#397: Don't Wait - For An Opportunity. Make One..

Getting booked can be harder than writing jokes and sometimes the most frustrating part is knowing your material works while the calendar stays empty. I’m honest about where I’m at right now: I haven’t posted as much because I’ve had fewer updates, and the real issue is simple, I haven’t forced enough opportunities. So I’m going back to basics and walking into open mics and local comedy clubs to remind people what I do and to get that stage-time hunger fed.

We also get real about stand-up comedy pay rates and why so many offers feel upside down. If someone wants a high-level comedian but only wants to pay entry-level money, the math doesn’t work, especially once you factor in driving, hotels, flights, and food. I share how I explain pricing up front without bitterness, and why protecting your rate is not ego, it’s protecting the whole game from becoming “Mercedes results on a Honda budget.”

Then we dig into the mindset that keeps me moving: forcing opportunities is a win-win. If you don’t ask, you already have a no. If you ask and they say no, nothing changes. If you ask and they say yes, everything changes. I connect that idea to comedy, dating, sports, and self-promotion, and I explain my approach to joke writing right now: one-liners, short stories, fast tempo, and zero wasted words to match today’s attention economy.

If you’re building a career in stand-up, creativity, or any craft that needs reps, come hang with me for a shot of urgency and strategy. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a push, and leave a review, what’s one opportunity you’re going to force this week?

