Follow Your Nerdy Passion to the Final Frontier with Computer Resume Podcast - Interview 18

Welcome to Nerdpreneur where we have fun conversations with people making money with their nerdy passion. As always, I'm joined by my co host, Frank. Hello. And today we have a very special guest writer, comedian and host of the Computer Resume podcast, Todd A. Davis. Welcome to the Nerdpreneur. Oh, Frank, Chris, thank you so much for having me on. I'm actually really excited and I gotta admit, I'm a little nervous about coming on to talk about running a business because I'm terrible at it.

So everything I learned has been through trial and error, so. So Todd, what is your nerdy passion? Well, I'm nerdy about a lot of things, but if I had to narrow it down, you know, obviously I'm big On Star Trek, I'm really nerdy on stand up comedy. I'm also a big comic book guy, so I'm, you know, as I go, I'm, I'm finding that I'm nerdy about people's experiences if we're, if we're kind of diving deeper on those things.

Talking with as many people as I have through my, my, my podcast, computer resume podcast, one of the things that I get really nerdy about is how this fandom, how the Star Trek fandom has affected different people. I've had on artists, comedians, actors, writers, Lego builders, and everybody comes from a different background. So it's fun to see when they watch Wrath of Khan, how it affects them versus how it affects me versus how it affects somebody else.

In terms of stand up comedy, yeah, you go up there, you do your material. If it's well written, if it's well rehearsed, if it's well presented, you get a laugh. But a lot of people don't understand all the technical aspects of it. It's still viewed as, you go up on stage and you be funny. Gosh, if it was that easy, man, I'd be rolling in money right now. But, you know, with the, with the pandemic, and I saw this working. The mics. When the pandemic happened, all the mics shut down.

So veteran comics didn't have the place to go to work out their material. Not to mention, not only did the mic shut down, but all the shows shut down, all the venues shut down. Yeah. So after that first initial wave, when the mic started opening back up, people had been sitting at home watching Stand up on Netflix and thought, I can do that. So when they opened back up, there was a flood of new comics who thought, oh, my Netflix special is six months away.

A lot of them are not still doing stand up. But the folks that understand the, the give and take, the repeated rejection, the constant editing, constant rewriting, the constant performance tweaking, those folks who understand that are still doing it are still working and are well on their way. So hold on. Do you do comedic standup? Do you have a specific audience? That's Star Trek people, also known as Trekkies. Well, we're all about learning. Here is actually a derogatory term.

So it's actually Trekker. Yeah. Yeah. I had to learn this too. I had to learn this myself. I am, I am humbled. I consider myself very knowledgeable in all things Star Trek. And I did not know that Trekkies was derogatory and that it's Actually, Trekkers. I remember a long time ago, there was a documentary called Trekkers, and it's called Trekkies. It was done by. It was done by Denise Crosby, cast member from tng, and she even did a sequel.

I've heard rumors that there's a third one in the works, but, yeah, I got corrected very early on. Thank God, that Trekkies is technically derogatory. The preferred term is Trekkers. Is it derogatory because it's been used as, like, oh, those Trekkies. And, like, as an insult? Yes. Now, if you fire it off, you're not going to start a. You're not going to start a nerd slap fight or anything like that. But, yeah, technically the term is Trekkers.

So I'm curious about not to get off Star Trek, because I know how much we want to stay there. But listen, I can talk about a lot of different things at length, so I'm prepared to bounce around, fellas. Well, I'm curious, how long have you been doing standup? Because I'm more of a standup nerd, actually. Oh, that's great. I started standup, I want to say, around 2014, I think. Okay, so you weren't one of these Covid comedians who came out of there and said, I can do that. That's okay.

I'm going to be the next Dave Chappelle. But in fact, you've been doing this for a while. Like, I'm curious how long from a standup perspective till you feel like, okay, I'm good enough to go up and do, like, a 5 or a 10 or something like that? Well, I mean, I'll give you the rundown from the top. I was actually working on a comic book at the time. I enjoyed the art of standup. I really appreciated the artistry of it, but really didn't have much of a drive to pursue it myself.

I was working at a college at the time in security. I mentioned off mic that I have a law enforcement background, and that's a whole different other story. But wound up working at a college in Florida, and there was a young woman there that worked in financial aid. As I'm walking around, checking different departments, you know, meet everybody. Hey, how you doing? My name is Todd. Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And I see her drawing one day, I was like, oh, you're an artist? She said, yeah.

And I was like, are you? And I kind of threw up the nerd flag. I was like, nerd, one of us? And she's like, oh, yes. One of us. I was like, oh, okay, cool. And so we kind of connected. We became friends. And I saw her sketching a little dinosaur one day, and I was like, oh, that's a cute little dinosaur. She goes, yeah, it's kind of my signature little doodle character. And I was like, oh, that's cool. The only thing I can draw is a skeleton.

I grabbed a little scratch sheet of paper, I doodled this little skeleton in a top hat and with a cane and the whole thing. She was like, oh, that's really cute. You know, we should make the skeleton and the dinosaur do something together. Like, okay, your shift over. She was like, oh, you know, a few hours. I was like, okay, I'll see you around in a little bit.

I went back to my office, grabbed a couple more sheets of paper, and I wrote the first script for the first Adventures on Earth with Adam and Steve. It is basically Calvin and Hobbes with more Bible jokes. Basically, Adam, the first man, wakes up, realizes he's alive, is immediately eaten by a dinosaur. So now he's left as this walking, talking skeleton, and the dinosaur actually becomes kind of his best friend. But the dinosaur can only say the. Can only say one word and it's rawr.

And so they end up exploring this new place called Earth and this new thing called life. And just gave me a bunch of opportunities. My father was a Baptist minister. I have had some family members come out more recent years. So I had again, I enjoy comedy, so I was able to kind of mush it all into this one thing called the first Adventures on Earth with Adam and Steve. It was all very, you know, good natured fun, just kind of poke fun at everything. And everybody just kind of

look at life through fresh eyes. In fact, the freshest eyes, brand new eyes. The Garden of Eden is portrayed as a nightclub. Nice. Satan, the devil is portrayed as a used car salesman. God actually looks like the big Lebowski. He's got a T shirt on that says, I got this. Yeah, that's awesome. We have the first woman appear, Lilith. Lilith is actually the crazy ex girlfriend. And then Eve is a blonde who's looking at a rock and scrolling on a rock because she doesn't want to look or talk to Adam.

Has no interest in Adam at all until she meets the dinosaur. And the dinosaur is the cutest dog she's ever seen. So that's how he gets the name. I was just going to ask if Steve played that, like, dog at the park role. Very much how they got it.

Nice. Yeah, it was a Lot of fun. We actually ended up doing it on Facebook every two weeks for a year and at the end of it, we collected everything and then we did a couple of brand new things that hadn't been released and we took it to Kickstarter and we set a goal of 1000 bucks. He raised a little over 1300. Nice. I'm very old school, very analog. So I sat at home cold calling stores going, hey, my name is Todd Davis, I'm an independent writer. I've got this new comic book, I'd like

to get it into your store, fuck myself. Okay, thanks very much, have a good one. And then call the next place. You know, lather, rinse, blather, rinse, repeat. So it's which that actually came in handy getting into stand up comedy. So while we were working on Adam and Steve at the college. So you had some practice with rejection is what you're saying, because of the phone. I used to do direct sales phone calling over and over and over again.

So I understand the callous you can develop from calling many, many, many people on the side of your ear and getting

rejected to get in the door. Actually, before we move on to where the standup comes in, I wanted to ask about like when you did that calling over and over and over again, did you learn some strategies for cold calling that were, that were effective for people to actually, like, listen to you and then actually get through to, yeah, sure, bring it over, I'll take a X number of copies of your comic or something.

Yeah, because. And again, if I had it all to do over again today, I would take a different approach. But for something specifically like that, a mom and pop brick and mortar comic book store isn't just going to be like, okay, yeah, send us 20 copies. That's not going to happen. They're going to say, can you send us a sample or can you send us a copy? I had an artist to pay, so I was like, I can't really send you a copy. However, I do have JPEGs of three of the strips.

So I would send them, you know, hey, here's a couple strips, here's the COVID image. You know, me and my partner, it's, we got 44 pages full color. You know, it's priced what a 44 page color comic would be priced. We did our research on that end and we also knew that most comic stores are used to getting a certain percentage from the distributor. So we also knew that we had to match that as well. But I didn't account for was selling them in bundles of 20. Because they came from the printer

in bundles of 20. I was like, okay, yeah, this will be fine. Mom and pop brick and mortar store, they want to call, they want to call the shots in terms of how many they get, which is fine, but you have to be prepared for that. Of like, yes, we would like to bring your book. We want five copies. Okay, no problem. Yeah, 20 is a lot, especially for a no name, independent phone call deal. Yeah. And it's kind of like I tried to sweeten the pot a little bit of I'll deliver them myself.

I'll do a bunch of social media posts while I'm there in your store. I'll sign all the copies. So now you've got autographed copies to sell. You know, if you want to bump, you want to bump on the price, bump them up because they're autographed, go for it. But yeah, I think learning some of that stuff and to be, you know, to be honest, for comic book creators or I've seen that the same process works for independent third party TTRPG creators.

