Transcript:

Ben Smith:

Welcome everybody to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. My name is Ben Smith. Allow me to introduce my co-host the Bob Marley, to my Tim Sample, Curtis Worcester. How you doing today, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester:

I'm doing well, Ben. Doing well. That's a timely intro there. I think Bob Marley was just here this weekend up in Oregon.

Ben Smith:

He was, yeah. Anytime we can get a chance to see, for those that are not in the state of Maine, not the reggae Bob Marley, our own Bob Marley.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

He has a lot of main humor, so...

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, I've probably seen him probably a dozen times. He's amazing.

Curtis Worcester:

It's solid.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. Well, I know from our show, obviously we have our client base and as people know, we're pretty sure financial advisors and we have some really awesome clients. And you know what? We've been sitting down with them. Of course, the investment markets haven't been the most cooperative lately, but we've been really excited to hear how people are doing, especially getting back together after this pandemic. And I think there's been a lot of our clients, they've been storing up some jokes to tell us. And they've gotten us roaring and laughter from their stories and jokes.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

So that got us to wonder, what if they're able to take their natural talents of humor and maybe make some money from it? What would it take to be a comedian or a humorist? These days anyone can really grab a camera on their phone and be online. So I can see where the barriers to entry might be low and maybe lower risk. So just looking up some statistics, according to Zippia, Z-I-P-P-I-A.com, 40% of standup comedians are over 40+ years of age, which makes sense to me as one would think folks with more experience in life would have more situations to draw humor from.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Ben Smith:

Also, interesting to me was the unemployment rate for comedians has fallen from 40% in 2010 to 23.6% in 2019. And then median income for standup comedians ranges anywhere from $55,000 a year to 69,000 depending on education. So you can make some money is the other part of this.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

So to be funny, you can make some money to be funny. So all in all, we know there's some of you out there that want to learn some tidbits about unleashing your inner comic, so this episode's for you.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right. So of course, no matter how many times they might laugh at our bad jokes, Ben, when you and I are not the comedic experts here.

Ben Smith:

We are not comedians. No.

Curtis Worcester:

So obviously we had to go find a guest. So our guest today is a serial entrepreneur and created over a dozen companies in his lifetime. So from a small construction company to owning a submarine and a beach shack in Hawaii, so...

Ben Smith:

A submarine, by the way. Wow.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, I mean, why not? Put it on the list. I love it. His lifelong love of comedy led to producing live comedy shows, TV series, concerts. And in no time he ended up opening up his first comedy club, Laughs Unlimited, which was just the 12th full-time comedy club in the entire United States. So he then built this into a chain of successful comedy clubs in Northern California. So not only is he bringing himself on our show today, he's bringing his vast experience of working with some of the most famous names in comedy. You got Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Saget, and Dana Carvey, while also helping develop talent such as Paula Poundstone, Brian Posen, and Tim Badore. So he also hosts a podcast called Standup Comedy, Your Host AND MC and has written several books including Be a Standup Comic or Just Look Like One, A Comedy Career Guide. I couldn't even get through the name without laughing. That's good. So he also wrote 20 Questions Answered about Being a Standup Comic: 10 Answers You SHOULD Know, and 10 Answers You MUST Know.

So with that, please join in welcoming Scott Edwards to The Retirement Success in Main podcast. Scott, thank you so much for coming on our show today.

Scott Edwards:

Wow, that was an incredible intro, Curtis. Ben, it's so great, exciting to be on your show. And ladies and gentlemen, I'm Scott Edwards.

Ben Smith:

Yay. The crowd goes wild.

Scott Edwards:

It is such an incredible honor the audience is not only excited to hear my name, but shocked that I'm on your great show.

Ben Smith:

And I think this is probably the first audience we've ever been in front of.

Curtis Worcester:

I didn't know we were doing this live today. This is great.

Ben Smith:

Well, Scott, with all of our shows, we like to dig into our guests a little bit, hear a little bit about your background, and in how you got to your point today. Love to hear about your story growing up and how you found your affinity for comedy business. How did that all develop?

Scott Edwards:

Well, Curtis said it all, so we're done. No, I'm kidding.

Ben Smith:

Oh, Okay.

Scott Edwards:

No, it really comes from being a serial entrepreneur. I did start my first company at 17. They've not all been a success, by the way, speaking of a submarine. Some have been huge financial losses. But hey, loads of fun. And that's my goal in life-

Ben Smith:

That's right.

Scott Edwards:

... is to have fun. But he is correct, Curtis shared with your listeners that in 1980, I opened the 12th full-time comedy club in the country called Laughs Unlimited. And by the way, it is still operating today, so over 42 years later, and it's now one of the oldest standing comedy clubs. I no longer own it. I sold it in 2001 and moved on to other opportunities like most entrepreneurs. After a while, I'm ready for a new adventure. Anyway, comedy, the way it came about, I'll give you the short version. I was 23 years old. I'd already started a couple companies.

I was selling life insurance and absolutely hated my job. And I was on vacation with my then girlfriend, soon to be wife, soon to be ex-wife. And we went by The Comedy Store, but not The Comedy Store on Sunset, we went to a satellite location right by UCLA and got a chance... Really the first time exposed to standup comedy we saw Sandra Bernhardt, Dave Coulier, several other acts. And I was just so taken by this art form because up in Sleepy Sacramento, even though we're the capital of the state back in 1980, we were still pretty rural and small town. And to see this entertainment form just overwhelmed me. And I stayed the whole night. I talked to all the comics after. I met with the manager and asked some questions. And a quick backstory, I've started a lot of companies, but I never do it just nonchalant. I research, I talk to the people that do the business and I learn what works and what doesn't work from them. And anybody interested in starting a company, go talk to people already doing it. No reason to recreate the wheel. Right, Ben?

Ben Smith:

Which is essentially this whole show. We said, geez, well, why go try to do this all yourself and try to figure out how to be a comic, where we go talk to someone that's been in the business of this? Let's skip all the innings one through three and get to the good part of the game.

Scott Edwards:

Exactly. And I think that's a smart way for anyone to learn about anything really. But anyway, so I spent the six hour drive back to Sacramento planning my newfound exciting future in comedy, came back, quit my job, went bankrupt, so I'd have no debts or payments. And then I wheeled and dealed my way into a banquet room of a restaurant. The trade off was I got to use the room for free, but they made the money on the food and the drinks. So I had no overhead. I was the only employee. I would set up the club, MC the club, take the tickets, clean up the club, and I did that for almost a year and a half before I was able to open my own brick and mortar location, which is pretty quick. All ego aside, I was pretty successful.

