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Jon Jon Lannen | The Christian Reeve Podcast | #20 | · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:03
  Right. Hello and welcome to another
• 0:07
  episode of the Christian Reeve podcast.
• 0:10
  And today I have a very special guest.
• 0:12
  My guest goes by the name, John John Lannan, the boy who was so
• 0:18
  nice, they named him twice. I just wanted to say that to be
• 0:21
  honest. Now John John Lennon is a
• 0:24
  podcaster YouTube. A children's book author twitch
• 0:30
  streamer although that's mostly for his podcast but still I
• 0:33
  can't that twitch streamer and A TV presenter hailing all the way
• 0:38
  from the United States of America.
• 0:41
  Welcome to the show. How you doing?
• 0:45
  Hi. Oh my God, I'm so good
• 0:47
  Christian. I am so thrilled to be on the
• 0:49
  show. Thank you again for having this
• 0:50
  is wicked. Cool, look at we're going global
• 0:53
  over here, we're all over the world.
• 0:55
  He's pretty amazing. Actually, to be honest.
• 0:57
  Because so far, I've interviewed people in a see, South Africa,
• 1:04
  Estonia, Germany, Poland and not an America.
• 1:11
  It's it would International baby, like Pitbull.
• 1:17
  I want to see a guest from Azerbaijan, mainly because I
• 1:20
  love saying that time trees named Alger by just simple.
• 1:24
  I'm, I actually do have a Russian guests coming up soon,
• 1:27
  so you never know. It's possible all da the music,
• 1:33
  I know you, okay? Before I get into proper
• 1:35
  questions, I know that you can speak a little bit off.
• 1:38
  Or, you know. Okay, so I guess my first
• 1:40
  question. Yeah, is, you were born in
• 1:43
  America, but your family is German.
• 1:45
  Is that correct? So actually, I was born and
• 1:49
  raised in Germany, and my mom is American and my dad is Turkish.
• 1:54
  So I actually have no German blood, technically speaking, but
• 1:58
  I speak fluent German and most of my biological father's our
• 2:02
  relatives, married into Germans. So, a lot of my cousins are very
• 2:06
  blond German looking children and my siblings are much more
• 2:10
  Olive toned. They really had that more.
• 2:11
  That Turkish complexion. And then we moved here, when I
• 2:15
  was 9, 10 years old. And, you know, now I'm here.
• 2:18
  Now, I have a new accent I suppose so bad because you have
• 2:24
  explained this before to me, and for those who don't know,
• 2:27
  listening on, you know, on Spotify on YouTube where ever
• 2:30
  else, you consume the question, we've podcast me and John John
• 2:33
  have actually colored before. We did a wrestling podcast on
• 2:39
  Jon Jones podcast. We also Did a show.
• 2:44
  So basically, John John does like this variety, show, I
• 2:49
  guess, you could say on his podcast, sometimes on Twitch and
• 2:53
  he invited me very graciously to do sort of an acting peace or to
• 2:57
  do some acting pieces on there and he showcased a bunch of
• 2:59
  other creators and put it all together and it made for a good
• 3:02
  show. So, we've done some stuff
• 3:04
  together. Basically, it's my point and I
• 3:06
  remember possibly, in that podcast you said about being The
• 3:12
  the connection to Germany. And I guess my memory is all
• 3:15
  over the place, because sometimes I have a really good
• 3:17
  memory and sometimes it's really bad.
• 3:19
  And I always feel bad because it's like, I'm a good guy, I
• 3:23
  will care. I'll make the effort for you as
• 3:24
  a friend, but at the same time, it's like I remember.
• 3:26
  I just, it's, especially bad if I have like, a girlfriend or
• 3:29
  something and I forget something.
• 3:30
  And they're like, how could you forget?
• 3:32
  And it's like it's not you. It's just that I'm terrible with
• 3:35
  him. I totally hear that and think
• 3:40
  about it. How many people you interact
• 3:42
  with all around the world different stories?
• 3:44
  So yeah, you are all good. Not to worry.
• 3:47
  I'm the same way with memory. I'm like, I think I attribute to
• 3:50
  my OCD and a TD. Very hyperactive brain.