If you're writing an adventure, if you're writing a source book, the sales tactics are very similar. Now with everything that's happened recently with the OGL and everything that went down there, stores are actually, I think more inclined than ever to get on board with an independent creator. As long as that creator is willing to play ball with the store, same rules apply. I'm not going to buy a bundle of 20. I'll buy three, buy four, maybe five. If it works, we'll

call you and order more. And that's. You gotta, as a creator slash salesperson, you have to be okay with that. It's like, oh, we'd really like to get 20. They're going to hang up on you. So it's take what you can get and then you start got to hit the road. If you're doing it old school, you got to hit the road. If you're looking to get a hard copy into a store and you don't want to spend shipping, okay, well then it's you in a car with a box full of stuff in your trunk.

Like that's the name of the game. You got to pound pavement, as they say. Yeah, that's, you know, so the comic book TTRPG sales to the independent stores. If you're not doing the digital route, which don't get me wrong, the digital route is really the way to go. Sell PDFs of it, make money hand over fist, get yourself a ISBN and Sell it on Amazon and sit at home and collect money. But there's still that element of I want to see my name on the COVID of a book that's on the shelf of a store.

There's something about that probably good for social media too. Honestly. Very, very. Like, if you, if you put it up there, it gives you this level of credibility when you can get through the barrier of a store because it's all through distribution, distribution companies, and a lot of people believe that, like, well, that's for professionals. And it's like, I'm just this independent whatever.

But in actuality, you could probably get your way into a store if you do the right things and talk the right talk to be able to get past that. And then all of a sudden you've got yourself in amongst some of the best creators. It's going to only increase your authority, which is pretty cool. Yeah. And, you know, and there's nothing wrong with getting in with your local comic book store and saying, hey, would you be willing to partner with me and help get the word out? You know, I've got it.

You've got to take a percent off to get it in the store anyway. Hell, take a little bit more. If they agree to plug it in social media, I can almost guarantee you if you get with one of these stores that happens to be running a local convention in your area, their reach goes way beyond your social media more often than not, you know, and that way, selling your book to an individual is great. Selling a bundle of books to a retailer, even better, because they'll do the legwork for you.

And at that point they'll say, hey, we'd like to bring you in for a signing. Now you can negotiate an appearance fee. That's the fun part. And how many copies you're going to sell too, right? Or how many copies they want for the sale. So that's where they'll be like, oh, well, we do want 30 copies or 50 or whatever it's going to be for this special appearance. This is interesting from a perspective of kind of like how to get started and kind of hustle your way into the comic book market a bit.

Is that the only comic you've done? It sounds like this is one of a few things. Or have you done other writing too? It is the one that is finished, done and available for purchase if you can find them. We only got. We did a limited run. It was our first book, so it is out there in the world. It is not the only thing that I have written, but it is the largest success of something I've depended on. It is on the shelves, people. It's on the shelves.

If you can find it, then snatch it up because there's not many of them out there. All right, well, how did this tie into. Yeah, how did this tie into standup? Okay, so while I'm making Adam and Steve, I'm working at the college. I noticed that the English department is having a local comedian come in and give a couple of seminars to the kids. One about writing. It's a writing seminar. And after the writing seminar, they do. The local comedian ran a public speaking seminar as well.

So for the kids who attend the writing seminar and the public speaking seminar, they have the opportunity to, throughout the day, write their own material and then perform at the end of the night. So in the midst of writing Adam and Steve, I thought to myself, you know what? I have no experience in writing comedy, but I do love comedy. It would probably be really great for me to sit in on a seminar about comedic writing. So I go up to.

I go up to the English professor who's putting it on, and I say, hey, you know, I'm doing this thing with this comic book. I have no experience in comedic writing. I'd like to just sit in on comedic writing seminar, if that's cool. Yeah, and you can also do the public speaking one as well. I said, well, I have an acting background and stuff like that. I don't know that I'll use that. But you know what, to complete the experience. Yeah, I'll sit in on both.

Then the English professor said, oh, and you want to participate in the show afterwards, right? I was like, no, I really don't. And she said, oh, come on, it's going to be a lot of fun. I was like, I hear you. I understand what you're trying to say. I have no interest in doing that. Oh, come on. You're going to have a good time. It's going to be fun. Everybody's going to. It's going to be great. You'll have a fun time. Come on, let's do it. All right, fine.

The day comes, I go to the writing seminar, I jot a couple things down. Go to the public speaking seminar. Got a few more things down, and a few hours go by. And now it's time for the show, and it's all these kids, 17, 18, 19 year olds, and here, this cop in his early 30s. And the first person goes up, okay, I might be up next. Second person goes up, all right, I'm sure I'm up there somewhere. Third person, fourth person, fifth person, sixth person, they keep going.

Okay, folks, your final comedian for the night. I was like, am I headlining? What is going on here? It's like, okay, I've written a couple of jokes that I think are solid in terms of content, format, structure, the whole thing. And I have a decent stage presence. I think this might work. I go up on stage, I do my stuff. Seems like it's going well. It's kind of hard to judge that while you're trying to work, I do it. All right, thank you so much. My name is Tade Davis. Goodnight.

I turned to leave as the comedian who's been hosting the thing all day is coming back up on stage. He shakes my hand, leans in and says, don't run off. Okay. I stick around backstage. And they said, okay, now we're going to bring up your top comedians for the night and everybody's going to vote. And that's when it sunk in that this wasn't a show, it was a contest. I was like, oh, no. So he. I think he split the group in half. So it's me and like six or, you know,

five of these other kids. They're kids. And here I am, the guy that works in security. These kids, he does. The host holds his hand over the head. So it's vote with your applause. And I ended up winning. Winning the competition. I won jester of the semester as a volume. They brought me a ridiculous sized bouquet of flowers. I was like, you gotta be kidding. And I'll say this, I beat the girl in the wheelchair. Oh, no. Yeah.

I felt absolutely horrible because she, in my opinion, had the best joke of the night. But she rolled up in her wheelchair, took the mic, set the stand aside like you're supposed to do, and the first thing out of her mouth was, you'll forgive me if I don't get up. Hysterical. It folded, everybody. I was just like, that is so brilliant. Like. And she and I are Facebook friends to this day. She's very,

very nice, very sweet, very funny. Ended up giving her the bouquet and just, you know, I was just like, hey, look, you had the best joke of the night and the whole thing. So that's part one of this, of this story. Okay. Part of winning the contest was you also got five minutes at the local open mic. Typically, new comedians get three minutes at best. This is like extortion. I feel like they're extorting you into comedy as opposed

to actually getting you into comedy. It's like, if you win this, you have to go do this. So I was like, okay, I've got five minutes at this open mic. I know I'm smarter than the average bear. I'm going to go to a different local open Microsoft and practice one time before I cash in. Before I cash in my five minute set. Smart, right? Yeah. So I show up at this bar slash pool hall place and they've actually got a side room with a stage, bunch of tables and chairs and the whole thing.

I get there early, room starts filling up. Now the room is full. And I think one comedian went up and they said, okay, please welcome to the stage. We got some fresh blood in tonight. Please welcome to the stage, Mr. Todd A. Davis. Applause, applause. I walk up and I'm ready. I've got my opener. I've got three bits. Each bit has three jokes. I've got a solid closer. I'm like, man, I'm gonna knock this out of the park. I just

won this contest against a bunch of kids. Yeah, against a bunch of kids. Kids who had never done comedy. And at the end of all of that, you were the one guy who had done comedy enough. You literally took the ice cream out of the little kid's hand. Yeah, exactly. If I'd have seen 16 bad comedians before you went up, I think I probably would have been like, thank God, someone up there. But don't get, oh, just wait, there's more. This story's about to take a turn.

So I get up, hey, everybody. And I do, I do my. I do my opening line. Crickets. Nothing. I was like, okay, maybe that. Maybe it's just the opener. So I do another opener. Crickets. I'm like, okay, maybe the openers don't work. Let's go into the first bit. I go into the first bit. First joke of the first bit. Crickets. Second joke of the first bit. Crickets. At that point, I go, well, none of this is working. I slap the microphone back in stand and I go, thanks.

Hi. I walk off stage. The host, who was not prepared for me to do that, runs back up on stage, grabs the mic and goes, hey, you know, you've got like 4 minutes and 40 seconds left. I go, well, none of this is working. So. And the host said, is this your first time? I said, it might as well be. And that made the entire room erupt in laughter. I was like, fuck, every single one of you. Give me that mic. Was it an instant? Was it like a haze, essentially? So here's. No, that's how comedy works.

It works in failure. No, I Think that part. Here's what actually happened. I get to the back of the room and there's the comedian that hosted the event at the college. He goes, hey, Todd, good to see you. Didn't realize you'd be here tonight. I was like, yeah. He goes, I saw what just happened. I go, yeah, man, I thought stuff was good. He goes, listen, you see that table right over there? Those

three people sitting there? Yeah. He goes, those are the only people in this room that aren't comedians. Comedians don't laugh at jokes. I was like, oh, okay, all right, I get it now. It was like, wasn't hazing. They were looking at me going, oh. And they were giving me the honest comedian response, which is, wow. Yeah, don't laugh. I'm like, well, God, I wish I would have known this. I had five. I had four minutes and 40 seconds left. Oh, man.

