Should I go to an open mic? Should I delete my account? Now this is being dramatic, but I feel like I'm in the golden years, but I don't feel like I'm in the golden years until five years down the road. I'll be like, dude, that was incredible. I was, I was doing, everything I wanted. I have employees. I have a house. I'm doing everything that I need. But I'm not like appreciating it because I'm always just head down. What's next? What's next? What's next? In other news, if you're feeling tired, you might not need more sleep. You might not need more caffeine. You might just be dehydrated. And proper hydration is not just about drinking enough water.
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1:30:19i usually care about the box more than that drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom there's this idea called deferred happiness syndrome the common feeling that your life has not begun that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idyllic future this idyll is a mirage that'll fade as you approach revealing that the prelude you rushed through was in fact the one to your death i think this is so fucking common i think that people have this next thing like they're sort of peering over the shoulder of the present moment to see what's coming you know when i feel this the most is when i go to the mothership and this is not an insult to any of the comedians at the mothership but there's always this sense of like oh yeah i know that like such and such is on now but who's up next but who's up next but who's up and before i know it i've but who's up next did my way through the whole fucking show and i'm like oh i'm done we're outside again like and i just like peered over the fucking shoulder of the present moment waiting for that i also think that's what has made dating so hard because you're like yeah i'm dating this person right now, but with social media and you see your whole Instagram, I mean, my Instagram, I don't know about yours.
1:31:26It's just like, there's hot women everywhere and there's just temptations everywhere. You're like, yeah, this girl's awesome. I love this woman. But you're also like, and then you're like, what are these voices coming in? So I feel that, and also people, even before they start dating somebody where they're swiping and they match with somebody, they're like, nah, it's cool. What else is out there? What else is out there? I don't know. Options are difficult, man. And, you know, there's this cool idea called The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. Did this TED Talk. I remember when I first, I remember where I was when I was listening to this, like, over 10 years ago, driving through Newcastle.
1:31:58It basically says - The beer? Barry Schwartz? Paradox of Choice? Yeah, that's where I'm from. The beer? Yeah, Newcastle Brown Ale. Sorry. Have you drank it? Yeah. It's good. Sorry, I was getting - Not at all. Have you ever played Newcastle? Have you done anything in the UK? No, I haven't. I want to. Bro. I need to. They'd like you. I would. No, I know I would do. I would. I really want to. You must be lining that up. You must be lining up. Yeah. We're working on London. I've done Australia, which is where I thought everybody was here from this morning. But no. Sorry. That was a bad intro to everyone.
1:32:32It's like, you're Australian and you're Australian and you're New Zealand. Well, everybody in LA has a cool accent. I'm like, nobody from LA is from LA. Like everybody you meet here and every bigger production you go to in LA for a shoot or something, there's always like one token Australian. and you're like, God, I need an Australian around me. You remember where you're - Where I was, where I was listening to this. 50 years ago, if you went into the jeans store to try and buy a pair of jeans, there would be one type of jean and there may be in different waist sizes, but you walk out and maybe they're not perfect for you, but you don't feel much regret about your purchase because there were no other options.
1:33:07Fast forward 50 years to now and you want boot cut or skinny, ripped, stretched, bleached. Do you want them to be cropped? Do you want them to be low rise, high rise? Do you want them to be looser baggy? if you don't choose the precise perfect pair of jeans, it's your fault. Previously, it was because reality constrained your options. Now it's because your ability to choose appropriately was wrong. So you get much more buyer's remorse when there's loads of options than when there's none. And this like analysis paralysis thing is why you don't make anything and you're always dissatisfied. And it's the same thing with partners.
