Let’s just get into your stand up.
Like, I just noticed over the last couple years,
you just kind of went,
like, through the roof, right?
When was the first city that you were like,
oh shit, I’m selling some tickets?
Sacramento. He was at the punchline.
No, I was at, uh,
Jenny’s Club at Laughs Unlimited in Old SAC.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. And it was actually kind of funny how it happened. So
I started posting consistently online and stuff, cause.
So the. My, my.
I guess you could call it an origin story.
I’ve been doing it 20 years,
and it’s, it’s,
it’s common for somebody to be very funny
and from this market and don’t nobody know from the.
From the Northwest. Northwest.
Okay, right.
Like, the only other comic,
you know, worth, like,
significant that has got to the bag real good,
I say, is Joe Coy.
He’s from here, but he claims Vegas,
where he started. Right.
Anyway, so Matt Rife comes to the club one year,
and he sells, I don’t know,
55 tickets across five shows.
What. What Club?
Mine. Natex and Super Funny Comedy Club.
Yes. In Tacoma, Washington.
Super Funny Comedy club.com.
Shameless plug. The next year he’s set to come
and I see the way Seat Engine,
which 90% of comedy clubs use for their ticketing.
Um,
a shout out to the Helium Ranch of comedy clubs.
That’s who created that. I see that there’s ticket sales,
but it doesn’t Say what act they’re coming to see.
I just see like, okay,
something’s moving this week.
I like hot. We have the shows that weekend
and it’s. It’s.
It’s not an above average turnout.
So I’m like, well,
who was all the sales I saw for?
So I go look, and it’s Matt.
Matt’s got four. He’s doing four shows.
He’s got three shows completely sold out.
He’d only been online for a week and a half.
So I called him and I said, Matt, what? What?
What the fuck? Well,
what happened? Yeah,
this is a massive needle jump.
He’s like, oh,
I got on TikTok.
I said, man,
I have a TikTok. I don’t use it.
I don’t even go out to see all the little dances.
Like, no,
they’re fucking with comedy.
Go on there and look. And I was like,
is it worth it? He’s like, dark.
I stay up all night long. I edit my own stuff.
I do the captions during commercial breaks.
I post my own shit. And, yeah,
do it. And I was like, alright.
So I go on there, I look on his page,
I take a screenshot that day,
I go on the next day, take a screenshot,
and I go back and forth between the two.
And he legit has like 18,000 new followers.
And at this time, Instagram is kind of stagnant with new followers,
right? Yeah.
Like, facts.
Once people got theirs, they’re like,
you know, this Is how my.
I’m not following a new person,
my stuff set up. So I.
I just wanna make sure time like this is like what,
2,022 23 we’re talking about right now?
Yeah. Kayla,
would you say 2022? Okay.
Summer, 22. Okay.
Two years ago. But the full.
The full answer to the question.
No, I haven’t experienced that hate.
And even that, it wasn’t like someone was like, see,
that’s why he was. It wasn’t even that.
I have not. Yeah, right.
Like, I’ve put in a lot of work.
I have, uh,
done good business.
I have put a lot of money in different comedians families pockets.
Yeah. Um,
you know, feeding,
you know, I’m getting back to the game
and in a way where, like,
at the very least you’re gonna respect that aspect. Like,
well, he,
you know. Yeah.
So no, I haven’t experienced it.
And then who? Like my.
My ogs are people that everyone respect.
So leaving behind a closed door
like Rodney Perry is not gonna let you bad mouth me.
Never.
He’s 14 years old. But not only that,
like, Matt Rife put in the work.
That’s what I’m saying. As a 14 year old kid,
he did the struggle shit. Yep.
Stayed in shitty hotels. Yep.
He grinded and what I being an OG.
But you gotta keep up with the times, right?
Can’t be living off. I was on.
I host a comic view. That was not The shit on Apollo? Yeah.
That should not be my credit.
Right? Right.
You should not be announcing me like that. Right.
My thing is like, now I’m like, okay.
Which Rudy Rush was doing, huh?
Everybody was from Comic View.
I know. And street for all from Comic View.
That should be my only credit.
He said, Chico being from 95 South.
I know,
haha. I said,
he got a lot of shit going on there.
He’s like, he switched highways.
I’m from Philly, yo,
that’s a different highway.
I said, what?
Haha, no,
but my thing is, like, I.
To your point, when you said you saw matt rife blowing up, right?
Yeah, I was in atlanta.
Uh huh. And I was doing a gary o’dwyer’s club.
Yeah, right.
