In November 2019 I started this journey of writing about stand up comedy. Others had tried it with their websites and YouTube vlogs but usually got burned out by a year's end. I'll be approaching my fifth year this November and I've written over 200 articles, attempting to give the most practical advice about writing, performing, branding, and getting booked in the stand up world. It's not easy. But luckily I'm living this comedy life daily with a lot of other wonderful comics I'm in contact with telling me the problems they face day in and day out. I also read a lot of Facebook comments and go to comedy group pages where I read about local drama and universal comedy issues, inspiring more topics to dive into. And there's a lot of bad advice I read. People don't know they're giving bad advice, so I don't fault them. Some inherently give bad advice because they're bitter or confused by the business side - it's more of a limited amount of experiences than purposely trying to sabotage rising comics.

But if there is one piece of advice that really upsets me is when people tell you what to do without giving some guidance. To hand a young comic a destination without a road map and compass is beyond bad advice, because it creates the type of anxiety and fear that causes them to do bad bringers, hook up with shady venues, and causes a lot of self doubt not needed so early on in their stage of comedy. Recently, I read an article by a club that said if you're not satisfied with your bookings, just start doing churches, cruises, and colleges. They gave no idea how to do any of those things and basically inferred if clubs don't book you anymore, then it's because that's not your market and you're not needed. None of that is true. So here is some practical advice on how to reintroduce yourself to a showcase club and the tools you'll need to break into new markets if you're ready.

How To Reintroduce Yourself To A Club 
So your "bringing days" are behind you. Your friends and family are burned out buying $5-$30 tickets to watch you do 5 minutes. That is normal. You've found your bookings dry up. You show up to the auditions, only to be told they need you to promote. Understand, that's a "them" problem and not a "you" problem. Sure does suck for them that you brought more people than they could, but that acknowledgment doesn't fix the problem of getting booked again. What you have to do is take a break from the clubs and focus on everything else around you that doesn't require bringing. Go find bar shows and tiny venues where you just focus on the act. Do that for 6 months to a year. Give your friends a break too. Those who work in secret can shine in the future open light. 

Now that you've discovered your new, more confident voice, you go back to the club and you ask them if they need hosts from open mics to smaller room shows. You bring a new type of value. Clubs don't want to ask you, just to hear you wanted the Main Room instead of hosting, but by offering to host you can build relationships with every comic you bring up. By showing the venue you don't need them, they'll respect you more.

Now, all of this is predicated on the idea your act is a club representation style act. Which means you're not too alt or crude. If they see progress as a comic, they'll be impressed too. Think of this as getting out of the comedy friendzone. 

Tools You'll Need To Reinvent Your Brand 
Often, comics want to be treated like big name comics when they have nothing to show if anyone looked them up. One reason clubs or agencies don't take your booking requests seriously is because you are selling the idea you're an asset without providing the proof. So let's say you go back to the club in 6-12 months, here are a few things to put together so you can show them you're a wanted and needed comic.

A Functioning Website
You'd be surprised how your website can change someone's perception of you. It doesn't have to be fancy either. You can use a pretty simple out of the box web based tool like Wix or Weebly (which I use) to build a front page a few tabs. Make sure it is both computer and phone accessible. You'd be surprised how people made none phone friendly websites by using Flash or code that doesn't work on the mobile device. Here's mine. You can look at it here: 
https://www.themoomabides.com/

You'll want to have a page dedicated to a calendar of shows:
https://www.themoomabides.com/show-dates.html

And a few 5 minute clips (linked to YouTube) showcasing your best work, and EPK (Electric Press Kit) with some nice photos, credits, and lists of comics and venues you work with. This will allow a booker from clubs, cruises, churches, casinos, or colleges to see your highlights and career.  
​https://www.themoomabides.com/press-kit.html

Getting that 5, 10, and 30 Minute Tape 
No matter the venue or market you want, your link/tape game must be strong. You want to have a couple listed 5-10 minute sets on YouTube that demonstrate your brand of humor. Don't worry about comics stealing jokes. That's not really as big of thing as you'd think, and unless they take your joke on late night, no one will ever think you're stealing a joke you actually wrote. But if you don't have a YouTube digital fingerprint, many will think you're the one stealing jokes or just not very good. I know if a comic can't send my a tape of anything then I'm not interested. 

One thing you can do is invest in a small tripod and use your iPhone to film a set. Just make sure the laughs are there and you can be clearly seen. If you're struggling getting laughs, then it's time to reevaluate the material. Even if you just have one solid 5 minute set, you can get a lot of gigs. 