It was seat-of-the-pants operation, but it went well. And if you fast forward five years, about 1985 by then, I had three clubs. And as Curtis mentioned, in the late '80s, I did two TV series, NBC and ABC. I did several concerts, the largest had 12,000 people. I was just so blessed, Ben. And I know you've already shared this, but let me tell your listeners how exciting it was. I was working with Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Saget, Dana Carvey, Raymond Romano, it goes on and on, back when they were, nobody knew them. This was before Saturday Night Live or before the Seinfeld Show. And they helped me, Bob Saget in particular, a great loss of a friend, particularly helped me get my club going and taught me what needed to be done to survive and succeed in the comedy world. And I was very blessed. It was all good timing, Ben.

Ben Smith:

That's awesome.

Curtis Worcester:

That is awesome. And so I want to ask another question here. So over your life and career, how has, I guess, one, standup comedy and also how have comedy clubs changed or evolved over that time span?

Scott Edwards:

Wow. We're jumping ahead. Okay. Great. So here's the thing, back in the '80s and '90s, standup comedy was really a new art form being shared with the public. Yes, there was comedy in the '50s and '60s, but it was pretty much just in the Catskills and occasionally on the Ed Sullivan show or something. In the '60s and '70s, standup comedy was basically the break between strippers at clubs and between bands at jazz clubs. It was not a mainstream art form. And it wasn't until the late '70s that clubs like the Improv or The Comedy Store started opening. And I really caught that wave at the beginning in 1980, as I said, I was the 12th club in the country. But what's interesting is that by 1986, it was like Starbucks, all the old discos became comedy clubs. They're all over the place. So we saw a lot of transition. To answer your question, in today's market, there's more comedy clubs than there were in 1980, but less than there were in 2000.

In other words, it peaked up and then it's dropped off a bit. And right now it's particularly challenging for comedy entertainers because of this woke's cancel society, everybody's so sensitive. You guys may remember, Curtis, you're maybe too young, but Ben certainly knows that there were comics that made a living out of picking on people and engaging the audience by making fun of all of us. Don Rickles is probably the most famous, so that was really acceptable in all part of the norm. We could all laugh at ourselves. It's very cathartic and healthy to laugh at yourself and those around you in a group. In today's environment, everybody's so sensitive that if you pointed out somebody's ugly Kmart sweater, that person probably knows, yeah, I'm in an ugly Kmart sweater and they don't care. But other people go, oh, he's picking on him. And it ruins that opportunity to see the funnier side of life.

Ben Smith:

From that end too, as upstate, where I think maybe comedy and obviously just the internet as well, is here's people experiencing comedy where they would... It's a destination and almost like going to a theater and in seeing a play and kind of experiencing that in person. I would imagine as well that some of this is that people are experiencing comedy in different ways. And they might even be, as you said, with not only just the sensitivity of the culture today, but also from a format perspective of, here's the bit and here's the TikTok or the Instagram or Facebook thing that's going on. And it just, versus the, well, I have tickets to go see as we said, Bob Marley from the State of Maine, or going to see Dave Coulier or people like that. Here's the event and it's a big thing and I got tickets, I'm going to go and it's an evening and it's an event thing, versus a more instant gratification. Would you agree with how that's evolved a little bit more?

Scott Edwards:

So back in the day it was destination entertainment, which is exactly what you're saying is correct.

Ben Smith:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

And back in those days, if you wanted to see standup comedy, you saw a really vanilla version on TV because you couldn't say what you wanted to say, but there was standup comedy on TV. So you'd have to go to a comedy club to hear the real raw entertainment. Now, I've never been a big fan of what's called Blue Comedy, the really dirty stuff, but I booked comics that were really dirty, but it wasn't dirty, like dropping a lot of F-bombs that have no sense of humor. There was smart comedic humor. A lot of people don't know that Bob Saget, who played Danny Tanner on Full House on stage was one of the dirtiest comics ever. But` he didn't swear, he just talked about sex and relationships in a real honest way, which made it kind of blue.

But it was always very funny, very insightful. And you couldn't see that on TV, you had to see it in a club.

Ben Smith:

Sure.

Scott Edwards:

So now fast forward to 2020 and what's happened is you can still get that there's nothing like that real live interaction with a comic and with an audience in a small room sharing an experience. I still recommend to all your listeners, go out and see a comedy show live. There's nothing like it, there's an adrenaline, a comedy engagement that is being shared that is amazing. And there's still comedy on TV, but it's a lot looser than it was in the '80s and '90s. And so you can hear somewhat more of a reality on TV, especially on the cable channels. But to your point, there's a false comedy on social media where people that have not worked at the trade, don't spend any time writing, don't care if they're engaging or sharing an experience with people because it's totally anonymous.

And even if they're using their name, they don't know who's listening, there's no reaction. So what they do is they go out and they spill all this filth and stupidity, and they think they're comics. Now, I'm sorry, I'm on a little bit of a soapbox, but it's so hurtful that people have taken a real art form of standup comedy and bastardized it because they can get away with whatever they want on social media. The only caveat to that, Ben and Curtis, is that standup comedy is the last bastion of free speech. So despite the woke cancel culture society, you're still going to find people breaking down barriers, getting through the walls, through their comedy, because it is, as I said, free speech.

Ben Smith:

Gotcha. Scott, love to just-

Scott Edwards:

We're not having much fun yet. Come on.

Ben Smith:

No, no. We're going to get there.

Curtis Worcester:

We'll get there.

Ben Smith:

We've got to paint the landscape.

Scott Edwards:

This is good information, Ben, but we want to have some fun.

Ben Smith:

Good. Scott, I want to ask one more bio question here for you. Any connections to the state of Maine at all?

Scott Edwards:

No.

Ben Smith:

Okay.

Curtis Worcester:

All right. Well now you-

Ben Smith:

[inaudible 00:16:49] got down out the way.

Curtis Worcester:

... got two now though so we're good.