And I was there and I looked at,
I went to the website, and,
you know, I’m, I,
I sell tickets, but I don’t sell out a month in advance.
Yeah, my shit goes to the roof the week of.
It’s consistent, guys.
The week of. And,
you know, this week. Oh,
Gary’s in town. Yeah.
It’s like, whoop!
The week of, you like,
oh, shit, it’s.
I don’t know what it is, but that’s what it is.
I’m online and I see Matt Rife is coming, like,
two weeks after me. Uh huh.
And he’s sold out completely,
all the whole show. And I go,
it’s a mistake. Or is it?
I literally like this. Something’s On your website,
I was literally going like this.
I go, there must be paper in her some.
And then I was like. So I went, like, literally.
And I wasn’t doing, like, hating,
I was like, I just didn’t know he blew.
So I was like, wait a minute.
So then I went to, like,
another club and I go, this fuck.
This motherfucker is sold out here, too.
Then you hold it here. I get to the club Friday. Yeah.
To get Garibaldi. I said,
Yo, is.
Did Matt Pop? Did I miss something?
And he goes, he goes
the same thing. Goes, TikTok, bro.
He goes,
the motherfucker got all these young girls and these TikTok shit.
And I go, what?
I called my web people, I said,
I need a TikTok. They go,
you have a TikTok? I go, what?
I go, there,
I got 600,000 followers. I go,
the fuck? I got TikTok.
They said, bro,
we’ve been posting your clips for like a year.
I said, we gotta get more active.
We gotta get active. We gotta get on this ship.
And now I’m like, almost 3 mil, right?
Wonderful. But I was just like, oh,
what I loved about your come up and his come up,
cause it wasn’t dances, it wasn’t sketches. Hmm.
I’m not wired like dizzy banks.
What he does is brilliant.
Yeah. And that is his bread and butter.
And he’s great at it. I’m just not Wired like that.
I’m just a stand up at the core,
get on stage, microphone.
I’m not. I’ve done sketches with Desi,
cause I knew when I went to Atlanta,
I said, let’s shoot something together.
And I knew he would lead us in the right direction
and his fan base and shit.
And we shot. Shot some funny shit that I wouldn’t have thought of. Right.
So he’s brilliant at that.
So I was just like, with Matt and with you,
I was like, oh,
this is just stand up at the core crowd work.
It’s. It’s.
Some of it is like written material,
but I got at the core, it’s a microphone,
it’s a stage. Yes.
In an audience. And I go, okay,
so it is possible to take off and sell tickets
and build a new fan base off TikTok.
And then probably a month after Atlanta,
I’m in Fort Lauderdale at the airport.
These four white dudes run up to me,
probably college age, maybe high school.
And I go, yo,
you have TikTok, right?
You have TikTok with Joe. Let me get a picture.
And they’re wild. And I go, oh,
they don’t know me from no one else.
They don’t even know my name.
Yeah. And so I’m in the algorithms. Yeah.
Of the TikTok. So I was like, oh,
I was. So.
I was almost like. Took a deep breath, like, okay, this.
This is attraction. We can do this.
We don’t need Permission. We’re.
We are in a beautiful time now.
Now, now,
now you get into.
Now you talking that Nate Jackson shit now.
What’s that permission shit we talking about? Permission?
We ain’t asking for permission.
We ain’t roll James around here.
That’s what I love. I go,
we are in the. Honestly,
I really think it’s the. The greatest era to self promote,
talk your shit, self blow up.
When I see comics bitching cause they’re not putting on,
they’re not selling tickets,
I’ll be like, that’s on you.
They’re not listening. That’s on you.
I have spent the majority of the two years
with every headliner I’m in town with
telling them exactly what to do.
Mind you,
my experience being told to get on TikTok and people thinking like,
Matt gave me the keys to the app or some shit,
was literally him saying, yeah,
just get on TikTok.
That’s it. One. Really?
No guidance or nothing. Like,
I texted him a couple nights later like,
what are you captioning with?
And he was like, I just do it myself.
I had to figure all that stuff out myself.
I started adding the other camera
where we’re filming who I’m talking to, right?
And Matt just had a tripod with one camera he would bring.
And I said, Matt,
you gotta get somebody to hold the camera on the other side.
He started doing that after.
I was like, you should do that.
Uh huh. Right, right.
We have now been in communication all the time.
We’re like, here’s what I’m doing.
Here’s what you’re doing. Here’s what you’re doing.
Like, how can we feed off?
Like, how are we.
Matt has, what, 44 million?
I have 3.5 million. 2023,
when I did organize the tour and go,
I sold more tickets in comedy clubs than anybody in America.