• 3:52
  That's like, you know, if someone talks for a couple
• 3:54
  minutes, I might only be able to answer one or two things.
• 3:56
  Go my goal. You know, how my brain went
• 3:59
  about 50 pieces, you just mentioned that it was that like
• 4:06
  a joke or do you. You actually have ADD or
• 4:08
  something like that. Is that a real thing that you
• 4:10
  have? Yeah, true story.
• 4:12
  I have ADD. I'm very open about my mental
• 4:15
  illness and mental health. I also have obsessive-compulsive
• 4:18
  disorder and those two things, really lends itself really well
• 4:23
  for being a neurotic Creator. But there are some struggles
• 4:27
  with that, right? But yeah, I know I struggle with
• 4:29
  OCD and avd every single day of my life but that's why I think
• 4:33
  creating is so great for me. I'm able to jump into all Those
• 4:37
  different Avenues. Not get bored with it certain
• 4:39
  thing. And when I do, you know, I've
• 4:41
  shipped over here but it's it's really interesting because of
• 4:44
  the combination of ADD and OCD, right?
• 4:48
  You, you lose focus quickly but OCD really hyper focuses you on
• 4:54
  a specific thing very compulsive, right?
• 4:56
  So it's really interesting, I go really hard, I'm all of my
• 4:59
  things and move along which is why I think I've been so
• 5:02
  successful with my Ventures. So in that sense I think my
• 5:05
  mental is just put it as a perspective.
• 5:07
  Obviously, a lot of us struggle with, you know, is our mental
• 5:10
  health and I think it's very important to take care of but
• 5:13
  also be aware of, right, because that's how you take care of
• 5:17
  completely agree. Although I will say this is, I
• 5:20
  think the first time I've ever some heard someone describe, ADD
• 5:23
  and ADHD as being under the umbrella term of mental illness,
• 5:27
  like that. And I guess my work, most of the
• 5:29
  time when people refer to mental illness, they mean, like, you
• 5:32
  know, dealing with depression or psychosis or schizophrenia,
• 5:37
  Friend or something like that. So I guess it, you know, it does
• 5:39
  come under that umbrella because it is a lot of different things.
• 5:44
  But yeah, I just thought that was kind of interesting.
• 5:47
  And you think about yeah, the ADD and OCD really lend itself
• 5:51
  to to exactly what you said. Often leads to depressive States
• 5:54
  and very a lot of anxiety states do so yeah I hear what you're
• 5:58
  saying. Absolutely.
• 5:58
  It's I guess it's a byproduct of but I'm pretty pretty aware of.
• 6:04
  I'm like if it wasn't a struggle, I die, you know.
• 6:07
  I wouldn't try to try to overcome it but yes, I agree.
• 6:11
  Just going back to what you were saying about sort of like using
• 6:14
  it for good for positive because I've interviewed other of a pod
• 6:20
  YouTubers on here that have suffered with, you know, things
• 6:22
  like ADHD and they do the same thing and they said, you know,
• 6:26
  for instance I had a YouTube one here called project Zeb, who
• 6:29
  sort of made a similar point about because he has is more to
• 6:33
  do with struggling to kind of regain attention.
• 6:37
  So he could be really focused and doing everything and that
• 6:40
  has attention, just snap stuff. Something else.
• 6:43
  So I suppose we've YouTube, It's kind of useful in the sense that
• 6:46
  you, if you're doing, like short videos, then it's fine.
• 6:48
  If he was doing something more long, long form like say like a
• 6:52
  twitch stream, that would be more of a challenge and also
• 6:56
  again just putting a line under that point and you making one of
• 7:01
  my youngest Brothers I believe has ADHD.
