- By the end of the year,
I had a spreadsheet
of every topic that most black comics
nationally were discussing and I just went, okay, cool.
- You've got your perspective.
I just want to be happy.
Don't you want to be happy?
So let's get right into what I think you do
as well as anybody in the world,
which is why we're so happy to have you here.
From a content creation standpoint,
from a creative standpoint,
how do you personally, as a human, like, think about that?
How did you come,
what kind of process even at a child,
back to being four,
did you have comedy around the house?
Did it come natural?
Were you distracting teachers in third grade?
Like what was your early process
of what has become your professional process?
- Comedy was escapism for me.
I wasn't in the same school system
for more than two years until high school.
So it was the constant reacclimation
to the social scenes and circles
of people around Birmingham.
And like, I would take the radio,
my father was in journalism,
and so I would follow him to speaking engagements
and stuff like that.
And he was a lot more wokedy woke than me
in terms of his content and what he spoke for
and what he fought for,
but the oration part of it I'm sure I got from him.
I'd say the first big deal was in the sixth grade.
I decided to make my own comic book.
I was obsessed with comic strips.
We read the newspaper as a family every Sunday morning.
That was our thing.
We'd sit the paper down and pull it apart like a turkey
and everybody would read a different section.
And so I was into Marmaduke and Garfield,
Calvin and Hobbes, the whole run.
And I drew my own comic book
and then I would charge students 50 cents to read it.
And then you had to bring it back.
It was like a one comic book blockbuster.
And I think that was my first hustle.
The concept of a copy machine and a stapler just didn't.
- You missed it.
You missed it.
- I said, no, this is the only one,
you can have to give it back on Thursday
because I'm getting ice cream money from Terrance.
- Roy, on the record,
who tried to not bring it back on time
in the history of this business, anybody?
- There was a guy Trey McClure,
we're friends now,
so I can call him out by his full name.
He held on to Mr. Goose a little longer than he should,
didn't pay any late fees.
It's all love, Trey.
I know this is gonna get back to you
'cause Alabama likes to gossip.
So for me, that was kind of where,
you know, being funny started
and high school was really where things started moving.
I got cut from my high school baseball team
my freshman year,
but I wanted to learn and see, well, if I suck,
what are they doing right?
So I volunteered to be the bat boy, equipment manager,
whatever you want to call it,
and I just trailed the varsity kids around
for a whole season.
And they did the food fundraisers
where you sell the chips
to raise money to pay for the uniform
and I outsold everyone in the school.
- [Gary] Interesting.
- And so that was,
when you start noticing how you need to build relationships,
and sometimes it's not what you're selling,
it's who you are.
The product becomes secondary to a greater degree.
There's a gentleman that my father worked for
named A.G. Gaston,
who was one of the first black millionaires
and A.G. Gaston had a mantra,
it was called find a need and fulfill it.
And so that always stuck with me.
And to bring you to the present,
comedically and where content creation is concerned,
for me, it's always been about seeing,
all right, what isn't out there?
And is there a way to make that
feel like something that's already happening now?
I sold a project to Comedy Central
that we ended up shooting a pilot for,
we're still in development,
and it's about a probation officer
and his relationship with this clients.
And to kind of show a different side
of what law enforcement is.
Probation is law enforcement.
It's closer to social work
on the spectrum of kicking ass, but it is law enforcement.
And we really boiled the show down to a lot of degrees,
there's a procedural element to it,
so it feels like something you've seen before,
but it's about a world
that you know absolutely nothing about.
And I think there's a value in being unique.
And for me, that came, I got turned,
I guess when I think about it now,
all of my best moments came from when I was rejected.
BET passed on me for Comic View for one year in 2002.
So much like baseball,
okay, y'all didn't pick me, who did you pick?
Let's see what they did.
And I sat for an entire season and watched Comic View.
It's like 40 episodes, six comics an episode,
and I just cataloged
every topic that was breached on the show.
And I just kept a list
of how many comedians talked
about this, this, this, this, and this.
And by the end of the year,
I had a spreadsheet of every topic
that most black comics nationally were discussing.
And I just went okay, cool,
I won't do any jokes about that.
So let's just start there
and see if we can be something
that hasn't been heard before it.
And off that alone, that should get me a look.
It doesn't mean that my joke is gonna be the funniest,
but it will be the most different.
And if I can at least have that advantage over you
when it comes time to pick tapes,
then I think that's something worth exploiting.
And so that's what I've always tried to do.
- It's interesting you bring that up
because for me, and I'm a, I talk a lot,
I produce so much content,
but so much of my strength and so much of what I attribute
the good things that have happened to me is about listening.
And the story you just told
is a really strong listening story.
The baseball story was a strong listening story.
Do you feel like observation and listening
is foundational for you?
- Yeah.
I think that's more important than execution
because you got to know where to aim the gun
before you shoot- - It's the insight,
it's the strategy.
- Yeah, it's a sniper.
You're sitting for hours and hours taking in information
and deciding when is the exact proper moment
to mount your attack.
And so for me, it's definitely about listening.
It's definitely about assessing the marketplace,
seeing what's being sold and seeing what's getting on
and then also trying to pull a Wayne Gretzky
and be ahead of the puck,
which is why COVID is so interesting to me
in terms of comedy creation and content creation as a whole,
because not only do you have a pandemic
where people are in pain
and people are gonna be hurting,
and regardless if a vaccine came tomorrow,
there are gonna be a lot of people
that are gonna be dealing with a lot of fiscal hurt,
a lot of emotional hurt.