So I got the best experience and the worst experience, like within, within 24 hours of each other. And from there on, I was just kind of like, okay, if it works, great. If not, learn from it. Go back to the drawing board and try again. So that, that was my introduction into stand up comedy. Wow. So since then, have you had a, you know,

an experience such as that? I mean, I'm just thinking of, since we're talking, you know, with someone who knows Star Trek, I'm thinking of that episode where Data is practicing humor in the holiday. Oh, man. Yeah, it's. I've seen comedians, like, working comedians do worse than Data did in that episode. Like, painful, painful performances of, like, you've made money doing this. This is really, really, seriously. I mean, good for you. I don't see it, like.

And I tend to approach comedy with a very open mind and kind of like, hey, there's. There's tons of ways to do it. You know, there's a, there's a technique for all of it. I was. Oh, man. And I. One of them. I recently came back from la, which I got to do a little bit of standup while I was out in la and I went to a room of just working comics of just who are grinding. And one of these, one of these comics went up and did their shtick. I will say, not a set.

They did their shtick and it was painful. It was painful to watch. I was trying not to pass judgment because here I am, country mouse from South Carolina in LA for the first time. I was like, okay, maybe, maybe there's something I don't know here. As I'm, as this comedian is continuing to perform I'm looking around the room going, okay, I'm not the only one that feels this way. I was looking at some of the facial expressions, like, okay, all right. You think so, too? Oh, I

see it over there, too. Yeah. Okay. All right. We're on the same page. This is awful. Rite of passage, I think, right? Yeah, yeah. I want to ask, like, Chris and I come from the acting world as well. And I'll speak for myself, though, as far as. There's definitely this. There's, like, very much two schools of thought in acting, and I'm curious if this is the same for comedy. So if.

If you are an actor very much, you compare yourself to anybody and everybody, and it's like, oh, so and so got a gig. Why didn't I suck? And then there's another school of thought which is, okay, so and so got a gig. That's great. They were perfect for that. Like, they needed that specific person with those experiences in their life. They're going to do amazing at that. Hopefully I was not chosen because I have a different backstory. I am a different human being. And that's.

So are those very much present in standup as well? Are they different? I think so. I think of the. Of the two schools of thought that you just described. I feel like a lot of people start in that first train of thought, and if you. If you hope to have any sort of longevity, you grow and mature to the second train of thought. Because from talking with a couple of actors out in la, that's the same process out there of like, hey, look, I may have nailed the audition.

I may have remembered all the lines and hit all the beats that they were looking for. But there's something else, that undefinable quality that I just don't have. And it's hard to put into words what it is until you sit across from someone who clearly has it. It's like, oh, that's why you've been working for 40 years. That's why you attained this level of success. And I got to say, for me, that came in LA when I got to sit down for 15 minutes with Nana visitor from Deep Space Nine.

She played Kira Neryse, and sitting across from her, because I remember her from Deep Space Nine and the whole thing. And it was just kind of like, okay, yeah, I mean, she's this solid character, the whole thing, but I don't know that she really stuck out to me before. She was very nice. She's very good, you know, very pretty. The whole, you know, she ticks all the boxes. But for me, it was just kind of like, all right, I don't really get it.

And then I was backstage at the Garry Marshall Theater there in Burbank, and she walked through the back door, and you could feel it when she walked through the back door of, like, oh, you exude this energy, this Persona, this life force, whatever you want to call it. And everybody felt it as she walked by. It was just kind of like, okay, yeah, no, I get it. I absolutely get it. I went to the producer later, and I was just like, so Nana Visitor. He goes, yeah, right? And I go, right.

We were already on the same page. But then she sat down across the table from me again to get 15 minutes on the mic, which I can't thank her enough for and adore her, that she was just like, yeah, let's go now. But, you know, with her sitting, you know, a few inches from my face, at one point, I was just kind of like, I'm going to have to look away so that I remember what to say for this podcast. But it is that undefinable quality. And you can see it. You can see it in actors,

you can see it in comedians. Anybody help. You can see it in politicians. You can see it. You can see it in religious leaders. You know, there's certain. In the most successful of car salesmen or salesmen in general. You know, salespeople, they have it, too. You know, it's not. It's not any one particular creative avenue. There's folks like that all over in every. In every different industry. But, yeah, for. If we're talking actors

and comedians specifically, yeah. I mean, there's been times where I've seen a comedian that in my mind, I know I'm funnier than them. And they get. They get an opportunity to go on tour, or they get an opportunity to open for famous comedian X. And part of me thinks I'm funnier than this. I should have gotten that.

But then I remember, oh, I've been doing a Star Trek podcast for two years and have talked with acclaimed writers and actors and all this stuff, and that's something they're not doing. So there's definitely, you know, an examination of your own accomplishments. You don't want to constantly be looking back, but, you know, the grass might be greener on the other side, but I have actual food, so it's important to remember that. Well, and the other thing is, if you're opening for somebody,

you don't want a good comedian. I mean, you learned that in your first standup show, right? Like, choosing an opener is tricky. It's really tricky. I've produced enough standup comedy shows to know putting together a lineup of comics is a science and an art in and of itself because you're kind of, okay, this person's got a bunch of credits, but this person has a better energy. So do I put this person ahead of them? Do I make them the closer

and make this person the feature? You know, plus I've got. I've got an opener. Who's got a solid 10 minutes. That's all they have. Do I make them the host? Do I make them the opener? Do I give them the opportunity to feature? You know, it's. You kind of have to gauge all of that as a producer, and then you got to put that lineup together. Plus, you're trying to watch the. Watch the clock if you're doing the light as well. Wow. It's. You know, the world of.

The world of standup comedy is especially for curtain jerkers, for open mikers. It's. It's tricky because you're kind of having to do all of it. You're having to write, you're having to edit, you're having to perform. If you really want to get out there, then you're having to book your own shows. You're having to produce your own shows. You're having to make contact with venues. You're having to make the poster. Like, I've made posters, fellas. And, you know, I've done.

I've done the promotions, I've contacted venues. Sometimes it goes, sometimes it doesn't. But you have to take all of that into consideration. If you're hosting, that means you're also watching the light, you're watching the clock. You're also having to remember whose name comes next. Because I've done that where I thought, oh, I remember who's up next? I'll just go up there and say, and your next comedian. And I went upstate. I went up on stage, grabbed the mic and totally blame, like, oh,

I just forgot. It's. It's. And then at one point, I remembered their first name but couldn't remember their last name. It was just. It's one of those things where if you're not prepared, it's gonna show immediately. You can't hide anything on stage. Yeah, you can't hide a thing. Which is why I think that's why I think there's.

That's why there's such a good relationship between comedians and musicians, because the comedians look at how they craft their Material, a traditional standup versus a singer, songwriter, who not only are they conveying thoughts and emotions, they are also getting it to rhyme. And more often than not, playing an instrument very well while they do it.

Sometimes it's all a comedian can do to just keep the microphone in one hand and not drop it and manipulate the stand while continuing to do their set. Some comedians have a hard time, you know, rubbing their stomach and patting their head and chewing gum like it's tough. But at the same time, the musician feels, and this has been my. Through my own experience with talking with musicians, the musician feels that they can actually hide behind the instrument.

And if they've got other performers, they're not alone. As opposed to a comedian who's up there with a microphone and their thoughts, that's it. There tends to be a really good relationship there. I've heard Jerry Seinfeld say that comedians is the most judged profession. Every six seconds, you're basically judged on whether or not you can keep people laughing, Right? And so I'm curious about something.

I want to get into something because there's a writer, podcaster, comedian, you know, everything that you've been able to create some level of success in and move forward with, it feels like you've had to kind of go forward, bump your head a little bit, go forward, bump your head a little bit more, right? And learn from those bumps and bruises that get you there. But you didn't quit. And that's really interesting to me because a lot of people quit and a lot of people have thin skin when they

go out there and try and do stuff. And, you know, you, you don't, it seems. I'm really curious, do you have advice for people around not quitting and also how to maintain a thicker skin in the pursuit of something you're passionate about? I think for something like stand up comedy and to a degree, podcasting and even writing, you know, they tell you when you're done with your first draft, read it, enjoy it, throw it away, because that is not going to be the last draft. It never is. It never is.

So if you're able to learn how to cut stuff and edit your own stuff, that's great. That's really going to help you in terms of writing stand up comedy. Same thing. Like, you're gonna get rejection a lot. In fact, I can sit here and write jokes all day. It's not until I get in front of an audience that that's when the editing process begins, because I deliver the material. And now I'm getting honest Feedback in real time.

So if you're able to pay attention to the feedback and, you know, okay, I gotta work on that bit. I gotta work on that bit. That bit works. So we got to keep that. And now we know. That's why a lot of comedians end up filming themselves, end up recording themselves audio so they, you know, they can hear themselves, but they're also hearing the audience. And, you know, in terms of podcasting, I've been at this for a little over two years. I think I'm decent at it.