1:33:40Absolutely. Well, it's the same thing with like, there's so much fashion, there's so much fast trends. It's like, I'm always fascinated at how, how I edit is how based on people scroll. Like I study how people scroll at airports, at restaurants, people scroll, no headphones on. And they're like, boom, boom, boom. So for me, I go, how can I catch their attention when it's usually a video where I'm talking? So it's like, I need subtitles. I need to catch their attention because they're going boom, boom, scroll, scroll. what am I going to do in that 0.5 seconds that's going to catch their attention because that's just the world we're living in everything is just like next next next next next next how can I in a next next next world be like and stop and there's so many options and it's it's it's to your point it's like that's why I haven't made a tv show I go I have this idea and they go well I'll set you up with it and then we'll do this and then and then I'm like there's too many options if I want to make a sketch right now.
1:34:39I call one guy, he shoots it, he edits it, it's out. So that's the, that's the, the gene. The stakes are low as well. The stakes are a little bit low. It's like, if I try and do this TV show and it flops, well, that is my shot as opposed to knowing, well, I do the video this week and it doesn't work. And then I do another one next week and maybe it redeems me. Like, ah, when the stakes are a little bit lower, it's easier. But that's again, that's the same advantage that you have at the start of your journey. No one's scrutinizing you. no one's like trevor wallace fall off when no one no one knew who he was yeah yeah i think about uh that habituation thing sort of the balance between wow this thing's really big and impressive and i want to enjoy it at the time but the more that i enjoy it at least in in my experience the more it causes me to get a little bit more sort of nervy and in my own head about what's going on and that's not very good for performance so correct the worst play cool whilst also trying to appreciate what's going on whilst also not looking over the shoulder of the present moment whilst also not yeah doing it so much that you're like oh my god it's such a big deal this is the beacon i'm gonna fuck up well yeah i when i did the the chicago theater that was probably one of the the biggest venues i've ever done and i remember there was a moment where I walk out on stage and it's a long walk from the side stage to the center stage.
1:36:05It's this loud ass cheer. And I'm like, dude, I got to get to the mic and tell a joke before I start overanalyzing. Like, holy shit. This is good for me. The second I tell the joke, I'm like locked in. I always to this day. And this was just a, something I learned from open mics and just myself is like, I feel like I always have to get a joke out as quick as possible. So the audience it's going to be like, oh, we trust this guy. Whether his next five jokes are shit at one, he got our trust right off the bat. So I come out with something quick. Like a good first impression, so to speak. First impression, right?
1:36:36The second you work on stage, based on what you're wearing, how you look, they're judging everything. So if your first joke is funny, they go, okay, we like this guy. That's something I learned from just starting out and doing open mics and doing random showcases inside of a Marie Callender's, which is a pie shop here in America. So I would always try to find a joke as fast as possible. Um, and I still do that to this day. Granted, a lot of these people follow me online and love me, but I'm still like, you guys invested your time, money, this, I you're getting funny out the gate. I'm not here to lollygag, but when I, I'm walking out there and I see how big this is, I see people cheering.
1:37:11I go, dude, I got to get to that mic so I can lock in. Cause if I'm out here any longer, well, the same thing for the special, I'm just standing there, like taking it all in. I'm like, Nope, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking I'm not doing my set and I'm like, I'm like, Oh, there's people, holy shit. There's people up there. Like people like, how are my jokes going to exceed their expectations or standing up? And they're so excited. I'm like, these aren't thoughts I have on the regular. So I'm like, once I just get in and do what I feel like I was meant to do, that's when the show is great.
1:37:40But every once in a while, I'll take a moment in a big crowd and be like, dude, this is a lot of people. I won't say that, but mentally, this is a lot of people like, shut up, get back to the set. Cause I'm not, I'm not thinking about the foot. I'm like off somewhere. Isn't that strange though the whole reason that you do this well you do it for you do it to feel proud of your performance and you do it to make people laugh and you do it to make money like largely you're doing it for the experience of having done it like the reason that we do things that we enjoy is to experience doing things that we enjoy and if the only way that you can perform is to almost fucking disembody yourself yeah uh you and it's this weird it doesn't surprise me that you go i enjoy the things that i do i just enjoy them three months later um and i saw this I was yesterday on the plane watching a cut of the vlog from New York and Toronto, which was last weekend.