Getting a longer set will require more work on your part. You may need to ask a booker at a restaurant show or alt venue to do you a favor and give you a feature or co-headliner spot. You can ask if they need helpers or need access to other comics you could reach out to. Another way is to invest in yourself and find a small venue and produce the show yourself. Tell your friends you're doing a taping and want them to see you do 25-40 minutes. I would get a friend with a nice camera to help. You then post a long set on YouTube as UNLISTED and cut it up for reels and Tik Toks. 

Don't Be Afraid To Say Goodbye To Clubs 
Here's the dark secret about showcase "bringer" clubs: They only wanted you for the guests. If by some chance you built a following or got a manager or got road gigs with a big headliner, they might utilize you differently, but for most clubs, they suck you up and spit you out. In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Willie Loman screamed, "You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit." Yet, the bringer rooms do this to everyone at some point. 

The irony is that after you do all the work to build a website, create a better digital fingerprint, and work on the tapes that showcase your best work, you'll probably get the attention of agencies that need you for road gigs that pay. Currently, I'm in three agencies and a just got invited to participate in corporate emcee work. I have had casting producers reach out to work with me on projects, and I just got back from a paid acting gig due to the producer/writer knowing my comedy stylings. The more you work on yourself, the less you feel the need to impress those who never saw your true value. 

Final Thoughts
Here's the thing. The bad advice I mentioned earlier was just a dumb way of saying if you no longer are getting booked, start looking at other doors. That is a truth, but to just say it is just as condescending as when your family member says, "You should go on The Tonight Show." Unless they know the booker, they're being cruel, even if they think they're helping. 

​So if you can grab anything from this article, please start thinking how you can shape your career to reflect all the hard work you've put in. And if you still want to get back into the clubs, don't settle for anything less than a promotion upwards.   

The most important moment a comic has is the moment they walk on stage. You convey everything with your body language, face, smile, frown, wave, or lack of acknowledging the crowd. You either demonstrate confidence and control or nerves and anxiety. Most people will start making judgements about you immediately. For better or worse. I'm talking about the showcasing comics. The middle acts. The openers. When Jim Gaffigan walks on stage, the whole room knows him. But for most of you reading, the only people who know you are your friends who came out. And they won't be there on the road. If they are, either they are super loyal or potentially stalking you. Which is really just a form of loyalty. 

The second most important moment is when you open your mouth and say the first joke. And it should be a joke, because it's a comedy show. Assuming you're not the host, you have one moment to get the crowd excited about the journey you're taking them on. That first joke is going to create a flight or fight moment. That first joke is going to either inspire hecklers or tell them to back off. And this moment happens in every show. From dive bar s**t shows to theater corporate gigs. Comedy is always comedy. It's the first impression, and while a bad first joke can be recovered from, you know the old adage: You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. 

So many comics self-sabotage their act by wasting time on stage. Either through silly dancing while the intro music is playing, trying to hype up the crowd with "Heyyyyy where my [single people/married people/random ethnic group/random gender group] at?" or acting confused on stage ("What do I want to talk about?"). 

So let's dive into what you should be doing in that first 20 seconds.

You Should Be Building an Identity  
What that first moment should be doing is creating an identity on stage. The first joke let's the crowd know the style of comedy you're doing. Are you dirty? Clean? Observational? Personal? Intellectual? Silly? There are a lot of ways to go. But the first thing you say builds a foundation. It's the moment people start to build the impression you try to give them and NOT the impression they created in their head. This is beyond crucial to your show going well. 

Identity is then the prism in which the rest of the set makes sense. If you walk up on stage and go "What's up Fuckers!" and then try to tell jokes about puppy sitting and church, unless they're "ironic," you will create a whiplash that makes no sense. If you start with something innocent, lacking a dark edge and switch into dirtier jokes about sex, the crowd is going to be confused. And not in a fun Andy Kaufman way either. But in a open micer just took a dump on the stage sort of way. 

Your Identity can be fleshed out over the set, but the crowd should get a sense of who you are immediately. Are you the fun aunt or uncle type? The tired parent? The swinging single guy? The creepy clown? The deadbeat child? The overthinker? The shy tech nerd? Something should scream out to the audience about how you think about yourself. They should be able to see your desk at work and your room at home in their head.  

For me, I start with insecurity. My act is a balancing back and forth between a full dating life traveling around the country for work or comedy while never feeling secure about any of it. Imposter syndrome galore. This allows for people to believe my stories about dating adult film actresses while looking like Frodo Baggins and working in TV and film while never feeling like it will last. This also gets the crowd on my side faster, as they like rooting for me. And I have to do this in the first 20 seconds. 
I can do this in a few ways. One way is by saying a "first joke" and the other is having an established "opening joke." There is a difference and I'll beak that down now. 

Opening Jokes Should Start Off Most Sets 
An opening joke will establish you and your style of comedy. I usually make a weight loss or weight gain joke, depending on where I am in my life. But the purpose is to get the crowd into a trance - to sell my act off the bat. I've changed it over the years.