If you go back and listen to episode one, episode two, episode three, versus episode 94, 95, 96, they are worlds apart. Some of this stuff you can't learn in school. You just can't. There's certain things you can learn, but when it comes to practical application, you gotta get out there. And like I mentioned earlier, being able to look at your own accomplishments is one of the ways that you stay encouraged to keep going. I may write 10 bits.

So I've got 10 bits of comedy that I think are really solid. I go to a mic, I do them. Three of them work. That's pretty rough. So I could look at it one way, like, oh, man, 30% of my stuff worked. God, I worked really hard on this stuff. Or 30% worked. Now I've got room to create more. In terms of podcasting, there's a quote out there that says, hey, look, most podcasts don't make it past episode three, and even fewer podcasts make it past episode 20.

So when I recently realized, oh, I'm at episode 90 something, I was like, I must be doing something right. So a lot of times it's looking for. Look for the thing that you are doing right. It may be one thing, and then you can say, okay, maybe I'm not the best joke writer. Maybe my. Maybe my stage presence needs work. Maybe I don't have the money or the means to get really good podcasting equipment or software.

Maybe I love comics, but my dialogue writing skills aren't up to snuff, or I don't know how to write art direction or something like that. I've got a great concept. So now you. Or, you know, with podcasting, it's okay, but I had a really great discussion. Or with standup comedy, you know what? I've got this one joke that works. If you focus on what you do have, you will be encouraged to work on the rest because you've got the one.

Now let's get two. And when I. When I did that comedy writing and comedy Stage presence seminar there at that college in Florida. That's what the comedian was trying to hammer in. It was like, look, you guys are not going to be able to do 30, 45, an hour's worth of comedy right now. It's not going to happen. What you're looking to do is build three minutes. If you can build three minutes, then you're off to a good start. You know, podcasting, you're looking for three episodes,

then you're looking for 20. With standup, it was build a three minute set. Okay, now build a five minute set. Now build a seven minute set. If you guys have watched comedians in Cars getting coffee, I always point new comedians to the episode with Judd Apatow, because he left college because he was already working in the industry that he wanted to work in, and he was interviewing these comedians for his school newspaper. He just kept doing that.

And through interviewing all these comedians, he kind of learned the formula, you're not going to be good at this for seven years. A lot of people who were sitting at home during the pandemic, watching comedy on Netflix, saw Taylor Tomlinson and her first special quarter life crisis, 25 years old, comes out and sticks the landing like a boss. They're like, she's 25. Oh, man, I can do this.

What they didn't see was the 10, 12, 15 years that she was busting ass in clubs around the country, building, building, reworking, rewriting, working all of that stuff out. It does not happen overnight. Same thing with podcasting. You record an episode, you edit it, put in your sound effects, put in your music, whatever you've got going on. You got yourself a decent logo, you put it out in the world. Congratulations. Now do it again. We see a lot of comedians come to that open mic and bomb.

The big question looming is, will we see you next week? Because it's easy to do if you're looking to check something off a bucket list of like, hey, I did stand up comedy. Hmm. You performed it. You performed at an open mic. Let's see you do it again next week. You know, comics. Comics is tough because now it's a collaboration, you know, with podcasting, for the most part. If you're working with somebody, there's

give and take. You know, somebody's maybe, maybe somebody has the marketing, marketing know how and the other person has the production know how, and you're able to work together. But for a lot of podcasters, it's one person with a microphone sitting in a room by themselves, putting their thoughts and words into the universe.

I'm lucky that I have a financially minded spouse who is absolutely brilliant, and I could not do my podcast without her going, hey, that's a great idea, but have you considered X, Y and Z? I'm like, oh, you know what? I didn't think of that. So in terms of producing the show, it's me. I've got a guy who made my logo, and I've got permission to use some music because I asked a local musician. Other than that, I book the guests, I write the scripts, I set up the calls, I record,

I edit all of that stuff. It's me. So when it comes to comics now, because I can't draw to save my life, I'm relying on my artist for a writer. It might be hard right off the bat to understand my words are only going to be read by one person. So I have to be able to work with this person to get the final product. So I feel like I'm starting to get on a soapbox and go off on a tangent. Did I answer the question? Yeah, there was a lot

of good gold in there, actually. I thought, and I was going to say, I actually have this theory, and I think that the more I hear these types of stories, the more I begin to believe it, that there really is no such thing as, like, talent. There is only the hard work and skill that comes through that. Because, you know, it's funny how almost everybody who they say has been brilliant, right? Take someone like Bob Dylan,

for example, right? Brilliant songwriter, highly recognized throughout all of his life, has been recognized as brilliant, right? And some of his most brilliant work, they. They discovered a notebook that he had where he had literally written every song over and over, different ways until he found the perfect way, in a sense, to actually

create that whole album. And, you know, there was a lot of speculation around the idea that, oh, this kind of just came out of him after this breakup, and this came out of him at this time of his life because it was like. But. But in actuality, there's no such thing as that. There is a striking of inspiration, I think, but then there's the work, the work that goes behind it that consistently makes it better.

And I think there really is no fast track past that, as you mentioned, you know, the idea that you can just dive in and be brilliant at something, I think is a very new and modern concept that people. That social media really propagates because, you know, oh, I just put one video out and I can go viral, and all of a sudden I'm famous and I'm good. And I'm known as this person who's really good at this one thing. Like all of a sudden that can all happen in instant.

But that's a Myth, right? Even Mr. Beast, the guy who essentially, what, like MoneyBalled YouTube, he talks about his journey upwards, took him, you know, X number of years. Now he makes like 70 or 80 videos a year. But he talks about how it's a whole lot more interesting and a lot more. Sorry, it's a whole lot more practical to put a ton of time into making that one video. Go to 10 million people versus doing like 10 million videos, you know what I'm saying?

That go to one person or two. So. So I think there's a lot in there that you mentioned that was really, really cool and valuable. I mean, keep in mind that, you know, when you hear these stories about. First of all, I think the big one is there is no such thing as an overnight success. I think Kevin Hart was. I think Kevin Hart said It took me 10 years to become an overnight success. You know,

looking at folks who. Again, I'm on this movie podcast, Cinema Shock, where we do, we cover cult and genre film history. It's a lot of fun. Available now, wherever you get your book. Nice. But one of the things that we cover is the process of the production from top to tails. So when you hear that so and so wrote this award winning screenplay in 10 days or two weeks, that's an amazing story. Look at all the stuff that they went through in their life before they sat down to write that screenplay.

I bet it wasn't all sunshine and roses. Like there was a lot of work, probably a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of rejection, a lot of trial and error. And, you know, it's good to realize like, oh, I'm not okay. Yeah, I might not crank it out in, you know, in a day, or I might not crank it out in a week or a month, you know, and that's okay.

Like at the end of the day, I think if you're creating art, then you as the artist gotta be satisfied with the work you created and understanding that that work is the stepping stone to the next piece. When you create a podcast, at the end of the day, hey, we've got a deadline. We put it out there. But now I kind of know what to expect in terms of how my equipment works and how the editing process goes. And okay, the music's gonna go here.

And now I'm changing my game plan in terms of my script and the sound effects are Gonna go here. And these are questions that my guest had that I am probably gonna have to address with the next guest. So I should probably write those down. You know, it's a learning process. You have to continuously learn. You have to continuously grow. If you're not, then you're not progressing, you're not growing, you're not going to get better. There are so few prodigies. You just can't bank on that.

You can't bank that you're just going to be the next Bo Burnham or you're going to be the next, in terms of podcasting, Marc Maron or Joe Rogan. Like, you're not going to have Joe Rogan set up tomorrow. Sorry, folks, not going to happen. You're not going to have two researchers and thousands of dollars worth of equipment to make. You're not going to get to sit down across from Robert Downey Jr. Like, it's not going to happen.

But what you can do is talk to your friends and then you can talk to someone you met at a convention or, hey, I met this comedian at the club. Maybe I can work with them, or maybe they'll talk to me for a few minutes on the mic or get a tip or trick from them. It's how you gather all these pieces to put together your own puzzle of success, because no one can see the picture except you. It's up to you to put that together so that you can show someone else.

Yeah. What you're saying is really important. And I wanted to kind of circle back a little while ago, though. The importance I'm hearing of patience and enjoying the journey and enjoying the process and getting there. And I make videos in my day job. And so much of it is iteration, iteration and just getting better and learning what steps need to be added to the process. I mean, that's something that Chris and I do a lot also, is just what needs to be added. And like you said,

this is where the sound effects go. I mean, I was listening to one of your more recent episodes, and your intro is very well put together like that is that. It's clearly like, when I listen to it, I think, okay, this has been through the wringer. This has been through iteration after iteration, and it is that enjoying of the experience. Now, you had mentioned. I kind of want to. There's. There's a lot of things I want to ask, but I'm going to try to narrow

this down for a second. You've talked about. I got all night. You asked away, man. Well, I want to focus on the you talk about patience and you talk about, you know, the joy of it. And the thing that gets me is so much of this at the end of the day that we nerds struggle to do sometimes is to remember the dollars. And as much as we don't want to have to worry about the dollars, I personally, you know, I openly admit Chris is

the guy who thinks about the dollars. I am the guy that thinks about, like, other things. And so as far as what you've done, I mean, all these different aspects in these different enterprises that you've taken, excuse the pun, but the different enterprises you've taken, what, what kind of money based wisdom have you learned along the way to think, oh, I gotta remember to get money here someh. Oh, I forgot, money isn't a part

of the equation this time. Where for you, what, what nuggets have you found as far as making money with many different enterprises? Because you said you're full time doing this kind of stuff too, right? It's not really like you're no longer a police officer, as you mentioned, or law enforcement. So how does that work? Well, that means that my spouse has a really great job with. That's what we've been doing wrong. Frank, what's going on? Damn it. We've been marrying poor. Damn it.