1:38:27I'm like, holy fuck. Yeah, yeah. That thing happened. And that thing happened. I'm like, hang on. Where was I when that thing was happening to me? Like, where was I in my mind? You're there, but you're not there mentally. You're somewhere else. Yeah, that was a good point. When I did my first tour, the videographer was, I was like, oh, this vlog didn't do very good numbers. he's like that's not what this is for he's like this vlog is so you can watch it back years later and be like dude how cool is that that i got to tour the u.s with my best friend at the time we're still best friend but we toured together and it's like how sick is that that you got to do this and like to your point i'm there i'm not thinking about the vlog and how cool is using i'm thinking about the show i'm thinking about what's next and what i got going on but then when you watch it back i almost get this like third person i watch it back i'm like dude this guy's life is so cool but i'm like i'm the guy that was me but i don't feel like it's almost yeah i really think there's something deep here dude i really really do um that morgan house little article i was talking about where he says nobody ever believes that they're living through golden years he's just this great example of him and his wife uh living in new york and he's they've got kids now and he's got the psychology of money which is sold a gazillion copies been on the new york Times bestseller chart for like four years straight or something.
1:39:49He was talking to his wife and he was saying, do you remember when we used to live in New York and we didn't have any kids and we'd lie in on a Saturday morning and we'd get to go and have coffee and we could have this wonderful time. Do you remember how amazing it was? Do you remember how free we were? And his wife turns to him and goes, what are you talking about? You were miserable. Like you had no idea whether you were going to hold your job down. You were scared about the future. We thought we were going to get kicked out of the house. And what he realizes is in retrospect, he could see that his fears were a waste of time and that the successes that he was hoping would come to pass would come to pass.
1:40:26But at the time, all of his fears were really real. Like I'm going to miss the first joke or people are going to laugh at me or stuff's not going to go well. And none of your successes are promised. So you end up with this weird world where in retrospect, you know that you had nothing to worry about. So you can almost enjoy stuff more. And I guess this is kind of a curse of somebody that isn't obsessive with high standards that's trying to achieve, because the reason that you are getting the outcomes you want is because of your obsession, your attention to detail, your vigilance of, oh, that might, that could be a little bit better.
1:41:00If only I refined it this tiny little bit more. Okay. Well, do you want to do that? And also at the same time be like i'm just present man i'm free flowing i'm like here those two things don't comport very well no and they feel like they would hate each other a guy who's compulsive and obsessive over an edit sees a guy at a coffee shop who's like it'll all work out man if people yeah those two guys would never hang out they would meet each other at a party and be like that guy's an idiot that guy's an idiot so it almost feels weird to let myself know like Like, hey, I've been doing this independently for seven years.
1:41:36Yet every day I go, how am I going to make this happen? I go, well, I have a track record of seven years. But I'm like, yeah, but how am I going to, in a week, in a month, in a year. But like, so to his point, if I put myself five years behind when I'm only two years and I go, ah, dude, how am I going to make this work another five years? you just you kind of just do but you're you're you're subconsciously trusting yourself while stressing yourself because you're stressing yourself to the next level you're like i gotta get i gotta get i gotta get true but but it's not like there's no like bumpers like in bowling where it's like course correcting you're like i'm just i gotta i gotta and you're just you're like stressing yourself forward in this weird way where you're like i trust myself because i'm not looking up job applications.
1:42:23I'm not, I'm not putting the fries in the bag. I'm not doing that. I'm trusting myself. I know that myself, I know what I'm doing is successful and funny, yet there's still doubt. What is, why? I've, I've done everything online that I've ever dreamed of times a thousand. You know, I remember I have a photo of a goal list from 2017 that I like to look at every once in a while. It was when I saw my day job, but I had just quit. I think I just quit my day job in that year. And one of my goals on there was like, get a million views on a video. And now I was talking to my girlfriend last night about something that stressed me.