I lost an aunt in February,
so I can't imagine what other people are going through.
So where there's pain, there's laughter,
there's an opportunity for a laugh,
but you don't know how long.
And then on top of that,
you have an election coming on the backside of this.
And if you think that elections
don't affect the type of content that ends up on television,
you're wrong.
So it's about looking and figuring out,
okay, what can you pitch or what can you create today
that's going to still have an impact
no matter who wins in November
and no matter what people are going through.
You know, the thing that's interesting now about comedy,
Chris Rock said,
and I'm paraphrasing him,
but he basically said everything that I do
is to convince people to come see me live.
Everything in his portfolio
was about getting you to pay the $50 or whatever.
He's not $50, he's probably like $100 now,
but to come see me live.
Come see this movie, watch this TV show, whatever.
Well, the come see me live element
isn't really there right now for comedians.
And you don't know when that's gonna come back.
So you have to do things that maintain relevance
so that when people are ready to go back out
and when people have enough money
on a regular basis to go back out,
you know 'cause I'm not gonna sit here
and act like what I do
is similar to the other people we're gonna talk to today.
What I do is a disposable income activity
that can hopefully alleviate a little bit of,
I'm no different than a sip of wine.
- That's right, it's a 100% escapism, 100%.
- So, you know,
I think when people get back on their feet
and the unemployment dries up,
the first thing you aren't thinking about
is coming to see some jokes for me inside of a corona hut,
which is what a comedy club is as far as,
low ceiling, everybody's together, that's a hut,
that's a corona hut.
So it'll be awhile.
So it's about figuring out content
and ways to do things that keep you relevant
and keep you ahead of the curve.
- On that note
because for everybody who's joining in #marketingforthenow,
please tell us what you're thinking
about this interview with Roy.
These are about 15 minute blasts.
So before I lose you Roy,
talk to me about the Call in Digital Show,
because I think as I'm listening to you,
it makes a whole lot of sense
why you're leaning in that direction.
- Well, because I feel like,
I feel like without getting into too much detail about it,
I feel like it's an opportunity to unite people.
And I see what's happening with a lot of the Zoom shows now.
Like if you peak the game from the beginning of quarantine
where you had a surge
in people becoming content creators,
so there's fewer consumers of content.
Everybody's grabbing a microphone,
I've gone to the camera stores in New York
and every time I try to get a camera component,
it's sold out or there's a two week back order
'cause everybody's buying the same stuff now.
I think that we are all one.
And so I did morning radio for 10 years
and the best part of morning radio
was talking to the streets.
And I think that's the most interactive way
to go about doing things.
And radio was a place where I was able
to really build a lot of relationships
because I did prank phone calls.
And so with the prank calls,
I took prank phone calls and this is pre YouTube,
this is '02, '03.
So the only way you went viral was over an email
where if someone sent you an email and said download this,
and you would,
you would just download random stuff to your laptop.
And that's kind of how I was able
to kind of grow my comedy a little bit.
And so through that what I learned was that
it's laughs that connect people.
So if we can all laugh together,
then I think there's something collective about that.
And so when I look at the marketplace
and when I find a need to fulfill,
I think that the sense
of collective conversation comedically,
most comedy conversations are observational,
they're voyeuristic,
hey, watch me talk to this person
versus, hey, let's talk.
And I think that's the cool thing about Instagram Live
is that people have a direct line.
I think there's a way
to kind of set that up a little bit more formally.
Real quick, my friend Carlton,
what we did because I was having trouble
breaking into prank phone calls in other markets,
and this just goes back to finding a need and fulfilling it,
I was having trouble breaking into comedy clubs
in certain markets
because I didn't have a television credit,
but I peaked that most comedy clubs
value comedians that have media reach.
And so the thing I knew about radio at the time
is that most radio and smaller AA, AAA baseball cities,
Omaha, Syracuse's, Columbia, Missouri's of the world,
they're carrying jocks in the afternoon or in the morning
that are by themselves or it's a two person show,
so they don't have a lot of content.
We're only playing the prank calls in Birmingham
and then they'd go in a vault forever.
So I would contact DJs
in cities where I wasn't getting booked at the comedy club
and mail them to prank phone calls for free
and just say, "Play 'em and say my name.
I don't care what you do with them after that,
they're yours forever."
And they would play them,
I'd let that marinate for three months,
then I would call the comedy club and say,
"Hey, I'm on the radio in your city every week,
you should probably book me at your club."
And that's how I was able to expand my reach comedically
and able to leverage those fans.
The one mistake I made was not having a fucking email list.
- You didn't have the data.
- Do you understand the data I would have had
if I'd have just been collecting emails since '02?
- Yes Roy, I do.
That's what I do for a living.
I do understand. - That's the one thing
I wish I had.
- No, but honestly I think the one thing that,
that's fine, but I say this a lot to my team.
A lot of people value data very highly
and the world does and I do,
but actual attention and brand
really, really gets underestimated.
And the part, I was listening very intently,
say my name and say it right and that's it
was exactly the punchline of why you're sitting here today.
And I'm really thrilled to be co-hosting this day with you
and I appreciate you and thanks for getting up rolling.
Hey, everybody on YouTube,
first of all, thank you so much, so humbled for your time.
I don't wear a watch, but time is the biggest asset.
So thank you for watching that video.
If you got some value out of that,
there's plenty more where that came from.
Feel free to check it out.