No, honestly, in terms of how to handle the finances, it is tricky and I am not financially minded. That is why I do consider myself very lucky to have a spouse who has worked in finance ever since she got out of college. So, you know, and we, we work really well together because I, we've kind of named ourselves. I'm the idea man, he's the nuts and bolts girl. And you know, we were. I come up with the big idea, which is great. Okay, we've got this. Can we find somewhere

in the middle to meet or. Okay, what's the closest we can get with this, with this amount of resources and with the understanding of, okay, we're going to do it this way, with this amount of resources. If we can bring in this, then we get to do it again now with this amount of resources. So it's a building. You got to build it from the ground up. That means you got to build it with what you've got to work with. You look at filmmakers like Robert Rodriguez, who.

Making Spy Kids, making Sin City, all of these things. He started with El Mariachi, but before that he started by giving his body to a scientific experiment to get the funding. He's got a great book out there for folks who are looking to either Be inspired or who are looking to kind of, you know, get their. Understand what getting into the film industry takes. And it's called Rebel Without a Crew.

And he tells the story of having this idea and having a, you know, camera as a kid and shooting his, you know, family members and friends, doing fun things and really wanting to make a movie. He had no money. He had to figure out what he did have. He had a guitar, he had a camera. I think he had access to a bus. And that was about it. So he heard about this scientific experiment where he would go into isolation for. I think it was isolation for 15 days or 30 days or something like that.

At the end of the experiment, he would get like 5 grand or 10 grand or somewhere in the middle of something like that. So he did that while he was in isolation. He made the most of his time and wrote the script. So at the end of the experiment, he had the script and he had his funding, and now he also had his guitar and access to a bus. And he. And if you watch El Mariachi, every penny is on that screen. It's not bad. But you know what?

That was the starting point. From there, that got noticed and was successful enough that he was able to get Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas and make Desperado that became a cult hit. He was able to get involved with Quentin Tarantino and make Once Upon a Time in Mexico and From Dusk Till dawn and a bunch of other really great things. And of course, while he's doing that, he's learning the art of filmmaking, and he sets up Troublemaker Studios, which is run out of his house, out of his garage.

It became one of the most successful independent film studios, and it's just based in his garage in Austin. Like, I mean, you can do this stuff. You absolutely can do this stuff if you set your mind to it. I feel like I've gone off the rails again. No, no. So far, I have heard Mary Rich and also sell your body to science. So I'm ready to be successful now. Okay, so let's get into

the nitty gritty of it, folks. Because, I mean, that is kind of, you know, okay, I can do standup, I can do a podcast. I can write a comic book. How do I make money with it? First of all, it's all the advice that you got as a kid. Save your money, keep receipts, be organized, all of these things. Pay your bills on time. It's all.

It's all of the advice you got as a kid that you didn't want to Listen to it all comes back around of just like, oh, I should probably keep those statements that come in the mail every month. And oh, you know what, I did spend so much on this particular thing. It was for the show. So I need to keep the receipt. Did I keep the receipt? Where did I put that receipt? Cameron? No other things like, oh, you know what, this particular Star Trek event wants me to come out to LA to do a thing.

They're going to pay me through reimbursement, which means now I've got to figure out how I'm going to get to la. So that means I've got to set up my llc. You know, setting up the LLC is not super hard. It's, you know, depending on what state you live in, you know, fill out a couple, you know, a form or two plus, you know, 25, 30, 40, 50 bucks, whatever, you know, whatever it costs and congratulations, you own a business. I'm curious, I'm curious. More like how did you get someone to pay you

to go to an event? That's the revenue, right? Yeah, they saw, they saw my work, they saw my work and they liked, they liked what I was doing. At what point, how many episodes in did that happen? Let's see, that was, I was 80 some episodes in, I think. And when I started the podcast, I started Computer Resume Podcast. I was doing it while working a full time job. I was a paralegal at a small firm here in town.

And so every spare moment that I wasn't working on a case or running to the courthouse or you know, doing gopher type errands for the lawyer, I was sitting there making notes for the podcast, prepping the next, prepping the next script, booking the next guest through social media, you know, and all that stuff. So really burning the candle at both ends. When that job got to a point where it was time, it was time for me to go. Now I'm able to, I thought, oh, you know what?

I'm going to have all this time to dedicate to it and it's going to be so much easier because now this is what I'm doing full time. You've got even less time because now this is all you're focused on. And when this is all you're focused on, you're focused on every little detail. So again, getting back to how the money comes in, you've got to be super organized and you have to value yourself.

Being organized will help you keep track of things, but that may only entail you watching money go out the window. So you have to value yourself and your product. If you value your product and you value yourself, when you put those two together of like, hey, I value my time and I value this thing, be it a podcast or this comic book script or this comedy set that I'm trying to build. You know, when you value your time and you value your art and you put yourself into that,

somebody's going to notice. Eventually. Somebody's going to notice. Hopefully you don't put all your eggs in one basket. You know, I'm doing the stand up, I've got the comic book thing, but the podcasting seems to be really going well and I'm able to crank it out every week. So that's where I'm putting, you know, having to, you know, I talk about being an editor when it comes to writing. You also have to be an editor with your own time of like, hey, I love standup comedy.

I love working on comic books. Podcast thing is really blowing up. So let's scale this back a little bit and put the prime focus here. Now. I still do stand up. Now the money I get from standup goes to fund podcast, you know, and that the podcast is what gets me noticed by folks who say, hey, we're doing a Star Trek event out in la. We're doing a Star Trek event in Iowa. We're doing a Star Trek event wherever we'd like you to host. Great. I'm a standup comedian. I can do this,

no problem and that. And. But you say, hey, look, it's going to cost. I live in South Carolina. LA is a long trip most of the time. If you put that out there and if you're conducting yourself professionally, hopefully they're conducting themselves professionally as well. And they say, hey, you know what, we've got a limited budget, we're going to take care of you. Or, hey, you know what? We've got a lot of resources. We've got you, not a problem. Great.

You have to say, hey, look, I value myself, I value my time, I value my art. That price is, if you can meet it, great, I'll see you there. If not, hey, no worries. Not a problem. When you get there next year or a few years down the line, give me a call, let me know. Or if my situation changes, it doesn't hurt my business, my business finances to take that one on the chin, then I'll come out.

But there needs to be that view of, hey, this is going to be beneficial for not only me, not only for my art, but for my business is this is me going out there is me going to wherever to do my performance. For me to put myself out there and my work out there, is that going to translate into downloads, Patreon support, merchandise purchases? I mean, is that going to translate? Hopefully it does. And it may take a couple of trial and errors, but you know what? Get yourself an llc.

Go get yourself a business credit card and stay on top of it. Whatever money comes in, be smart about it. Your bills on time, you know, keep track of your receipts, keep track of your statements. Know when the next bill is coming out, I get the stuff goes right to my phone. My phone is on my hip 24 7, man. So it all comes back to, you gotta value yourself.

Because when I see that is a real problem with comedians, because like I said, comedians are known for getting paid in cheeseburgers and encouragement. They don't know how to value themselves. It's easier for a comedian, it's easier for a podcaster to sort of gauge their time because they know, okay, we're recording for two hours. That means I'm gonna have to edit for at least twice as long. So now we're talking six hours.

If I've got a regular nine to five, how much am I making at my nine to five? I need to be making at least that, if not more, to make it worth it. So that's, you know, that's. Now you've got some numbers to work with. You know, I'm looking at again, I'm still building this thing. I started the. I started the podcast and I think early last year is when I got the llc, and I think earlier this year is when I got my business credit card.

So, you know, you build it slowly over time and understand businesses take time to be successful. Just like comedy, just like podcasts, just like writing a comic book does not happen overnight, you got to be prepared for, okay, we're going to have to tighten the belt for six months, a year, two years, three years, five years. If we want to make a real go at this. That's what it takes.

And being able to reconcile that in your own mind and say, okay, when I went to get my business credit card, I had to take account of how much money is coming in based on Patreon supporters, based on investments that I've made myself into my own business with the money I make from standup comedy. Okay, this is how much is coming in on a monthly basis. The credit card company goes, okay, you're approved for X. That's what you've got to work with. So now, okay, that's okay.

So if I gotta fly somewhere, I gotta make sure that I can cover that. I'm gonna get reimbursed. So you gotta keep track of your expenses. It's not just the flight. It's the flight. It's the hotel, food, Uber. Like, unless you're sleeping at the airport, which I don't recommend. Sleeping at lax. Not a good idea. No way. Yeah. You know, I don't recommend Vancity Airport either. It's terrible.