Scott Edwards:

Hey, I did some research in preparation for this podcast, so later on, I have some good information to share for all the fine residents of Maine about comedy in your state. But me personally, even through the thousands of comics that I had in my clubs and I had on my podcast and TV shows, I have yet to have somebody from Maine. So we need Bob Marley or Curtis to get some material and share it with the world.

Curtis Worcester:

All right, Sign me up. Sign me up. So obviously the goal, or the topic of our show today is how can we unleash our inner comic in retirement? So in a previous episode, we had an expert on side hustles, come on. And it feels like getting paid to make people laugh might be the perfect retirement side hustle or the only hustle in retirement at that point. So as a comedy consultant, what advice would you give to someone that wants to start in the world of staged comedy? Like day one, I say, I'm ready, I want to do it. How do you help them?

Scott Edwards:

Buy my books.

Curtis Worcester:

All right. I love it.

Scott Edwards:

Sorry, that was a little capitalistic. And they're available on Amazon. Okay, so here's the short answer is that it does take some time to make money in standup comedy, but it is a fun side hustle. But I wouldn't necessarily recommend that people do it for the money. Do it for the expression of who you are, that adrenaline filled moment of fear and confidence that you get on stage when you're in front of strangers. We're not talking about being the class clown or the funniest guy at a party, that's one thing. When you get up in front of people that paid to be entertained and they're strangers, it takes some work. People think, oh, I'm a funny guy, I'll go up and do some dad jokes. And the reality is you want to, first off, talk about yourself. Self deprecation is a great way to introduce yourself to an audience and engage with them and get them, okay, he's picking on himself, it's okay now if he says something that might pick on somebody else, we're all in this together. It's a shared experience.

So I recommend to all your listeners to get up on stage somewhere somehow. And even if you never do it again, give it one or two tries. Keep in mind that an amateur, it's a big deal to do three minutes of material.

Curtis Worcester:

Wow, Okay.

Scott Edwards:

That's going to feel like an eternity on stage.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

Now, it is true, Curtis or Ben, that if you want to go pro and make some money, you do have to build that three minutes up to about 15, 20 minutes of material. Now, what that means for those that are taking notes is that you write about an hour's worth of material, and out of that hour, there's probably a decent 15, 20 minutes. It's that difficult to fill the time and find a way to engage with an audience.

It doesn't sound like a lot of time, three minutes or 15 minutes, but trust me, when you're in front of a bunch of strangers that are drinking alcohol and out for a good time, they have paid to be entertained so there is an expectation by the audience that there's going to be something worth hearing. So there is a little bit of responsibility on that open mic or that performer to reach that goal. And you're going to fail. Everybody, Bob Saget, Dana Carvey, they've all bombed at one time or another. That's part of the process. That's part of the learning.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Scott Edwards:

There's jokes that aren't going to go over, but when you get right back on the horse and write some more.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure. Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

Did that answer your question?

Curtis Worcester:

No, that was perfect. And you teed up my next question. So I want to focus on that audience piece of it. So I've written the material, I'm telling myself I'm ready, I want to do it, how do I do it? How do I go about getting booked? Or how do I get listed as a comedian that's available to be booked? Or how do I get on a stage?

Scott Edwards:

The reading glasses are on.

Curtis Worcester:

All right.

Scott Edwards:

Don't be shocked everybody. Don't call the doctors or the therapist, it's okay. So here's the good news about Maine, you guys have so many great opportunities to get out and do a open mic set. First advice, write some material, practice it in a mirror, or share it with some family and friends and see if you can get them to laugh. That's a good start. But when you're going to go up in front of strangers, have three to five minutes of stuff to talk about, and you're not going to improv with the audience at this point. That's a learned thing down the road. You just want to go up, do your material. Almost like Steven Wright. Remember he'd go up, he'd do a joke, do a joke, and then leave. It's, you're going to go up, you're going to do your material. By the way, it's always best to memorize it.

I have had a couple comics... Great story. Gary Shandling came to the club, he was working my club, and it's a small audience, maybe 40 people on a Wednesday night. And he goes, "Hey, ladies and gentlemen..." He did 20 minutes, proved he was funny. He goes, "I'm going to be on the Tonight Show next week. I need to practice, try out some materials." And the audience was like, yeah, because it's like a peak behind the curtain, right?

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Scott Edwards:

So he brings out these three by five cards and starts reading off material. And if the audience laughed, he'd go, oh yeah, that's good, and he'd put it in his pocket. And then if they didn't laugh or they booed, well that's out. And what was really great was, it was magical for the audience at that particular show, but what was extra special was the next week we saw him on The Tonight Show, doing those jokes and those 40 people can say, I was a part of that creation.

It didn't happen very often, but that was a magical moment at my club and a good reminder to people that want to get into comedy, it's okay to write this stuff down and have it prepared. And even if you're an open micker, have notes on the stool next to you, have keywords to make sure you don't forget because you're going to get stage fright when you get up there. Everybody does, even the pros. So having an eight by 10 sheet with just keywords for the joke, in order to keep you on track. You're not looking at it, but it's there to guide you, so that's my advice. So I was talking about Maine.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

So here's a couple things that I found out. You have some great opportunities. I love the name of this club, have you heard of Running with Scissors Improv?

Ben Smith:

No.

Curtis Worcester:

I have not.

Ben Smith:

I have not.

Scott Edwards:

It's right there in Maine, Running with Scissors Improv. Now, improv's a little bit different than standup comedy. It's scripted/unscripted group entertainment. But just like standup comedy, it'll give you a taste of show business. You have the Curry's Comedy Club, the Comedy Connection, and the Empire Comedy Club. Up in Bar Harbor you have ImprovAcadia.

Ben Smith:

Yep.

Curtis Worcester:

Yep.

Ben Smith:

Yep.

Scott Edwards:

Yeah, so that's a good place. But I was most excited to find out that all over Maine, there's a company called the Maine Comedy Clubs, and they do one night shows at different nights. Like Wednesday, it's in Portland, and Thursday it's in Banger, Maine. And then it goes to Waterville and Windom. And there's different rooms all around the state. And those would be a great place for your listeners to get started because they're one night comedy shows. And if you approach the manager or get ahold of the Main Comedy Club, that's what it's called, and say, Hey, I live in Banger, Maine and I want to do a little open mic stuff. They'll tell you the best night and they'll set you up for a set. But be prepared. Don't just show up and think, oh, I'm a funny guy, I'll wing it. It won't work.