• 7:07
  I do always get confused. There's so many variants, it's
• 7:10
  whatever. But, you know, basically he has
• 7:13
  a lot of energy and all over the place but he's very clever kid
• 7:21
  and was really interesting. I remember before I saw him
• 7:24
  actually just before lockdown because they're my that part of
• 7:29
  my family's in London and I've moved up north and I luckily got
• 7:33
  to see him doing some like ice skating and it's funny. like you
• 7:39
  got this kid, he just like porn star token, as got a million
• 7:42
  miles an hour and then you put him in this completely different
• 7:45
  scenario where he's got focus and put all of his energy into
• 7:48
  one thing and suddenly he's like a machine, he's like You know,
• 7:54
  and it works. And I guess that that is kind of
• 7:57
  the whole point is. It's all about how you look at
• 8:00
  these things and how you approach these things.
• 8:01
  Because, like, one of the things, I remember my dad saying
• 8:05
  about that situation was the kind of because I think he's
• 8:10
  going to a particular school. Now that is better equipped for
• 8:12
  that but like before he was going to just a standard school
• 8:15
  where office teachers were kind of useless and didn't really
• 8:18
  know sort of like I guess how to approach that how to how to make
• 8:23
  the bet that the best of that, and really like encourage
• 8:27
  someone to kind of use that, you know what I mean?
• 8:30
  Like, bring it back to you actually.
• 8:32
  Did you have like a sort of a similar experience at school
• 8:35
  where your teachers, you know? Did they Foster that in you and
• 8:39
  kind of sort of push you in the right direction?
• 8:42
  Or is it kind of a bit push back?
• 8:44
  And you had to fight it or like, what was your experience of that
• 8:47
  growing up? So overall I think it was
• 8:50
  embraced it. You know, as the chubby funny
• 8:53
  kid growing up. I think that's always a con,
• 8:55
  some level embraced. But one thing I will say about
• 8:58
  my, my brain is. I often say too much, right?
• 9:02
  And that's what got me in trouble in school.
• 9:04
  It was that I was saying, horrible things.
• 9:07
  I would just say to me. That's right.
• 9:09
  I would stand up in front of the class and maybe talk about my,
• 9:13
  what my mom does, for a living and how much he makes and how
• 9:15
  much he pays in taxes. It's like you don't need to say
• 9:17
  a hold of that. And so I would often, you know,
• 9:20
  Kiki, That a classroom for things like that, but never
• 9:23
  anything in a negative sense. It's exactly your point with
• 9:27
  your brother. I think that's so beautiful,
• 9:29
  because when I am able to hone in on my passion and there's a
• 9:35
  few things, I'm wildly passionate about when I can hone
• 9:38
  in on those things. It is a laser hyper-focus and
• 9:42
  the distractions almost don't happen.
• 9:45
  The closest analogy I heard is like people who play sports, you
• 9:47
  know, when they're in the field, all they see is colored like the
• 9:50
  colors of the Jersey. Um, you don't really know the
• 9:52
  play-by-play and I think that's very true.
• 9:54
  When you're doing something that you're passionate about, you're
• 9:58
  driving that you don't see any of the distractions, but you're
• 10:00
  going so, laser-focused fast on the thing you're passionate
• 10:03
  about, and I think that's why people with ADD and ADHD Thrive
• 10:08
  and things like that because they don't get that shot often
• 10:11
  because there are a lot of distractions in the day-to-day.
• 10:14
  But yeah, like I said if you focus on something with passion
• 10:17
  and can boom it's that's when you know you're doing something
• 10:20
  right? And you're probably following,
• 10:22
  you know, your life's work, you know.
• 10:24
  That's a really good point actually.
• 10:25
  Especially in this day and age, where you know, you've got all
• 10:28
  this access to false moving kind of technology.
• 10:31
  And also, to be honest with you, I think there's a wider issue.
• 10:37
  Just in society, in general with this kind of fat, is that a fat
• 10:40
  joke? in terms of like, instant
• 10:58
  gratification culture and, you know, like people kind of having
• 11:04
  a very short attention span and I think that, you know, it's all
• 11:10
  even Or challenging for someone who's got like you know, ADHD or
• 11:14
  something like that. But same time I mean yeah
• 11:18
  there's a lot of different Avenues.
• 11:20
  Now to kind of put that into and I think, yeah, content creation
• 11:23
  is perfect with that, especially with the energy thing.
• 11:26
  I mean, from my brother, you know, he's often being told
• 11:29
  like, you need to calm it down. You need to slow down and it's
• 11:31
  like, there's something like this.