I loved what you said about value yourself, because I think that's not just a problem for comedians, because you brought up that it was a problem for comedians, but I also think it's a problem for a lot of people in business, in the job that I do, I see people all the time undervalue their work and not value at all. And it happens where people will ask you to do something, they'll ask you to work for free, or, oh, can you do this thing for me? Or can you. You're really good at this.

Can you do this thing? Or, you know, and if you make podcasts, people will often ask you about doing stuff like that for them. Or if you happen to have an expertise in sales like I do, some people will ask you to give advice to them and help them out. And I have just got to the point where I myself, because I've seen so many people say, like, I'll give it away for free and also start charging for their knowledge. And I think that that is a barrier.

That's a mental shift that a lot of entrepreneurs or nerdpreneurs have to make at some point where you realize the knowledge and value you bring to the market. And there is a value on your time to be able to execute on that. And I think that's a really important place for people to say, like, hey, what is my time worth at least? And what is the bare minimum that I need to get in order for me to feel that this is not a waste of it? And I won't, and I'll be excited.

And then the next question I have is, how much do you need to get paid for you to be excited to do it? And that's the amount that you should try for. Yeah. And I said, you know, because when la, When I went out to do Shuttlepod, those questions came up. I was like, okay, what are we, you know, what's bottom line? What's the bottom line? Flashback to years before. I'm doing standup comedy, and a comedian friend of mine, Queen Momo, she is a wonderful comedian. Working here in Greenville.

I asked her because she was starting to get paid for gigs. I was like, hey, look, I have no idea where to start. Like, how much do you even ask for? She was like, look, let's start really basic. It's a dollar for you to write the joke. It's a dollar for you to perfect the joke. It's a dollar for you to perform the joke. They want you to do 15 minutes. That's $45. Start there. You know, that's a minute. Yeah, yeah. And just say, hey, look, I wrote it, perfected it.

Here's the performance, and you can start there. When you start there, then you start to take into account mileage, food, and other things like that, which is where having other comedians ride along with you comes into play. Like, hey, you know what? Hey, I just got this. I just booked this show out of town. They're also looking for, you know, I'm the feature. They're looking for an opener. Can you do 10 minutes? They'll pay you 20 bucks.

Sounds great. You know, in fact, I've got a show coming up later this summer in Georgia. And they said, hey, if you want to bring. If you want to bring a feature, let us know. I said, okay, how much you paying? And every now and then, you can see when you ask that question, you don't get a response right away. Yeah, they're like, you got to stay on. You got to.

You got to. Like. I was looking at it as I got to stay on top of this and make sure I get an answer in writing so that when I pitch it to somebody, say, hey, look, I got this thing in Georgia. You want to open or do you want to feature? And you do 20 minutes, they're going to pay you X. Okay, now, they're banking on my word about what the promoter said. I've got it in writing. So you want to cover your bases. This goes back to keeping organized, keeping details of. Because what I'm doing is.

I've got that conversation. That's my contract. Now, some people have official contracts, and that's fine. But coming from the legal world, having worked at a law firm for a few years, it's in writing. Judge is going to see that as a contract is closed. So now, again, how far are you willing to pursue that is up to you. But in terms of creative endeavors, and I actually ran into this when I was getting ready to do Adam and Steve because my artist had never worked on a comic book before.

And I ended up doing a contract for us and everything and, you know, this was. She's. She's a little bit younger than I. Than I am. And her. She was actually. She actually said, hey, would you have a problem meeting my parents? They actually want to meet the person I'm about to sign a contract with. I was like, yeah, absolutely. I went dinner with her parents. And she. Then, they're sweet, lovely people. And they. And I said, hey, look, I know you're concerned about your daughter getting into

business with some weirdo. I get it. I said, let me tell you this. It would not be in my best interest. It would not be in my best interest to screw her over. Because what happens if I screw her over? Do I get the better of her? Do I get her chunk of money? Sure. He gets to go to everyone she ever meets and says, hey, have you ever heard of this guy? Don't work for him. He stole my money. That's a bunch of people. Now, that won't work for me.

I just shot myself in the foot for however much money I got out of it. So you kind of have to put some of that stuff into perspective for people because a lot of people see a contract and they get scared. Understandable. I was promoting a show and one of the performers handed me a contract. And I was kind of like, oh, oh, yeah, this is part of it. This is the business part of show business. Like, there's paperwork and there's contracts sometimes, so you gotta be prepared for that. And look,

nobody's holding a gun to your head. Like, if you don't want to sign the contract, then just say, hey, look, this isn't going to work. Sorry. If you're not ready for that, that's fine. But put it on front street. Like, I've worked with artists. I've talked with artists about working on a book of mine, and they get gun shy when I slide them the contract. And it's like, oh, I don't. No, no contracts. I was like, well, I'm not working without one. So if you want to work, great.

Here's your first assignment. Sign this. If not, okay, that's fine. But now this is going to go to somebody else. That name at the top that looks a lot like yours is going to change to somebody else's name. So you kind of have to sell it to somebody. Because a lot of people consider themselves artists that are not business minded. And I speak to myself. You know, I speak of myself. I speak of, you know, comedians, podcasters, comic book people. We're great at the art that we make.

But when it comes down to the soup and nuts of business. Like, we get a little gun shy, and it's. It's. It's a big step. You know, it's kind of like, hey, you know, I've talked with wonderful, wonderful artists who are like, I'll. I'll never be able to work with anybody. I can't work in a big company. I can't work for. I can't work with. I can't collaborate with anyone. And I actually talked with someone who said that. I was like, I hope you like bagging groceries.

Be like working at McDonald's, because that's what's in your future. Like. And I. And I had to double down and say, look, I hate that for you, because you have. So I see it. If I see it, I know there's other people that see it because I don't have the best eye. So if I see your talent, there's other people who see it and are probably willing to pay for it. But that means you got to work with them. If they're. If they are your patron and they're hiring you to do a thing,

you gotta do what they ask. You know, if you're working with a collaborator, if you're an artist working with a writer, guess what? You gotta really define what that relationship is, because the writer is gonna give you the script, and that's what you're supposed to draw. So if you come back with something that's not in the script, quote, unquote, artistic license is only gonna get you so far. They're going to say, okay, but we're missing a key point of the story here.

And there's supposed to be three people in the room, and you've got one, and he looks different from panel one to panel three. So artistic license, okay, to an extent, but, like, you've clearly not followed my directions. And when you don't follow directions, like any other business, there might be a strike one, strike two, strike three. But in creative business, like, I don't have. I'm on a deadline. I don't have time for you to screw around and waste my time

and waste my money. Like, sorry, you're fired. I'm going to go find somebody else who's willing to work, who wants to work. And it's like, it's that scene in the Godfather. Hey, look, it's not personal, just business. This is what we got to do. I'm on a track. I want to be successful. Now I'd like to take you with me as a collaborator. You're willing to do that. Here's the contract, here's the script. Let's get to work. If not, okay, I'm gonna go find somebody else.

No hard feelings, you know, peace be with you on your journey. But like, sorry, I'm in it for. I'm in it for a different game, for a different. For a different end, and you got to be okay with that.

I think this has come up for us not just in an artistic level, but I can see it being so prevalent in an artistic area because artists have that idea that what they create and all that is precious and all that sort of thing, but like, from a business perspective, it's about what the art can bring them in terms of attention or value and money and all that sort of thing. So there becomes this contract. And I guess the way I heard it put was on one of our. Who was the guy who did the LARP thing?

What was his name? Josh. Josh. Josh from the Empty Chest. Right. That episode he talked about, a lot of people enjoy playing at business and not actually doing business. And so they say that they're really. Or they do the things that are kind of easy on their side, like, oh, I'm going to get the logo and I'm going to get the business card and all those sort of thing.

But they're not actually doing business because when it comes down to working with clients or people who would actually pay them money, they're not doing anything to do that because they're, they're, there's. They're. They're just sort of imagining that they're that. But when they're confronted with that contract of like, okay, here's your business. This is the business side. Sign here. So we actually can treat lists at a different level of seriousness. Yeah, okay. That, that's just,

that's just cost to play in the game. In fact, when we started this podcast, Frank, one of the things that gave me a green flag for you was you wanted a contract. I wrote it. Yeah, well, we co wrote it. I, we put some things together. I was like, you're not going to write the whole thing. That's the other side of this too, is, you know, you have to have input. But it was. But. And, and contracts can be negotiated. That's the other side of it. I think

that a lot of artists avoid confrontation. And so because they're unwilling to say, negotiate, sometimes they'll be like, well, I won't take a contract that doesn't suit this, or whatever. They're not willing to come back with like, hey, this can be modified, or these are some things, or they sign bad contracts. Talk about anyone in the music industry, let's talk that, right? Like this is, you know, being willing to negotiate and understanding your value.

All of these things are actually really valuable learning lessons of entrepreneurship that I think people should take heed of. And not to sit there playing business, but to actually be willing to step into the arena of doing business for real. Yeah, but I mean, doing the business is great, but being careful with the contracts too. I mean, I'm sure you totally understand from your time as a paralegal, like, don't just,

you know, sign any contract. I mean, I can't count the number of times as an actor I saw other actors sign their like, talent release form without even reading it. And I would be like, whoa, like you gotta read that shit. And I would, I would sit there and read it whether it was modeling or acting. And people would look at me funny and I'd be like, sorry. I actually read this thing and they're like, all right, take your time. And then I'd go through it. And now, like, now I'm on the other side.