1:43:02I'm like, if a video on Instagram doesn't do a million views, I'm like sad. I'm like depressed about it. But I'm like, that once was my goal for the entire year. One video hit a million views. And I wanted like a million views on like Facebook. I don't even, this was pre TikTok. This was like pre-instagram so it's interesting to see i lost my train of thought interesting to take a sip interesting to see that i'm looking here i've got like a yearly goals library yeah that's what you've prompted me to go and look at here uh i think me and dean put some together certainly in 2018, which was hit 20 ,000 subscribers.
1:43:43And the problem that you have and the problem that everybody has, so habituation, right, which is you get a new car and then you get used to it. And the first day that you get your Cybertruck, it's amazing. And after that, you kind of, the hedonic adaptation sets in. But the same thing happens for goals and the same thing happens for what you want to achieve. So the first time that you played a headline show, just straight up headline show not just spots been like holy fuck 200 people and it's just me and now you're looking over the shoulder of the fucking beacon and going yeah i know but what about chicago what about milwaukee what about the whatever whatever so there's this line for every level there's a devil and as you keep on getting better at the thing the level of resolution that you look at it with becomes more refined you know you go from like 360p to 1080 to 4k to 8k you're like looking zooming in zooming in zooming in zooming in and that makes the job harder but that's why you get better that's why the people that are the absolute top are the best because they've continued to zoom in and zoom in and zoom in a lot and i i don't know i think i'm sorry zoom in on what the level of like resolution that they look at their craft with you know for you to deliver a joke that got this size of a laugh five years time you're like yeah but i could have just like clipped the end of that word just a tiny little bit better my pacing could have been a little bit more i know that my hands weren't perfect.
1:45:05I know that my body language wasn't perfect. I could have held eye contact on the first person just a second longer. I could have smiled a little bit more, whatever, however you refine your art form to like really dial it in. But when you're first starting, you're like, make words come out of mouth, like publish blog posts online, draw illustrations. Get a laugh. Say my name. Exactly. So as you get better at something, you get better at something and you start to try and do the thing with like an ever increasing skill set, right? Like you're more refined with what it is that you do. And the problem with that is that as you get, as you get better, your standards increase and that you're never done.
1:45:44Like there's no point at which you'll feel like you've arrived. And I think this is a question that I'm playing with myself, which is like, am I going to regret that in retrospect? Like, am I going to look back on a career where I was always looking over the shoulder of the present moment for the next thing I was going to do? Or is that the game in order to be able to come high, like to perform at the level that you want to? I've kind of got this, I've kind of got this working theory that you, you probably can let go of 5 % of the neuroses to gain probably 50 % of the presence and the enjoyment.
1:46:23And yeah, maybe it'll sacrifice a tiny little bit of performance. You'll like, let a couple of things slide you'll make a couple of errors but it might be worth you know another half of oh this is really fucking cool and i am here and my mind is where my feet are as opposed to being like must get on stage must say joke must yeah yeah yeah i don't know balancing those two things enjoyment in the moment and high standards are they're a really really tough thing to do one thing i'm really trying to get over and and i love your opinion on this is like if I have a video that I really love making and I'm having fun making it, I'm having fun editing and I'm so excited.
1:47:02And then I post, my excitement is only as high as the video does after that. At one point, I loved making that video. I loved writing it. I love shooting it. I love editing it. And then I post. And if it does bad, I go, wow, that excitement's now gone. what is that is that just the same as like if i tell a joke that i really thought was funny the crowd doesn't laugh but it's different for me because if if a crowd doesn't laugh at a joke i go okay cool i have a thousand other i can now go to or i know i right now now okay that's not funny but i have another attempt at it in this next set but when it comes to a video it's like all this happiness i once had for it if it does great and it's like let's say that cybertruck video for example i had the idea i got super excited for it i moved straight on my schedule i go we have to shoot this i'm obsessed about it we shoot it it does great i go fuck yeah that's a perfect storm but there's also times where i have the same energy and i post and it goes and i go what the fuck yeah what why why can i not still have the excitement that i once had with it because it didn't do what i thought it was capable of yeah i think in a perfect world it would be lovely to say I can just do it for the art form man I know what is artistically honest and I know what's funny better than the audience knows what's funny I don't think you do I think if you're trying to do something that makes other people laugh and that doesn't happen this is one of the problems with doing the video thing online I think at least part of it is the why question it's like was it because of the edit was it because of the script was it because of the acting was it because of the joke?