When I was 260 pounds, my opening joke was:
"Glad to be here. Thank god I'm in an air conditioned room. I hate the heat. Because I'm fat. Hell, I sweat eating a salad. That's just a joke. I don't eat salad."   

After losing weight because of heath changes:
"I'm excited to announce my doctor told three years ago to lose fifty pounds and I've done it and kept it off! I no longer feel like a fat guy who has to lose fifty; instead I feel like a skinny guy who just gained thirty."  

Notice each joke has a self-deprecation tone. It let's the audience know how I see myself. And it lets them know it's okay to laugh with me and at me, because I do it too. 

And while your opening joke doesn't have to be self-deprecating, it should give them a taste of the type of jokes you'll be slinging all night.    

First Jokes Are Not Opening Jokes 
While an Opening Joke is an identify defining joke, first jokes are just that: the first joke. There can be multiple types of "first jokes" that help establish your style of comedy. Here a few examples:

• Joke from the previous comic's set (tag) 
• Joke about the venue 
• Joke about a person in the front row 
• Joke about the city/local establishment 
• Joke about the neighboring city 
• Joke about your trip over 

While these jokes demonstrate quick wit, and I do these types of jokes a lot, they can also make the rest of your set feel wooden by comparison. That is because everything following will have a script rhythm to them. But here are a few of my favorite first jokes I might do. 

When the last comic or host is tall and good looking:
"Give it up for [_______]! Wasn't he great? He's everything my ex girlfriend wished I was." 

When I'm in a rough part of California:
"Who here is from [this city]? Who here is from [neighboring city]? Great, we'll meet in the parking lot after my set for the gang war. I hope you wore the right colors!"    

These jokes don't really say anything about my act, but what they do is create the potential of future improv and off-the-cuff possibilities. And that can open you up and be the reminder YOU (yes, you!) are funny and not just the jokes. 

Final Thoughts
As you navigate through your comedy journey, you have to remember that as you evolve, so will your jokes. So don't be afraid to change the opening joke as you change. With that said, make sure the opening joke shows a sense of your act so the crowd can feel excited about the set. Recently, I made a mistake of making an Epstein joke that got big laughs from half the crowd and bigger groans from the other half. Which means I had to tap into my dirtiest jokes only, limiting my ability to flow through the act as I desired. By creating a division up front, my more evergreen jokes didn't hit and I was forced into blue crowd work about a married couple looking for a throuple that got a great response. They didn't know I was drowning and using the crowd work as a safety raft. It's a trap and if you go too far off course, pivoting can be tricky.  

​Regardless of your choice to start with a tag joke from early in the night or sticking with a tried and true opening joke, you never reach the level you want if you just jump into odd observational humor. You then become a human joke book and not a flesh and blood person. You can move into those observational jokes later, but not until they get a sense of who you are first. Because after that you will have created a space that invites all the creativity you need to be the comic you want to be.     

Anyone who grew up in the 1990's as a junior high or high school student probably watched a lot of Saturday Night Live. Without streaming or YoutTube to later watch on your own time, if you wanted to see Mike Myers, Chris Farley, and Adam Sandler, you had to be home at 11:30pm on Saturday and watch what would become the eventual lunchroom conversation (along with The Simpsons) or risk the earliest form of FOMO. Not every sketch was a homerun, but every week was must see viewing. What SNL did was train us to watch sketches in a certain way, and through the prism of talented writers, producers, and executives, that format became the standard. There's a reason we still remember SNL sketches but nothing from MADtv really made it into the cultural zeitgeist. The only sketch show to come close was In Living Color, but that was so edgy, it was unsustainable to maintain on network TV.

Today, everyone is a creating sketches. But here's the catch. The SNL style is now considered dated by younger generations. The TikTok/IG Reel culture has created a new model. Out are the 5-10 minute long form sketches and in are the 60 second sketches that rack up views and are immediately disposed of after consuming. So I want to look at the three basic forms of sketch writing, because if you are using the SNL structure online, your chances to go viral are DOA. And if you don't have a 6-8 page sketch on file, your chances of getting hired by a showrunner becomes zilch. 

Stage Sketches 
Before most of the SNL cast members became household names, many of them were Improv and sketch characters. They honed their craft through performance groups in UCB and Groundlings classes. These types of sketches feed off the energy of the (young) crowd and have a traditional structure where the actors learn lines (often without cue cards) and allow for playful improv. If you watch these sketches on poorly shot video on YouTube today you'll find them rather static and boring. That's because they're meant to be felt, not just watched. It's a humorous experience where actors and writers are learning what works and what doesn't. Sketches on the stage don't make a lot of money, but the purpose is to find a voice in a workshop environment.   