Curtis Worcester:

All right.

Ben Smith:

Okay.

Scott Edwards:

Did that answer your question?

Curtis Worcester:

That was great.

Ben Smith:

That's awesome. Yeah. And, Scott, I want to ask, so now we know, all right, well, we can work on a set, we figure out how to get booked and get on a place. But let's talk about types of comedy because I know that there's different types of comedy out there, and I can think about, hey, how do I identify what area of comedy that I'm best at? So I guess that's a question, because I know there's different types of comedy out there, and how would someone just figure out where their strengths and where the weaknesses were there?

Scott Edwards:

Let me take a guess. Ben, you're a host. That was a really well stated question.

Ben Smith:

Thank you.

Scott Edwards:

You've done this before.

Ben Smith:

We've done this, I think, now 72 or three times. Yeah. So we're getting better. Yes.

Scott Edwards:

Good, good, good, so that's a great question. So there's really all kinds of standup comedy. And keep in mind that includes the variety arts. There's comedy magic, comedy ventriloquism, comedy juggling. There's a myriad of ways of doing it. In pure standup, what we call monologue presentation. Remember Johnny Carson would get up and do a five minute monologue before the show. A Monologue presentation is just you, the mic, and the audience. No props. Although prop comedy is a great way to get into standup, but that's a whole nother department. So for straight standup monologue comedy, you want to do what feels natural to you. So for example, Steven Wright liked that slow, very controlled, hey, this is what happened, and take a pause because they knew there was a laugh break. He would do a joke, take a pause, do a joke. There was no stringing thoughts together.

Most comics, and what I recommend is that you want to string your material together and you take the audience on a journey. That's why I said you start off talking about yourself, because one, it's something you know about and you can make fun of that everybody can share in on. Wow, I'm so tall, but hey, I get to the best view during a parade. Whatever it is, it's some little nuance that you make fun of that. Then you could string that into, well, I'm really tall, but, hey, then I had to go on an airplane. And boy, it's not easy being tall in a plane because there's no leg room. And then you could talk about airplanes. Well, when you're flying, right, it's a string of thought.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

You're taking the audience on a path, on a story. And then I want to share with your listeners that if you sit down and write three to five minutes of material, remember that the last bit is what you think is the funniest and the opening is what you think is the second funniest.

And everything in between is where you play with stuff. So a professional comedy show starts off with a laugh, and then a professional can keep a plateau of comedy for 10, 20, 30, 60 minutes. But whoever it is, no matter how long it is, three minutes, 30 minutes or three hours, you have to end on a higher note like a crescendo in music. You got to take them one more level up. So your funniest stuff is what's last. I did a concert with Jay Leno. We had a sold out 2,200 people. Did it twice with him, actually. But the show I'm thinking of, he goes out and he does about 15 minutes and just material and jokes and captures the audience. They already know who Jay Leno is. He was already famous at that point, but he does some material.

Then he just talked to the audience for about 40 minutes and everything was funny because he could take whoever he was talking with, oh, you're in a suit, you must be a CPA. Everybody laughs. And he goes, Yeah, I am a CPA. Everybody laughs. Well, as a CPA you must be good with numbers. He could extrapolate the conversation and keep it funny. But then he'd go back to material for the last 15, 20 minutes and just rip the audience, some huge, huge laughs.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

Well, Jay's an expert standup comic, and he did a 90 minute show. Very, very rare and difficult for people to do that much time. But that was the secret to the length. It wasn't necessarily 90 minutes of material. He could just interact with the audience and keep them laughing for a lot of it. And then there was maybe an hour or 40 minutes of material on each end. Does that make sense?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

So here's the next person, so that's straight monologue.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

So we talked about Steven Wright, slow and deliberate. Jay Leno, just a conversation. Then you have Robin Williams. He worked for me twice. Robin Williams had a machine gun style effect of comedy where he just threw out so much crap that he knew that 30% of it would click with somebody in the audience and get them laughing and keep them laughing. And he had so much experience, and he was an actor, he was a professional improv person. But when it came to standup comedy, he had this amazing Rolodex in his head. So if he heard a bakery, he automatically had four or five bread jokes or yeast jokes, or rising jokes, rising dough. That's how his mind worked. So there's three extreme examples of different kinds of comedy that are all stand up comedy, but they're all a totally different presentation model. And what's important to your listeners, if they'd like to give it a try, is the simplest and easiest is, be yourself.

Go up, if you're a normal energy, calm guy, go up and share your material in a normal, calm, natural way. If you're a hyper comical guy, you can see I'm a little animated myself, you use that on stage. I MCed my shows for 21 years. I had more stage time than any comic, and I was always riffing with the audience, but I was always moving and interacting and asking questions because I never wrote material. I'm not a standup comic. And let's make that clear to your audience. I'm a producer, I produce shows. And as a comedy club owner, and Ben, we should have thrown this in, you're not just producing a show, you're running a bar, you're running a restaurant.

Ben Smith:

Sure.

Scott Edwards:

It all goes in together. So owning a comedy club is different than being a standup comic. However, I was able to marry the two, be an MC, interact and make audiences laugh. But I never wrote a joke. I just have that type A crazy personality. And I'm fine with people laughing at me. People would point out that I'm a little on the heavy side, or I always wore Hawaiian shirts. And I would say, yeah, this belly is due to success and the shirt is, I don't believe in hiding it, I believe in decorating it.

Curtis Worcester:

I love that.

Ben Smith:

Love it.

Scott Edwards:

Just simple things like that that makes the audience laugh at you, but with you.

Ben Smith:

Yep. Yep.

Scott Edwards:

So did that answer the question? There's a lot of different ways to present material. You want to be true to yourself. It's just like when you're writing comedy you want to write about what you know. So if you worked for your father in a construction job, you don't want to do jokes about being in the Navy, you want to do jokes about being on a construction site, so that's hopefully my simple response to that. Not so simple. Good.

Ben Smith:

No. Well, Scott, I think that's perfect because again, I think what we're trying not to say is that, hey, I'm funny and I want to get up on stage and this is something I want to do and to earn laughs. But I want do it without just parroting whatever Jerry Seinfeld says during his set. What makes-

Scott Edwards:

That's a good point. We never steal material. Robin Williams had such a Rolodex that he was often accused of borrowing somebody else's material, and he always apologized and paid him because he couldn't stop his mind from going to somewhere, something he heard. It didn't happen a lot. But the point is that you want to be true to yourself and you want to be original. And by the way, Ben, that's a great point. Every comic has done jokes about being married or going on an airplane or being in traffic. That doesn't mean you can't do jokes on that. You just don't want word by word to imitate somebody.