I'm a producer and so I get talent to sign these release forms and so I make sure that they are as plain to understand as possible. Because I don't want the talent to feel scared, intimidated, and back out on set. I mean, that would be frickin terrible for. Oh my God, so many reasons. Yeah, you gotta do the business right. And you know, when it comes down to.

When it comes down, when it comes down to asking for your bottom line, when it comes down, when it comes down to asking for money, when it comes down to negotiating a contract, oh, when it comes down to looking at an NDA or a talent release or something like that, you gotta as talent as the artist you have to look at. Okay, here's what I want, here's what I need. Hopefully we're at least somewhere

in the middle here. And that is, you know, that goes to the money, that goes to the contracts and concessions you've got and the things that are allowed and not allowed in the NDA. Which is why, like I tell people all the time, I told them when I work in, when I worked in the legal field, whenever anybody's asked me for a piece of legal advice, which the only person you should ask for legal advice is a lawyer, that's the first thing I always say.

But I say, hey, look, if this is something you're seriously considering, find an attorney who's Willing to sit down with you for 50 to 100 bucks, whatever a consult costs, and get them to read it, hey, here's here. And just say, hey, look, I'm an actor, I'm a performer, I'm an artist, I'm a whatever, looking to get into business with this particular person to create X, whatever it is. Here's the NDA, here's the talent release, here's the contract, whatever. Does this hold water?

You know? You know, get them. Get them to say, hey, look. Yeah. And I, to be honest, I did it recently for someone who. They were like, hey, they handed me this NDA. Can you take a look at this and just give me some fresh perspective? I said, yeah, read through it three or four pages.

And I said, honestly, it looks like pretty standard boilerplate language, but you may want to pay attention to this thing here and also this one, you know, And I was able to say, hey, look, it's saying X, Y and Z. You gotta make sure that you're okay with that. And, you know, thankfully, they were, you know, that caused them to take a second look. And, you know, art is risky.

Art business is risky. I mean, you know, they say when you go to college for an art, like, get ready to bag groceries, get ready to ask people if they want fries with that. Like, it is a risky, risky field. So if you are met with some success based on the professionalism that you've put forth so far, which is what happened to me. Which is what, how I got the job in la. The folks from Shuttlepod came on my show, saw how I ran my show, and they said, hey, we want to work with you. Great.

I'm that organized for myself. But someone was able to see that and interpret that as. That's my level of professionalism. They wanted that on their team. That's how it happens a lot of times anyways. You got to be able to say, hey, look, I value my time, and I want to make sure that I am secure with everything that is happening in this creative endeavor. And if. If it works, if it ticks all the boxes, green light, let's go.

If there's something that you're not comfortable with, you need to speak up before you put pen to paper. I actually talked with a professor of theater who's a tremendous actor and actually has a comedy background. And we got into a discussion about working on different projects. And she told me there's three things you want to consider. Material, people you're working with and the money you need. Two out of three, two out of three is workable.

If the money's great and the people are great, the project could be dog shit. But you're having fun with people you like and the pay's good or. That explains Star Wars. Yeah, to be honest. Explains a lot of projects. When you've got that in mind, it's like, oh, that answers a lot of questions. Yeah. Then again, the other side is where the money is crap and the project is great and the acting is amazing. Then you have theater. Yeah, it's all theater. And you know what?

We see a lot of great stuff come for that, come from that. Where, you know, you get these smaller independent films where you've got, you know, a writer and a director and cast who just believe in what they're doing, but they just couldn't scrape the funds together somehow. Robert De Niro is in the back. That happens. You know, he would do that for. He would do that for film student. For film student.

He lives in New York, and if you brought him a great script and whole thing, he would show up on a day. He would show up on the day and be in your student film. I think. I think Dennis Hopper did the same thing where it was just kind of like they see these young filmmakers who are hungry and they've done their P's and Q's and they've. But they don't have the funds to book Robert De Niro. That's not going to happen.

But he sees their passion, he sees their work and their creativity and says, you know what? I'll show up for the day. You've got me for the day. I'll sit in the back, I'll put my name in the credits. I'll be on the poster. We can do this. I mean, Stephen King. Stephen King would sell his short stories, would sell the rights to his short stories, I think, to young filmmakers for a dollar. That's great. Now you're producing a Stephen King thing that it did, and it cost you pennies. That's amazing.

You know when you get to a point where you can do that sort of thing. I just finished telling you. It happened to me with folks out in la. They were kind enough to come on my show after seeing the work that I do on social media and with my podcast. They came on the show, saw how I ran a show, and they were like, you know what? All right, let's. Let's talk. Let's work. Great. I'm down to work. And you got to be ready for that stuff, too. You know, the fact that I got

15 minutes on the mic with Nana. Visitor came because I asked her at the right time, and my computer and microphone were set up and ready to go. She said, yeah, you want to do it now? I said, absolutely. It's set up, ready to go. I walked her into the other room and hit record, and we started talking. Like, if I had said, oh, can you give me 10 minutes?

She'd have been like, no, sorry. You know, I think back to that scene in Batman Begins where Liam Neeson's walking Christian Bale around the ninja compound, and he talks about the ninjas being able to disappear. He's like, it's preparation and patience. You know, it's preparation and agility. Like, he breaks it down. It's not magic. It's not magic. You gotta be ready. That's how it works. And to be honest, working in the arts seems to follow the same pattern. Seems to follow the same formula.

You put yourself into it, you swing for the fences, and when that opportunity comes along, take it. All right, let's do random rolls. Yes. So we're gonna jump into random rolls. This is 20. Do you want me to roll it? Well, actually, 100. Actually, we have different questions that we go, are you. Are you kidding? Like, I'm. I'm a decent DM. I've got a D.100. Okay. I wanted to. I wasn't sure the quality, the level of nerd we had. So nice.

It takes six minutes for it to stop rolling, but, hey, I know. So here we go. Roll number 1 97. Is artificial intelligence going to take over humanity? Yes. Next roll. Here we go. This is perfect. Are you kidding? You're talking to a Star Trek nerd. Absolutely. I was going to say, you've been waiting for this moment for your whole life, probably. I had that one locked and loaded, man.

I got to say, though, like, just chatting with ChatGPT and Stuff, we're doing a Star Trek game right now, tabletop RPG game. And I was like, I kind of want to run a game now just so that you can have ChatGPT be the computer, because you can legitimately type in, hey, ChatGPT. I want you to act as if you're the Star Trek computer right now, and it will do it. And it does a pretty surprisingly great job of coming up with Star Trek jargon and complications and challenges and all sorts

of stuff like that. When you say, like, hey, we'd like to tell us the tachyon readings on this whatever, it legit just, like, types up a bunch of stuff. Computer. Star Trek Y gibberish. That sounds amazing. So highly recommend people try that. Oh God. All right, ready for another roll? Yeah. Last one. All right, here we go. 26. What is the last nerdy indulgence you made just for yourself? Ooh, last nerdy indulgence I made just for myself. I think it was probably

a D and D thing I bought. Yeah, I bought off of D and D Beyond. I bought one Grung above and the Tortle package because I was like, I have to have those. I have to have those. And they're. And they're so inexpensive. I was just like, yeah, like I want to. I want to be able to play as a turtle. That sounds so, like so much fun. Actually. The Grung are very fun. Yeah. Yeah. You know, looking at the third party independent adventure scene out there. There is a writer who has

done a book and now I can. Oh, there it is. Hang on one second. So I found this on Amazon. I was just kind of like, I have to have this. So more, more than the stuff I bought on D and D Beyond. I found this on Amazon by Andrew Kolb. K O L B. He did book called Neverland where you can play through. You can play through the entire island and he's broken down every character, every group. The pirates, the mermaids, the Lost boys, everybody and every part of that island. I am so excited.

I am so excited to take my players through this in the not too distant future. He actually did a follow up book which I'm even more excited about called Oz. I'm a big wizard of Oz fan. Yeah. I will be adding that book to my collection hopefully in the not too distant future. Sounds totally awesome. Yeah, that is pretty cool. Sorry, a little grung pun. Totally. No. All right. Totally awesome. There you go. You gotta hit the D. You gotta hit the D. That could be taken wrong. All right.

I should have said. I thought you would have loved to play in frog gotten realms. Wow. As a comedian I'm sure you hate puns. Anyway, let's do one more. I love a good painful pun. One that just gets the eyeball crunch. Yeah, they go completely reversed in my head of just. Oh God. It's even better when it's delivered and then realize it's not quite delivered totally well and then you have to do it again. It's like someone explaining a joke, which I do very often.

The best puns are the explained puns. Yeah, it's. You deliver. You deliver the pun and then you get the like. Did you get it? If. Time for one more. Do we have time for one more, fellas. These are so. These are so fun, actually. Well, if we can do one more of those. But we also was thinking we do have rapid fire questions, which are a. Whole series of back and forth too. So why don't we do a bunch of those and see where we land?