SNL TV Sketch 
Here is where we see the classic SNL format play out and influence writers for decades. These multi-camera sketches usually start with a sort of based in reality premise. Then the sketch progressively grows and escalates into a more bizarre ending. Think about the SNL presidential sketches. The candidates walk out like they're going to have a normal debate and then the moderator loses control as more and more nonsense is spewed.  

Think about Chris Farley's Matt Foley, the man who lives in a van down by the river. The sketch doesn't really get into a big laugh until 2 minutes in! The sketch starts with concerned parents trying to get their kids off pot. Then they set up the joke with the premise they hired a motivational speaker. Then Farley shows up. Then it builds and builds until the family reunites afraid that Foley will live with them. 

Many would say it's the funniest sketch in SNL history, and they would be right. But today, that sketch wouldn't survive the Reels/TikTok algorithm. This classical long form style might stand the test of time, but it doesn't stand the test of catching a viewer in the first five seconds. The structure is set up-punchline, but through a traditional story narrative. For the millennials and Gen Xers it's the way it's supposed to be, but for the social media generation, it doesn't work. 

Social Media Sketches 
That brings us to today's sketches. Today, the hook (premise) can't take two minutes, but instead has to be introduced within the first five seconds. Whether it's Trevor Wallace's famous There's No Laws with White Claws or the current Content Machine's gender/dating videos, the jokes come within seconds, like a funny commercial; and the product is their brand of humor. 

Trevor's brand of quick hook sketches was a sort of transitional era back in the 2018-2020 era. He started with 4-5 minutes traditional lengths and eventually found a solid sweet spot of shorter sketches. He later converted these characters into the voice of his comedy. It took a few years, but after finding that voice, he has turned himself into one of the top comics in the country. 

Meanwhile, the Content Machine team has turned the 60-90 second sketch into a clear brand, mocking everything from dating culture to the corporate workplace, mocking the entire Gen Z experience. This quick 60-90 second structure packs a joke every ten seconds. With their rolodex of beautiful female guest stars, these two dudes have become the standard of sharable meme-sketches. 

Another example of this is @Cherdleys, who portrays a young man dressed like a Mormon, preaching self-righteous messages and putting down women. It's all done in good cheer, but these videos are sometimes just 10 seconds. With a mixture of silly rainbow graphics and fonts, they get thousand's of shares. With over 1 million followers, clearly this is working.     

Think of SNL as the Albert Brooks, Woody Allen, or Steve Martin type of films and today's new crop as the next group of Airplane! or Naked Gun films - layering the jokes on top of each other. One gets Oscar nominations. The others make millions at the box office. 

Why This Matters
Often I talk to friends who want to create sketches to go viral, and there are a lot of them, but they try for a few months and don't go much further than filming a bunch and then giving up. Views never get past a certain number and they get discouraged. Which is essentially the network TV mindset. Low ratings equals a failure. 

But that's not how the current algorithm works today. The ratings/views are less important than the amount of content you post. Whereas SNL takes a whole week writing and rewriting sketches, content creators pump out similar style sketches matching certain brands and themes daily.   

If you want to go viral, the trick is to create quick, disposable, rapid-fire content. It's like a video meme you send to friends and then weeks from now you've forgotten it. In our new world, this is the template. Just keep filming and putting up content. The algorithm will eventually reward you for feeding the machine. 

Think of Sketches as a Portfolio 
While going viral is a goal and eventual pathway to other successes, keep in mind that most won't. So it is important to film content you think is funny and you can be proud of. Even if you want to create long form SNL sketches, then just make them as great as you can. You might not build a fan base, but you might be able to show them to showrunners and producers down the road. By having a strong portfolio, you can prove to TV executives that you have the chops to create content, work with talent, write scripts, and film. 

So don't look at each view as life or death, but look at each individual piece as a bigger part of selling your writing or directing or editing. 

Final Thoughts
Being a comic today means you have to have your hand in a few things beyond stand up. Creating your own web based content is crucial to creating a voice, but so is having a writing example. One thing you'll notice is that the viral social media creators don't always transition to TV. Their brand of comedy works in 30-90 second pieces, but if they try to expand to 30 minute episodes, they can't find the same magic. That's why you must work all the  writing muscles. 

This is why Adam Sandler made it. He was a sketch writer/performer, but also had high concept script writing abilities. He took "sketch" characters like Billy Madison and Bobby Boucher and found a way to put them in full length feature films. If you can't transition to other forums, you will age out of your platform.

So just like you should have a 5 minute, a 10 minute, and 20-30 minute tape to send bookers, you need to be creating short and long form sketches and shows to help push your creative boundaries and keep your brand fresh and diverse.