Ben Smith:

Right.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

And I think that's the key piece, which I know you're bringing up there. And also, I know you brought up Jade Leno, and Jay Leno actually is going to be in our area in central Maine. He's actually going to be up here at the Colin Center of the Arts.

Scott Edwards:

Oh, go see him. He's amazing.

Ben Smith:

So I was just going to pull that plug as October 22nd. If you want to go check that out and maybe take a little notes as you're referencing some Jay Leno comedy. That might be a good place to check out.

Scott Edwards:

And then go backstage and say you were just hanging with Scott Edwards and he'll know exactly who I am. We did a lot of stuff together.

Curtis Worcester:

That's awesome.

Ben Smith:

Nice.

Curtis Worcester:

That's awesome. So Scott, I want to keep going into our show here, and I'm going to go back to the hypothetical of me being a comic or trying to be a comic, all right? So I've got my materials or what I think my materials straightened out. I know where I'm going. I got that stage that I'm going on, but I just am terrified that I'm going to say my best joke or what I think is my best joke, and nobody's going to laugh. So I know you talked about it earlier, that everyone fails. There's all, there's always an element of failure. Is it common? Do we always just bomb the first time we do it? Is that normal? And if it is, how do we minimize that? How do I make sure I don't get booed off the stage?

Scott Edwards:

Well, first off, people are a little nicer than that. It's very, very rare to get booed off the stage. But even Jay Leno with 90 minutes of material is going to say something that doesn't get the response that he said two minutes later got, right?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

There's waves of laughter. So not everything hits at 100% and it shouldn't because there's nothing in life that's that solid. So expect that there's going to be some crickets sometimes when you say something you think is funny and it's not. But that's not an indication that you're doing a bad thing. It's an indication you need to rewrite it or switch the words around or drop the topic. If it's not a topic, you can share that... What's interesting, guys, and I don't want to get too deep here, but comedy is a real reflection of life through your eyes.

So there has to be a certain truth. It's like how we always say that there's always a little truth in every lie. If something's going to work and engage with an audience, the audience will not buy it if you're lying to them. This is my point. You have to be sharing something that is a shared experience. So I don't know if I have a good example, but, oh, I was driving in traffic. Well, boom, everybody in the audience has been stuck in traffic. And then you share something that happened that you saw the funny in. The funny in the really good comics are the ones that see the world the way we see it, but they're able to pick out the funny. Is that too vague?

Ben Smith:

No.

Scott Edwards:

It really is a gift. Curtis, you were saying, what if you got on stage?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

I'm going to put the magic specs on again.

Curtis Worcester:

All right.

Scott Edwards:

I wrote some material just for the people in Maine.

Ben Smith:

Can I? Let's go.

Curtis Worcester:

Let's hear it.

Scott Edwards:

All right. So joke number one is your relationship to Canada, right?

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

You're right next door, we share a border.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

So I got to read my own writing. Oh, we have a real problem being next to Canada and what it's doing to employment. All those snow backs coming across the border and taking our jobs. See, in California, the old joke is the wet backs.

Curtis Worcester:

Gotcha.

Ben Smith:

Gotcha.

Scott Edwards:

I'm not saying this is going to go over in a woke society, but it's just a play on words. All right. Let's see if we can get a better one. Oh, you guys are in a really rural area. So hey everybody, I saw a tractor... Let me do that again. Hey, everybody. I saw a tractor out in the parking lot who's here from Dry Mills?

Ben Smith:

All right.

Curtis Worcester:

Okay. So if you're in Portland, Dry Mills is really out there.

Ben Smith:

Yes, that's right. Yes.

Scott Edwards:

Okay. Curtis, does that answer your question going over like a lead balloon?

Ben Smith:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

But you know what you do? You just keep going.

Curtis Worcester:

You keep going. That's right.

Scott Edwards:

Last one, Ben.

Ben Smith:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

All right. So you guys have a lot of French heritage, right?

Curtis Worcester:

We do, yeah.

Scott Edwards:

Oh, it's always interesting being French or interacting with the French. Why do the French like snails? Because they don't like fast food. Ba, da, bum, bum.

Curtis Worcester:

It's a good one.

Scott Edwards:

So there you go, Curtis. If you want to irritate and piss off all your audience, you got three jokes.

Curtis Worcester:

Love it, love it. Got it. Love it.

Ben Smith:

But, Scott, I think what you were we're saying here is, I think that's some of the fun. Is this, hey, there's going to be things that I say that people are not going to find funny, but I need the stress of that, that feedback where I'm now stressed on stage of, can I then recover? Can I then put myself back in a situation to get the audience back on track and can I get them laughing? And isn't that the game, isn't that the game of being the comedian is, I'm trying to create consistency and laughter and get that feedback, but when it does go off the rails, let's see how I can get this back on track and get them tracking with me.

Scott Edwards:

Right. And that's one of the things that I think is a value to us as humans, and that's why I encourage people to go on stage at least once or twice, because you want that opportunity to put yourself out there. You want to be able to thicken your own skin and take some rejection and overcome it. It's good for your psyche. But I will tell you that there were comics, many of them, that once they knew they had an act, they knew they had a way to bring the audience back, their thrill every time on stage was to take that audience and push and push and push the envelope. And at some point they lost the audience, or they got that boo. And then what they got a thrill and a challenge out of is, they could come right back with a material and win the audience back.

Ben Smith:

That's right.

Scott Edwards:

So exactly to what you're saying, Ben, is that some professional comics found the thrill of being a comic was taking somebody as far as you could take them and then bringing them back. There's a sense of success, of confidence, that you get from that. Now be honest, those guys are a little crazy, and they were very professional and had the backup material. You don't want to take the audience down a bad path and then not have anything to bring them back.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Ben Smith:

Right.

Curtis Worcester:

Say thank you, goodnight. They'll be waiting out front with Tarring and feathers.

Ben Smith:

Right.