1:48:46Was it the premise? Was it the timing? Maybe it's because the Blue Jays lost. Was it like, you know, what was the contributing factor and you're going to drive yourself crazy as opposed to really on stage, the reasons that something doesn't work are pretty constrained. It's like, wasn't funny enough. Timing wasn't right. Body language wasn't right. So you only have a few number of variables. So I think there's going to be less reflection on that. But another part of it, like generally is just humans are social animals and you don't want to do something that other people don't respect or feel is good.
1:49:19Like this is why talking of Tucker Carlson, uh, I thought it was kind of a meme that he doesn't check. He doesn't read the internet. Like he literally doesn't have access to his own YouTube channel. He doesn't have access to his own Instagram, doesn't read anything at all. And all he does is live on this fucking hundred acre plot of land in Portland, Maine, like the middle of fucking nowhere. And does his thing turns up. He has the talent that he has he does his thing and then he fucks off and like that's the only way really without the feedback mechanism that you can't second guess yourself that's also what i was thinking and it's like i'm at this point where i still post all my videos on instagram and tiktok it's still me other apps it's like other people running it but like for whatever reason i still care so much about how a video looks on instagram and tiktok but i'm so in the weeds i'm so in it that like I post it and then I refresh 15 minutes later.
1:50:13And it's like, that's not the mind of like a successful CEO. It's, you know, it's like you kind of do like a month report or something. And I'm like, okay, maybe it finally is time that I get somebody who uploads for me. So I can do that. So I can be like. A bit of distance. Yeah, just some distance. And if I do look at a video, I look at it a week later instead of day of. And I'm like, my thoughts are, my feeling towards the video are like live. you know it's like i post something this morning and i go well how's my day gonna be you know instead it's like completely determined by how this video performs which is so stupid it went well i'm good it went badly i'm a piece of shit i mean dude it's it's um michael blauson who i do a podcast with love the guy we have the same brain where it's like i can tell when a video is doing well for him he can tell when he's doing well for me because it's like you got a little pep in your said what's going on i'm like dude 13 million on this stand-up clip and it's it's just i hate that it is the nature of our game but it's like to your point we all love to feel like we did something good the same way that if i turn a blind eye to my instagram page and i'm not posting anymore i would still want the social media guy to be like dude this hit 10 million and i'm like fuck yeah that's awesome now that shouldn't make my day any better or worse it should be like cool note it down but it's not like i should start skipping around town and everybody gets a raise and i mean sure maybe but like it should like how much social numbers affect my day is just stupid i'm like you know it's i know social media is getting to me when i walk outside and i go wow the birds are lovely today i'm like dude you're losing it they've always been there touch grass buddy because you hit 40 million today yeah that did pretty well yeah um it was a 5.6 million on a stand-up club we'll take it base good base hit but um for me it's like i want to just be a little more disconnected in that tucker carlson world but then there's that voice in my head that fights for it that goes yeah but being online is good because now you know what the trends are now you know what to make the videos on this this is the um kind of the vicious game of social media that there are diamonds in the rough.
1:52:26True. Right. You scroll online for long enough and you will come across something every so often. You're like, yeah, there's my inspo. Do you know the idea of a signal versus noise? You familiar with this? No, I like this though. So imagine that you were a trader and you were trading a particular stock and you were to check the price of this stock every single day. There would be loads of intraday movement, right? It would be up and down. Or you check it every 30 minutes. And then in another version, you check it every day. and then in another version, you check it every month and then another, you check it every year.