Yeah, we can. Yeah, we can put some effort or some more time into these specific. Normally we alternate, but I want to hit you with a couple quick ones here. So normally I ask Star Trek or Star wars, but I'm pretty sure I know the answer on that. So I decided to create some custom ones for you. So I'm going to give them to. You real quick here. Which is your favorite Star Trek villain? I gotta go. Khan. Okay. Favorite. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, shoot. It was Peter Weller's character in the last.

In the last big thing in Enterprise. It was the episode Demons and Terra Prime. He was the leader of the terrorist organization Terraprime. His. I've actually gone on record as saying he's better than Khan because he was out for a bigger endgame. Khan was out for revenge, which you're out for a revenge against one man as opposed to this guy who's looking to. In his mind, he's out to save the planet, which there's a bunch of implications there.

But. Yeah, I can't remember the character's name, but it's Peter Weller's character from Demons and Terrapin at the end of season four of Enterprise. That rapidly. Yes, that's perfect. Perfect. All right, how about this fave Star Trek movie? That's gonna be generations. Yeah, yeah. Generations. Yeah. Kirk and Picard. Kirk and Picard. Yeah, Yeah. I watch it around my birthday with Wrath of Han and they actually go really well together. All right, I might ask a non Star Trek question.

So let's see. No nerdy stand up comedy questions. I know we can get there. I'm gonna. Here's one. Your zombie apocalypse weapon of choice. Shovel. It's a tool and a weapon. It's a blunt. It's got an edge to it, but it's also blunt. You don't have to reload it. As long as the handle doesn't break, you're good to go for a long time. Tea or coffee? Coffee. Three favorite pizza toppings. See, nowadays I go, do you count cheese as a topping? No cheese is on pizza. Unless you're doing extra cheese.

That is an acceptable. That's for suckers. Extra cheeses. They are not giving. You've heard it here first, folks. They Are not giving you extra cheese. That's not a thing. That's a way for them to get you from. That's a way for big pizza to get more money from you. Don't be suckered. Don't be sucked by big pizza. It's big pizza and big cheese. They've been working on this forever. Yeah, yeah. Let's pull the curtain. Don't pull the curtain back on big pizza. Pull it down, fellas. Just get it off.

All right, anyway, this just became an expose. So I know Deadpool goes pineapple and olive because he likes the sweet and salty. I actually like sweet and spicy, so I go pineapple and jalapeno. And then I do like it a little bit hearty, so I'll choose a meat. But I'm a simple guy. Ground beef. Don't overthink it. Now, here's the other thing. Here's the other thing. I get my toppings under the cheese. You have to ask for that, because most of the time,

they just put them on top. Well, as soon as you pick it up, if the cheese and the toppings haven't taken, all your toppings are going to slide off. So you got to ask to get all your toppings under the cheese. The Greek restaurant I used to work at would do that. It was. Oh, man, it was great. Loved it. Good way to go. Once you do it, you'll never go back. Is cereal a soup? And why not? Or why is it? Hmm. I tend to think of soups as more savory, and due to the nature of cereal, a bowl of cereal,

classic bowl of cereal. Even if you're just going cheerios. Corn flakes. Even the most bland of cereals end up coming off sweet most of the time, Even depending on the type of milk you choose. Even if you go with something like oat milk or soy milk, it's still going to come off sweet. It just is. Especially in America. Yeah, especially in America. As a Canadian, our cereal is different up here a little bit.

Like corn pops in America are, like, crazy compared to, like, we have regulations here about how sugary we can make our. Our cereals. And so. Yeah, yeah. So we have. We have some cereals up here, like Alpine, that is never sweet. Like, they got raisins in it, which is the sweetest part of it. Oh, actually, that sounds pretty good. Yeah. Do I consider cereal soup? I mean, off the. Off the bat, I'd have to say no,

because I think you're talking about. I mean, that sets the tone for your day and to Be honest, I look at a nice big cold bowl of cereal is kind of. It's just as important as your shower, as your morning shower. Like it's going to wake you up, you know, a little pep in your step, a little crunch, you know, a little sweetness to kind of get those eyelids open. Yeah. Soup to me says comfort. It's usually warm, so it's kind of an end of the day or maybe midday if you're having.

If you're having a rough day, makes a good lunch to kind of bring you back down to zero. You know, it's at the end of the day or on a cold day, you're wanting some comfort. Nice bowl of soup, the way to go, fellas. But, yeah, do I consider you. Do I consider American cereal soup? No. Alien or Aliens. Oh, God, they're too very different. I know. Yeah, you're talking Ridley Scott versus James Cameron. You're talking about a think piece versus an action movie. Those are apples and oranges, fellas.

I gotta say, I have grown to appreciate Alien more, but I think Aliens is so much more accessible. If you're talking about a first watch, you kind of need to go Aliens. Because everything that happens in the first one, you see the ramifications on Ridley's. On Ripley's face and she talks about her crew and she's giving the briefing to the Marines. Now, do you get all of the gravitas of everything that happened in the first movie? No, but again, you're talking about a bunch of miners.

You're talking about a bunch of people who didn't really stand a chance against the xenomorph. Truly. Now you've got some bad hombres, to quote the movie. You've got some bad hombres and they fall like flies. It is very easily accessible. You've also got the added layer of danger because of Newt. Now, Ripley's not just trying to protect herself, she's got to protect Newt as well. So you're seeing the queen Alien versus. It's not Newt's mother, but definitely a surrogate mother figure.

It's mom versus Mom. That is. That is a brutal fight that there are dudes everywhere who are just like, yeah, I'm not getting in between two moms fighting. Not gonna happen if I got it. If I gotta come down on one or the other, I. I think. I think I gotta go Aliens, unfortunately, I do. I do respect the hell out of the first one, and I love that as a whole. But, yeah, I gotta go. Yeah. I would agree with you on that one for sure. All right, Frank? Yeah, I think.

All right, so how many cats is too many cats? It's too many cats. When you're. When you are making a conscious decision to get out of their space, their space is outside. They are. They are animals. They belong outside. So if you've got an animal, an animal. I have a dog, but he's living in my house. He's living with me and my wife now. We treat him, and we call him our son, but at the same time, like, he's an animal. He peeps, he pees and poops outside. Like, and

we joke all the time. You know, he. You know, he'll be on the couch or be on our bed or something. We'll be, you know, trying to get our own little space, and he'll grumble and he'll just. And I always chime in with, oh, I'm sorry, am I in your way? So how many cats is too many cats? Depends on the person. And it depends on the person. Not the. Not the. Not the abode. It does not depend on the house.

It is up to the person. If you, as a person are finding that you are making a conscious decision to get out of cats way, you have too many cats. Well, Todd, this has been so awesome. And I gotta ask, where can people find you? Listen to your podcast, see your comedy, and any other stuff you wanna plug. Yes, absolutely. So, as I've mentioned a couple times, I am on Cinema Shock, where we cover cult and genre film history. We take a filmmaker and we usually cover a good chunk of their career.

Usually something that aligns with the story of their life and work. We actually just finished. We just finished a series on Sam Raimi not too long ago. Before that, we also covered James Cameron. We covered everything from Terminator to Avatar. So small set in terms of James Cameron. Our very. Our very first series that we did, we covered the collaborations between George Romero and Tom Savini. So anyways,

we get into the nitty gritty. Like, we really dive deep on these filmmakers and the stories behind the stories. And you can find that on all of the socials at CinemaShock. You can find all of the episodes and our merch@cinemashock.net. if you're a big Star Trek fan, you can find my show, the computer resume, podcast, wherever you get podcasts. We are covering the entire franchise in chronological order for fans new and old. Right now we have finished Enterprise

and we are about halfway through. No, we're. Where are we? Sorry, we're in Discovery. I think we're between season one and two of Discovery. We've also covered the pilot episode. We've covered short treks. We are also incorporating comic books if they tie to an episode or a film. We've had discussions with actors, we've had discussions with comedians, Lego builders, tattoo artists. If you. If you like Star Trek and you have the means to watch an episode, odds are

I've asked you to be on my show. So, fellas, get ready for some questions about coming on my show. For sure, for sure. But, yeah, you can. You can find. You can find computer resume podcasts. As I mentioned, you can find it anywhere you find your podcast. You can find it on all of the socials at Computer Resume. A lot of people call it computer resume. I did a horrible job of picking my name, but yes,

computerresume on all of the socials. If you're looking to find my standup comedy stuff, pictures of my food, pictures of my dog, pictures of old cars, you can follow me on all of the socials. Rtodavis Spelled just like it sounds. Todd A. Davis on all of the socials. And I'm available on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd for the movie fans out there, as well as D and D beyond. So that's where I'm at, fellas. That's where you can find all my stuff.

Everything except my Social Security number. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Todd. This has been so great. And as always, everybody, keep it nerdy. Hey, nerdpreneurs, you just finished the free version of this Nerdpreneur interview. We spoke to Todd for a whole other hour after this where we covered more on his podcasting business and a whole lot more Star Trek.

You can get access to the full version of this episode by going to patreon.com nerdpreneur and becoming a member of our awesome Nerdpreneur board. Thanks again for listening. Keep it nerdy.