Curtis Worcester:

But to really succinctly answer your question is, you have to be aware that not everything's going to go over 100%, but you want something to back it up. And you want to have that self realization and confidence that you can get the audience back. And that's really important in any art form, but especially standup comedy. A great analogy would be a musician has got five songs he is going to play in a concert. He knows that the third song is not as strong with the public as everything else. So he'll play that third song, and the audience might politely applaud because we're all trained since birth to respect music, good or bad. But then he knows he can come back with his album killing top hit and the audience is going, "Woo." So just like comedy, in music you hit him hard, and then you give them some entertainment, and then you have that crescendo and you just make it super appealing. And that's when you get the encores. And the really good stars, when they get an encore, have something that even is better.

Sure.

Ben Smith:

Right.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, no, that's great. I want to keep going here along the same lines of... I guess it's a little different. So I want to take the audience out of it or say losing the audience. So pretend I have the material that the audience likes, but people still make mistakes, I guess, on stage. So what is, I guess, the number one mistake that you see beginners make when learning to be a comic?

Scott Edwards:

I think that the number one mistake is thinking that these people on social media or unfunny comics are doing the right thing when they're dropping F-bombs and think it's funny. So let me give you an example of that. People do respond to F-bombs and dirty words because we're raised since childhood that those are incorrect in open society. And so we giggle or titter, or gasp when we hear something.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Scott Edwards:

The problem is there's some people that think they're funny and all they're going, I saw my freaking girlfriend and she wanted some freaking bread, so I went to the freaking store, then I got her some fricking bread. Well, the audience is going to react to that because it's shocking, it's unnecessary, and it's just swearing. But is it humor? Is it funny? Right. To me, it's not. He's just doing a stream of filth out of his mouth and the audience, they're not going to sit there politely with their hands in their lap.

They're going to react to the filthy mouth. But that person thinks that reaction is supportive and happy and it's not.

Curtis Worcester:

Gotcha.

Scott Edwards:

It's shock value you. So the big mistake that a lot of amateurs make is that they'll say something funny, they'll have a thought or they've written something. But I want to make sure the audience reacts so I'm going to drop F-bomb into the middle of it for no reason. And I see that all the time, and it's like, you don't need it. The joke may not be a Jay Leno quality or Bob Saget quality joke, but you had a premise, you had an idea. You just need to work on it. Think of a joke as a lump of coal. It has to be done over and over and over again, and compressed and changed and switch the words around and eventually compress that coal into a diamond.

Then what do you do? You save it, you reuse it every show, and you go start with another lump of coal.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

So that's how comics start with three minutes on stage and end up with an hour on stage. They're constantly building. Let me share one more thing, Ben, if you don't mind, and Curtis.

Ben Smith:

Yeah.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

One of the magic aspects of standup comedy that makes it really good for actors, a lot of comics become actors.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Ben Smith:

Is that when Jay Leno, or Saget or Carvey, or even Ellen DeGeneres who worked for me, Paula Poundstone, as we mentioned, Brian Posehn, who was on the Big Bang Theory, when you're sharing your comedy on stage, the acting comes in, to that audience it's like, you just thought it up, right?

Right.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

Oh, you know what? I was driving here and I saw this homeless guy on the road and blah, blah, blah, and there's a joke. The people think that actually happened because you're acting like it's fresh, new stuff. But what the audience doesn't realize, and it doesn't really matter, is that comic probably told that same joke over the last two years a thousand times. And each time he changed a word around or changed something around and got it so it was just perfect. Is that makes sense?

Curtis Worcester:

No, that makes great sense, and I appreciate you explaining it that way.

Scott Edwards:

Yeah. We need a recording of this. This could be like a-

Ben Smith:

This is good stuff.

Scott Edwards:

This could be a audio lesson on how to be a comic.

Curtis Worcester:

Do a MasterClass or something with this.

Scott Edwards:

Yeah, there you go.

Curtis Worcester:

I want to go back, because you surprised us back there a few minutes ago with your jokes about Maine, and it's tied right into this question I want to ask you next. So obviously Ben and I are in Maine, here in New England, so-

Scott Edwards:

Beautiful area, by the way.

Curtis Worcester:

I want to ask you, I guess, how would you write those jokes? So here I am, say I'm going to go on a stage in Maine, and I want to connect with an audience here. What is your process, or what are some steps we can take to really make sure we are speaking or joking to that audience?

Scott Edwards:

Well, Curtis, it just proves that what I said before didn't connect with you at all. So the point of the material I wrote was, I went to a map of Maine and I saw what was around it. So what I was trying to share as an example is if I was a resident of Maine, you have a wealth of material because you have all the beautiful forest, you have the ocean, you have the lakes, you got Canada, you got Vermont near you. There's so many things that you can pick on. Comedy and tragedy work side by side. To make comedy really work there has to be a little bit of the tragedy. So it could be absolutely amazing to be next door to Canada, but if you went up and said, hey, don't we love those Canadians, you're going to get a response.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Scott Edwards:

But it's not particularly funny. You have to say, well, we love those Canadians, but I wish they'd moved their semi-trucks, they're blocking my driveway. Something... I just made that up.

Curtis Worcester:

That's good.

Scott Edwards:

As you could tell, it didn't work. But to answer your question, whether you're in Banger, Maine or Portland or some of the other towns, Bar Harbor, there's something about your community, what you do, your life, whatever your past is. Oh, one of the best topics that everybody can relate to, family. So you talk about stuff that's real but you find the funny in it. Oh, geez, I was at Thanksgiving with my family and I'm 42 years old and I'm still at the kids' table, we're all waiting for Uncle Mel to die.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

I can't get to the main table, so that's something. Anybody that wants to try standup comedy, find the funny in your life and what's around you. And in Maine you have so much from big towns to little towns like Dry Mills, you have the French connection, you got Canada, I already mentioned. You got all these things that if you make fun of or you write material about, your audience will be able to engage with you. Now, I said that really early on, Curtis, but I'm going to repeat it. The value and the quality of comedy comes from engaging with an audience and having a shared experience. Funny or unfunny, if you don't engage with the audience it's not going to work. We used this example before, if I've got some experience as a CPA and I go up and I'm doing CPA jokes, but my audience is from the construction industry, they're going to go over like a lead balloon. Right?

Ben Smith:

Right.

Scott Edwards:

You have to talk and engage with the audience on a level that they can relate to.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Love it. So-

Scott Edwards:

I'm repeating myself now guys. I'm repeating myself.