Transcript

Booking Drought And Open Mic Plan

What Professional Comedy Actually Costs

Force Opportunities With A Win Win Mindset

Hitting Local Clubs To Get Seen

One Liners And The Attention Economy

Practice Everywhere But Need The Stage

Jiu Jitsu Morning And Closing Push

SPEAKER_00 0:08

You know, I haven't been doing this podcast as much, unfortunately, because I have had a lot less updates and progress into things that I'm pursuing. So everything that I do on this podcast, it's all about working my way to be a professional comedian. And a lot of that I give examples of lessons learned through jujitsu and life and stuff and this whole process and whatnot, right? And uh, you know, I feel like it's important. Like right now, I just can't get booked for anything, which like is driving me crazy. So I'm just gonna go, I'm gonna do something I haven't done in so long, which is just go to an open mic and just tear it up and then just walk away. Because I know my material already works. I'm just not getting booked because um basically people people want like a Mercedes, but they want to pay for a Honda. Meaning people want a comedian to do me as like a comedian to do a show, but they don't want to pay me. Or they do want to pay me, but they want to pay me at like a rate that as a working professional you know is way too low. And if you start accepting that low bit of money, you could say, Yeah, well, you're leaving money on the table. That's true, but it's also the juice isn't worth this worth the squeeze. So, for example, would you drive two hours in one direction for a hundred dollars? Not at all. That's like, I mean, and not even that. A lot of times in comedy, uh typically speaking, you get paid like$500 for every 15-minute block, right? So if you were to do an hour, you usually get about two grand, right? However, most comedians uh only do about 45 minutes, which to me I think is crazy because I just try to have a higher bar uh to rise above everyone else, right? Um, but also because a show is usually one hour long. So five minutes goes the host, 10 minutes goes to the feature. That kind of like warms up the crowd. Uh that five and ten, that's 15, they split that first 500, and the rest of the five, uh, the rest of the 1500 from that 2000 goes to the comic. Or it could just be 2000 for those 45 minutes altogether. All right. But anyway, point is whenever somebody wants to book me, they don't know the cost. And I let them know that up front. Uh, you know, that you're not expected to know the cost, but I should be able to educate you and tell you why. And that reason that I'm explaining right now, as far as like how much to pay a comic and stuff like that, um is um pretty much the standard rate. Again, once you are a working professional, I'm not even including like traveling. If you're traveling, they gotta pay even more, they gotta pay your per diem, they gotta pay for your flights. I mean, if I'm paid$2,000 to go to Atlanta, hypothetically, hypothetically. All right,$500 spent on a uh damn hotel,$500 spent on plane tickets,$100 in food. That's like saying, would you go to Atlanta for$900? Maybe. But I I I mean, my point is is that it's not supposed to go into your stage time budget. It's supposed to be added. Without digressing too much, um, I'm I'm kind of getting like I don't want to say frustrated, but like, you know that thirst, you know that feeling of like thirst when you want some water? That's not frustration, that's not anger, it's not irritation. Hungry, I guess that's a different word for it, but not for an actual physical food. Like I'm hungry to get on stage, you know what I mean? Um, and I have a thirst for that, so to speak, and an appetite, again, with this analogy, uh, to go on stage, but I'm just not getting booked. So I just gotta force uh some opportunities. And I think that's what what I'm trying to build into with this podcast right now is how if I'm a big, big believer and I always had to be more proactive and reactive to be more successful as a comedian. Um, but instead of waiting, which you should never do, for opportunities to come to you, you have to be proactive and force opportunities. If you want to be successful in life and anything you're doing, don't let that girl come to you, go to her. Okay? Don't don't expect that um uh a set of dumbbells and a barbell and some weights are just gonna be thrown into your lap and hands, right? Go to a gym, right? Forcing opportunities and forcing situations to occur will increase your not just your production, but your likelihood to succeed by infinity. You cannot, I mean, I I've always said before that if you know I believe in win-win scenarios. And now listen carefully what I'm saying. A win-win scenario, meaning, all right, if you let's just use a girl, a girl talking to a hot girl as an example. If you were to not talk to a hot girl, your likelihood of being with her is already a a negative, it's a zero, it's not gonna happen, okay. Now let's leave the realm of possibility that for some reason she comes to you. This is just your control as far as your control goes. If you don't ask, okay, you already have a no. So if you ask a girl out who's really attractive, which is what I always did, right? Uh, beyond attractive, okay, she could actually be uh excited that she's so hot and you're you she may be way out of your league, that that's brave of you or something like that, right? But my point is by you saying nothing to her, that's already a no. But by you going up and talking to this girl, okay, you've increased your percentage from zero to 50 just by talking to her. And guess what? If she's not interested, nothing changed. There's no difference between you talking to a girl and her saying no, and you not talking to her and her saying no. The only thing you could change is her is for her to say yes. So by initiating your own opportunity, by forcing that circumstance, okay, to talk to her, you only have a positive outcome. It's a win-win situation. If you say nothing, it's a no. If you say something to her and she says no, you're your your circumstance didn't change. So the way I look at things is I don't have a 50% chance. I have a 100% chance of winning, of always being right. And I think if you I think if you have that outlook, not just on life, but a lot of things, like sports, you know, uh shots on basket, you know, you're more likely to get points in your sport or whatever if you take more shots on on goal, on basket, whatever it is, right? It's no different. You know, you got to shoot your shot and you got to do it as much as possible, right? And like a machine gun, shotgun, just all over the place. Constantly, constantly, because you're the only one in life that is gonna speak up for yourself. It's gonna advertise for yourself, it's gonna market for yourself, it's gonna say why you should get the job more than somebody else. And it's not desperation, okay? It's force. You're forcing the opportunity through your own reactions, through your own will, right? So that's part of what isn't happening right now. I'm not forcing enough opportunities, and I know that's definitely one of my uh probably number one area that I always have to work on is just forcing um opportunities for things to happen. And uh, I'm not making excuses, but I'm telling you, that's the reason why I haven't had as many uh podcast uh episodes, and um, but that's a hundred percent my fault because I need to be forcing um forcing opportunities. So I'm gonna start out by just going to a couple clubs, comedy clubs that are local. One of them is more more uh local to me and close, the others are further away, and just doing some open mics and just showing them like, hey bro, did you forget? You know, I don't claim to be better than anybody else, but I am different than everyone else. And my philosophy when it comes to comedy is to be different, not just in uh, and this is just what I do not just be different in the material that I'm saying, but in the tempo. I want everything to be very fast, and I don't mean talking fast, I mean like and you know how I was saying there's a lot more juice. Uh uh, like imagine if you were squeezing a lemon, there's tons of juice. I only squeeze a little bit of that lemon for each joke. I leave tons of unexplored opportunity because, in my opinion, now comedy is to the point of where if you talk too much about one thing, all right, um, you can kind of lose the audience. Maybe, maybe not, right? But I am doing pretty much just one-liners. How many comedians can you think of? Just off the top of your head. Now ask yourself this how many can you think that do primarily one-liners? A lot less. So I do primarily one-liners, and then all of my uh stories, they're very similar to one-liners as well, because I only do like two to four sentences about one topic if it isn't a one-liner. Right? But they're they're very short and condensed, and and I just want I want the most amount of jokes I can possibly get, the most amount of laughs, I mean, right, in the least amount of time. And sometimes, in my opinion, when you have a story that's too long, it might be a really great hard punchline at the end, and you don't have to talk fast. But if you don't get to the point soon enough, especially in this Instagram universe, right, you can lose your crowd, lose your attention, and then you lost it. So I feel like keeping everybody's attention is my biggest goal at this point in comedy. And I have devised a system of where essentially I'm doing one-liners and um making my my stories a lot shorter, less details, right? I mean, think about like this. When was the last time you saw a film that was over 90 minutes? If something is over two hours, you feel like it feels like it's a loss, and that's crazy. Now, what about this? Two and a half hours, right? It just seems more and more unlikely. So now condense that exact thought that you're having, but as far as doing stand-up comedy, and that's what I have devised, and um it works a hundred percent. I was actually anywhere I go, I always I always say like the world is my stage, right? So everywhere I go, I'm always practicing. But now, like I'm practicing, meaning like I go to the the Dollar Tree, if I'm at the grocery store, I'm trying one-liners, I'm trying small bits, I'm absolutely everywhere. Um, and I'm always staying sharp and my technique tight. However, always rehearsing, always rehearsing, however, um, I need to get on stage because it it like it builds up everything, but there has to be a point to where I it builds up too. And right now it's like there's all this uh tension, not in like a bad way, like a good kind of attention, right? But um it needs to be released, it needs to, you know, uh hit that mark as far as what all my repetitions are going towards. So, anyway, that's where I'm at. That's what's going on, and I'm at jujitsu right now. It's Friday at 5 58 in the morning, and coach is about to open the door. So, y'all have a beautiful day. Thank you so much for your time listening. I'm gonna be forcing updates, forcing opportunities, and making things happen. This is Benjamin well done. Check it out and do it yourself too. I'm out. Peace.