1:52:59Across a year, there is loads of noise, but what you're actually getting is signal, right? Something which is reliable to the trajectory of this thing over time. If you check it every half an hour, it's almost all noise. It doesn't contribute to, you even said it yourself that sometimes video might launch slow and go pick up after five days or whatever. And you're like, huh, that came into line quite nicely. because you've prioritized noise over signal. And the only way that you can really sort of select out noise and select for signal is to reduce how frequently you check and to like do it at bigger chunks of time.
1:53:37Certainly I know for me, when we started having somebody else post on my behalf, unless I'm like, it's 10 a.m. Central time, I should, a video has gone up 30 minutes ago. I don't know that it's gone. And another thing that's been really good is, and this is from my housemate George, he always has a couple of things in the tank and he publishes something that he wrote a few weeks ago. So, you know, let's say that you start off writing, but before you begin, you have four videos, articles, illustrations or whatever. And then number one goes out on week number like four. And then number two goes out on week number five yeah like you're always moving like this that distance i think between creation and publish gives you a little bit more like huh well it's great because you're also not creating based on last video's performance if a video bombed now you're stressed you're like i need a hit and now you're writing under the pretense of i need a hit and i swear the internet knows when a video is forced if we do this force the internet's like no no hey this is desperate energy yeah this is a fun zone buddy the videos that always do the best to me are like the ones that i like had the most fun creating so when you distance yourself one to four like you just said now that gives you some space to be like hey i made this when i wasn't even thinking about these other videos so true i gotta yeah i'm about like like two i'm like a week out every week but maybe that's not enough time certainly with this if you did that if you did the little bit more inventory buffer plus somebody else posted on your behalf, I think like, okay, we're starting to create a little bit of distance, right?
1:55:18To get away from the noise and to get into the signal. Yeah, I like that a lot. I've never seen it so clear, getting a signal. I've never seen it so clear, but I also don't know any CEO who is standing over the shoulder looking at their Squarespace or their Shopify every 30 minutes like, what's it selling? What's it selling? What's it selling? It's like, they come in the morning, how'd we do? Good, bad. Okay, they're not refreshing. forget like i i totally get it and i think you're right but i wouldn't be too hard on yourself because two things first off this is the training mode that got you to where you are it's the same founder mentality like startup demon mode degen fucking thing that everybody who rips a project off a launch pad has it's like i did everything i like came up with the ideas and i worked out like what what's my handle going to be on social media and like do i use fucking after effects or do i need to use premiere pro or like is capco any goods i don't know and how do i fuck i exported it in the wrong like it's 25 frames per second or 24 30 looks weird like you know all of these things so now you uh you know getting from 97 to 98 are the inheritor of the guy that got from 0 to 1 and then got from like 10 to 20 and 20 to 30 and you're like okay all of that stuff was good for then but the tools that got you here don't always get you there they don't always get you to the next thing it's like um like let's say you've got a big journey to do and part of the journey involves you getting across a river you know okay i've got this boat i'm like fucking rowing across this river and now you're on land and you realize that you're still carrying a fucking boat you're like that was a tool for that i needed for then i like that i think i need it now um but it's hard to let go of because you're like i know this works i might need this later on or you almost have like a self-esteem or like a pride you're like yeah but i've always been that i've always been but there's certain things that i can leave behind it doesn't mean that i don't know how to use it anymore i mean the posting for instance is a really good one yeah because it's such a low skill level thing and presuming that you like trust somebody to be the poster you're like i can probably get someone else to press the button for me yeah you can probably get i remember when we first started using a company to do our instagram clips and it was like we would get them to do it and send it to us for us to post and then you're like involving yourself unnecessarily in the process of doing the thing yeah but this is i have this idea called the lonely chapter which is like as you move through any stages of development, it's hard to resonate with an old set of friends and you're worried about whether or not you're doing the right thing.