Ben Smith:

No, no. Well, these are lessons we got to highlight here, so I appreciate that, Scott. So I want to ask about, obviously from a wide range of comedians that you've seen come through your clubs that you've been able to work with, and again, I know you've mentioned a lot of the greats that have come through, love to hear just maybe a couple lessons that you personally have experienced by observing and seeing in real time these comedians, the Bob Sagets, the Seinfelds, the Carveys, those names. What things did you learn from them that you feel like, I think, is maybe a little more standardized or maybe normalized into today's comedian?

Scott Edwards:

Well, I think, Ben, that's another good question. I don't know where he gets this talent. The thing that I think audiences need to realize is that I've named dropped some famous comics that have worked for me. I was very blessed to work with Harry Anderson from Night Court, Tommy Chung from Cheech and Chong, Graham Chapman from Monty Python. It goes on and on. Soupy Sales, for those that are over 50, actually threw a pie in my face. That means something, if you're over 50, doesn't mean anything if you're under 50. But the relationship to these celebrities is that the audience has an expectation because they know the name. But the secret is that there's thousands of really funny people that no one's ever heard of. Bob Worley, Jeff Jenna, Tim Badore, it goes on and on. Mark Pitta, there's Will Durst, there's all these comics that made a great career out of comedy, had a decent living, really enjoyed their lives, had a good successful career, just nobody's ever heard of them.

They just didn't get what I call the golden ticket and end up being stars. One of the best comedy teams ever out of Florida was a team called Mac and Jamie, and they did several Tonight Shows. They had their own TV show called Comedy Break. And yet, if I went up to anybody and said, hey, did you hear the latest joke for Mac and Jamie? Everybody would go, who?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

In this day and age, Curtis, to an age thing, a lot of people don't remember Laurel Hardy.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

It's just sad. It's a generational thing. And so when you go out and see somebody, or you're thinking about planning a night out of entertainment, don't worry if you don't recognize the name.

Curtis Worcester:

I like that.

Scott Edwards:

There's a lot of funny people that aren't famous that have something to share. Now, the other thing, and again, I'm repeating myself, Ben, but it's the same question, same answer. The trick to entertaining an audience is talking about stuff that everybody in the room can relate to. So if we're keeping track, audience, that's the third time I've said that. It is so important that whether you're talking about your own life or your community or your state or the state of the government, these are all potential topics. It has to be something that your audience is going to agree or disagree with, but they have to be able to relate to, right?

Ben Smith:

Right.

Scott Edwards:

Paula Poundstone is a very esoteric comedian. She doesn't go up and just talk about being in traffic or going to the airport. She talks about her weird view of life. Emo Phillips is the same way. These are people that would talk about going shopping, but because they have a twisted mind, it's totally different from our experiences. But since we've all been shopping, now you're seeing shopping in this unique twisted way. Does that make sense?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Absolutely.

Scott Edwards:

And that makes it funny.

Curtis Worcester:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Scott Edwards:

So even though they're from outer space and are really strange, I'm talking about Emo Phillips, Paula Poundstone, people that bring a twist to their comedy. Judy Tenuta who just passed away was the same way. They're still really funny and they're still talking about stuff that we can all relate to, shopping, traffic, all this stuff, but they do it from this kind of weird prism that changes and makes things strange. Fascinating. But Ben, it goes back to your earlier question, the, there's so many different types of comedy, it, there's no right or wrong, it's just how you approach it.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

And I think that's the fun part about this as a topic today is just, again, how do we turn ourselves into it versus, no, I have to go replicate a model and try to fit into a box. Is trying to find your own personality, highlighting that personality. And is it, you're saying finding that commonality that everybody could then relate to and then laugh at or with? So I love that from a formal aic, but again, you at the center of it, not trying to just do what everybody else is doing.

Curtis Worcester:

Right.

Scott Edwards:

Right. So let's put a pin in it on this retirement show. So your audience is over 50, maybe over 60, they're thinking about retirement, and I want to stretch myself and go do an open mic or try to write a couple minutes of material. What are you going to write about? You're going to write about being retired. You're going to write about what your past career was, how you transitioned into retirement, how weird it is to be retired. I'm semi-retired myself, I sold my business last year. I went from getting up, getting dressed and being at work looking sharp every day, to I get up and I go, what am I going to do today? And there's a lot of humor in that. And so your audience, if they want to play with this art form and expand their own reality and try doing an open mic, write about what you know.

Write about what it's like being retired or transitioning to retirement. If you used to be a lawyer, ooh, lot of jokes there. If you ran a grocery store, you have experiences that other people don't have that you're going to be able to share that they can relate to. I just gave myself an idea. So let's say you ran a grocery store for 30, 40 years and now you're retired. You have stories about running a grocery store, people knocking over a stack of food, or a customer coming in dressed up in a Halloween costume, who knows? Something weird that these people haven't heard, but they've all been to a grocery store, right?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

So when you're sharing those stories, it's going to be funny. It's going to be entertaining because it's your past, but it's their reality.

Ben Smith:

Right.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

And again, also seeing an everyday situation that everybody's in and seeing it from another lens. So I think all of those things are really awesome.

Scott Edwards:

Wait a minute. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Okay, Ben gets a little applause. You're absolutely right. You have to share about your life and you find the funny. And whether you're retired or about to retire, or just think of comedy as a hobby, it's not that hard. It's scary. It's not easy, but it's not that hard to get up on stage and give it a shot. And we mentioned there's a lot of clubs. The Maine Comedy Club, M-A-I-N-E, is got rooms all over the state that, as long as you contact them, contact the show producer and say, hey, I want to try an open mic, I've got three minutes of material, they'll set you up. That's how they find people. That's how they create comics. One of my greatest gifts to the entertainment world was my club was an A room.

It was the step before stardom. And so I was able to discover a lot of comics and help them on that path to success. I had a comic, Ed Solomon, who was a terrific writer, but not a great performer. Guess what? He ended up writing Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, Men in Black, Now You See Me series. He's a huge successful multi, multimillionaire, successful script writer for movies. But he started as a standup comic. Karen Anderson, who was a standup comic, very, very funny in her own right, ended up being the head writer for the Ellen's DeGeneres show, and has gone on to write several other shows. So it's not always ending up with the Golden Ticket being a celebrity. You could write movies, you could write TV shows, you could be a producer, a director. There's so many things that comedy can lead to, but all starts with that three minute open mic set.

Ben Smith:

Love it.

Scott Edwards:

Tada!

Curtis Worcester:

Here it is.

Ben Smith:

And, Scott, I think exactly what you just said was, look, this is the time in our lives of having a ever reduced fear of failure, is that this is the time where I can go and experiment. I can go be the thing I always want it to be. I can go try new things. And I think that's what we want to do in today's show, is let's lean into that theory and that thinking and try to push people into it. And I know Curtis has one last question we want to ask here.

Curtis Worcester:

I got one question for you left. We've made it to the end.

Scott Edwards:

Wait.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, go ahead.

Scott Edwards:

Let me just validate what Ben said.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

Is that at our age, when you're in that pre or current retirement position, you have nothing to lose.

Ben Smith:

That's right.

Scott Edwards:

So put yourself out there because even if you get booed off stage, that's an experience you'll remember the rest of your life. Chances are that won't happen. I have faith in you, everybody listening, you're going to find some funny. And even if there's only one or two funny lines out of the three minutes, you're going to feel so good when people laugh or respond to something you said.

Curtis Worcester:

Absolutely.

Ben Smith:

Love it.

Curtis Worcester:

Absolutely. So, obviously we've talked about it a few times now, we are a retirement focused podcast, we love to kind of help people find their successful retirement. So I want to ask you, Scott, how would you define your personal retirement success? I know you mentioned you're semi-retired, but what does a successful retirement mean to you?

Scott Edwards:

Well, and I'm not a good example, everybody listening. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I sold my club, which was, by the way, an insurance agency because that's full of laughs. I did that for over 15 years. I sold it and I say semi-retired because I'm still a consultant for the guy that bought me out. I still have a connection with my clients and so I still offer them services because they're my friends, they're my clients and have been for years. But unlike most people that retire and start traveling or just linger around the house, I started another company. I've actually got four podcasts now. I just started a new company in connection with the small city I live in and that's what entrepreneurs do. They go out and find the next adventure. And it may crash and burn, it may be a huge success, but that's what I live and thrive on.

For the average retirement person, if I could give any advice to anybody thinking of or now in retirement is, do not sit on your ass and watch TV. You got to do something that's meaningful to you, that could be travel. I have a plan to go to Africa next year. You want to travel when you get to this point in your life and you can afford it and you have the time. But there's much, much more than that. I have another friend that went into silversmithing and just makes silver jewelry. And he was in the comedy world for 40 years and very, very successful and now he does jewelry. I have another person that's writing for other people. I have a couple people that went into public speaking. Your life was unique, maybe if you went out and shared your story with other young people, you could teach them how you succeeded.

Become a public speaker and you don't have to do it for money, do it at the local Rotary Club.

Ben Smith:

Exactly.

Scott Edwards:

Or the Lion Club and share your story.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Scott Edwards:

It's really good and important, as a senior generation, to take our life's experiences and share it with others. Now it's true, 80, 90% may just ignore you or might just be entertained by you and that's it. But there might be five or 10% that pick up something and go, oh crap, I could do that, or maybe I should do that.

Curtis Worcester:

Absolutely.

Scott Edwards:

So that's my advice and hopefully a good answer to your question, Curtis,-

Curtis Worcester:

That was great.

Scott Edwards:

... is that you should never stop moving. You got to keep your mind going. You got to keep your body going because the minute you stop doing stuff, that's when our minds and our bodies fail us.

Curtis Worcester:

I love it.

Ben Smith:

Great. And, Scott, I think that's something that we see with our clients as well. And again, creating a purpose filled life, whether it be your day one or year 100, I think that's something we always have to have. So appreciate you coming on our show and sharing your insights. And-

Scott Edwards:

Am I bad at Maine jokes?

Ben Smith:

... giving us a few bad Maine jokes here or there, but this is really great and I really appreciate it and, Scott, we will catch you next time.

Scott Edwards:

Hey, Ben, Curtis, this has been way more in depth and way, more helpful to people, that I realized it wasn't about me, it wasn't about you. We were sharing ideas and knowledge and I would love a copy of this. You guys do a great job and it's a real honor to be on your podcast. Thank you, gentlemen.

Ben Smith:

Scott, thank you so much. All right, so we definitely learned how to unleash our inner comics to be our outward comics here-

Curtis Worcester:

We sure do.

Ben Smith:

... in retirement. And I think what we finished on with Scott is the point, is here's the time in our lives where we can take risks. We can put ourselves out there. We have a wealth of stories and things that are funny in our lives, and I think we took a few minutes and wrote it down and created a sys. I bet we could all be probably pretty funny-

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

... maybe do okay, and as you said, maybe eventually make a little extra money on the side is not a bad thing too. S again, I think it's a little bit of an offbeat topic for us for what we normally do, but a little fun thing as well. So I like the, become a pilot, become a comic. There's these very niche things that are out there that some of our clients were interested in. I know I would be remiss if we didn't give Scott some plugs here for a few things that he's involved in. One is, he actually has created a network of podcasts, of 15 different podcasts, where he has different shows from different comedians have been in his clubs and audio clips and jokes of the day. So you can check that out at standupcomedypodcastnetwork.com. So again, standupcomedypodcastnetwork.com. You can check that out. Again, check out his podcast, right?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

So go to your Apple podcast, Spotify, standup comedy, your host and MC was with Scott, so you can check him out there. And also if you do want to take the next level, this springboard of our podcast, go check out the books. Is the 20 Questions Answered About Being A Standup Comic: 10 Answers You SHOULD Know And 10 Answers You MUST Know, or Be A Standup Comic Or Just Look Like One.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

So you can check out both of those books and that. So, Curtis, where can people find out a little bit more if they maybe have trouble writing it down?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, exactly. So obviously we always like to do a webpage for our show here. So obviously this is episode 73, so you can find all of the links to Scott's stuff, his books, his podcast network, his podcasts, really all of it we'll have LinkedIn there. So that's going to be a blog.guidancepointllc.com/73 for episode 73. So as always, we appreciate you all tuning in. Hopefully this was a lighter episode for you. I know we go back and forth here on topics, but I know it was really fun for us to do. So thank you. Thank you all as always for tuning in and we will catch you next time.