1:57:57And each different hurdle that you get over is part of the selection mechanism of why people don't change. It's the same as why people don't delegate responsibility. They're terrified. They're like, oh, fuck. If I don't do this thing, what if it goes wrong? What if something, I don't know. I've got scarcity mindset. I'm concerned about the future. like, ah. Yeah. Well, it's, I've had this trait before where I've hired somebody and then I go, you know, I'll just do it myself. And it's like those, let's call it three employees who give me that made it that much harder for me to find that person.
1:58:28But then I, uh, I had a guy work for me before his name was Zach. And he was like the best employee who came in and absolutely crushed. I go, dude, you changed my whole perspective of what adding somebody to the team can be. I had previous examples where I found like, ah, I wish there was difference here. Or like, maybe you are, you kind of knew something better about that. But like, I was skeptical about hiring certain positions. I was skeptical about hiring like a everyday producer. And then I hired this person. I was like, oh, this is what somebody who is good at this job looks like. It freed up so much.
1:59:01It was, it allowed me to, uh, you know, double my production and make it look that much better and really up the value of it. but I was so scared for so long because I was like, yeah, but this person kind of sucked or that person kind of sucked or freelancing with this guy sucked. So sure. But, but it's that same default of, of going to the negative versus the positive. Well, I could hire, sorry, what was it? No, I, uh, somebody asked the exact same question at the live show last week, which was like, I work 70, can I say 70 or 80 hours a week? That dude in Toronto. So I worked 70 or 80 hours a week at this startup.
1:59:37and I'm terrified of relinquishing any control at all. And I need to make my first hire. And I was like, one good bit of advice is try and have that first hire be someone that goes well. Because if it goes badly, you learn the lesson that you learned, which is like, I can't trust people. And all that an employee is, is an unreliable GPT that I need to peer over the shoulder of and triple check their work. And it just makes me even more vigilant. I'm just vigilant on behalf of somebody else as opposed to myself wow that's great i think this is honestly dude despite the fact that you're playing it you know such a huge level on social media i really think this is just par for the course of like anybody in a startup that's trying to build a business and they're like that's also it it's like at one point i was only myself doing this and now it's like i'm running this you know out.
2:00:57company that produces Or a 7-Eleven. 7-Eleven, yes. Yeah. I think I have that fear. It's like, I have a fear that I'm going to hire somebody and maybe hire them too quick. And I go, ah, you don't know what you're doing with my Instagram. Ah, you're fucking it up. You're making it worse. Nobody knows what they're doing with my Instagram. Really? No, that's the lesson that you would take. You're like, you hire a person. First person doesn't go well. It's like your first relationship, they end up cheating on you. You're like, everybody's a cheater. It's like, you chose a cheater. Or maybe it was you.
2:01:25Maybe you're the problem. but yeah uh Trevor Wallace ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for having I learned so much I've been a fan for so long I didn't even know that you followed me and then I saw they and I was like dude this has been happening for years oh come on it was once you'd be on me once but um honored to be on here uh yeah follow that Huberman live shows where should people go Trevorwalls.com I'm touring the whole United States I think I have like 30 shows left on this tour then we're filming a special in march in phoenix arizona tickets going to be announced very soon um when does this come out a couple of weeks all right well maybe it's on sale trevor wallace.com thank you for having me chris and uh make sure to drink element and new tonic is that how you say it yep thank you free ad reads new tropic yeah sure is there kratom in this yes thank you for having me chris
From the publisher
Trevor Wallace is a comedian, writer, and content creator.
What does going viral actually feel like? If you’re Trevor Wallace, it’s just another week. From Celsius kids to Zyn bros, Cybertrucks to Monster Energy and "Kyle's", Trevor turns internet chaos into comedy gold. So what’s the method behind his madness, and how does he keep winning the internet
Expect to learn why Autism is the new stolen valour, Trevor’s thoughts on the new Charlie Sheen documentary, how Trevor gets ideas to create his content, Trevor’s thoughts on Celcius, ZYN culture, and Cybertrucks, how it feels to go viral on the internet, why dating is so hard now, why most of your fears are a waster of time and much more...
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