• 11:32
  It's like, there are no limits go nuts.
• 11:35
  So yeah, I hope he does that in the future, but anyway, it's
• 11:38
  we're bringing it back to you. I just thought that was
• 11:40
  interesting. Mention that I didn't know that.
• 11:43
  So I've learned something new, but in my research, obviously, I
• 11:47
  learn that you like you write children's books and I saw this
• 11:50
  on your website and several other places.
• 11:52
  I wanted to ask you, what prompted you to actually start
• 11:55
  writing children's books. So, the story is actually really
• 12:00
  wild how it all happened. I was actually in, this is going
• 12:05
  to take a turn, I'm gonna check in the hospital with congestive
• 12:08
  heart failure, and my heart was pumping.
• 12:11
  Being at 66%. It was a condition called Mi
• 12:15
  pericarditis and I remember sitting in that hospital bed,
• 12:19
  frankly, terrified not knowing how to make it out like
• 12:22
  genuinely my last rites were let you read to me.
• 12:25
  I had friends, you know, visiting it was very very
• 12:28
  bizarre time in my life and I remember saying to God or the
• 12:32
  universe, whatever is out there and I don't know.
• 12:36
  And I'm clearly like in a very vulnerable scared scared state,
• 12:40
  If I get out of this hospital, I have to spread my message to me
• 12:45
  far more people than I have in the way that I have.
• 12:48
  And before that meant, much of my time was spent touring and
• 12:52
  onstage, and I knew I had have to shift my medium.
• 12:56
  If I want to reach more people, let's say I had a year left or a
• 12:59
  couple months left and frankly, at that time, you know, when
• 13:02
  things were getting diagnosed, I have no idea what my future
• 13:05
  held. How do you get that?
• 13:13
  Taught me is to remain in the moment and appreciate the now.
• 13:18
  That's such an important thing. Especially when you're dealing
• 13:21
  with a health scare or your day-to-day life is be grateful
• 13:25
  for the now. No matter how crummy it is, or
• 13:27
  how great it is being grateful for down.
• 13:29
  And I remember saying, if I get out, I have to spread that
• 13:32
  message and I think it's going to be a kids book about improv
• 13:36
  and the funny thing is that had never been done before.
• 13:38
  No one had written a kids book about this thing.
• 13:40
  We call improv comedy, of course, theater and comedy books
• 13:44
  are out there, but nothing tailored to this thing and so
• 13:46
  that was kind of the idea. Yeah, the first one did a really
• 13:50
  really well, so I decided, you know what, there's other avenues
• 13:52
  to go. So of course, there's the draft
• 13:54
  that taught me how to laugh, which is all about improv on
• 13:56
  Comedy. The giraffe and cheetah taught
• 13:58
  me Theta, which is of course about theater.
• 14:01
  And of course, the draft on bunny taught me how to be funny
• 14:04
  and that was all about stand-up in comedy, so I figured listen.
• 14:07
  If I knew earlier on that, this could be my Avenue, it's exactly
• 14:11
  your point, your brother. Like if people knew that these
• 14:15
  Avenues were out there for each other, at a young age, Gosh, we
• 14:18
  could flourish some cool things because me experimenting in
• 14:21
  football was fun but it just wasn't my passion.
• 14:26
  So when did that actually happen to you about how old are you?
• 14:29
  And when that happened? December 2009.
• 14:35
  And I was early 20s and I like to the youngest patient on the
• 14:39
  heart, floor at the time, which is just, which was wild and you
• 14:43
  loved as a hallway. Deciding, you know, there's some
• 14:44
  comedy and it to, you know, one of my friends came to visit me
• 14:48
  and there's in the state there's something called the VA Hospital
• 14:51
  right which houses and helps veterans from the present and
• 14:55
  retired, right? And so one of my friends had
• 14:57
  gotten lost and walk through the VA hospital and so She saw
• 15:01
  horrendous things, I mean just I mean left and right and then she
• 15:05
  finally gets to me. She goes you look fine.
• 15:26
  Sounds like you're willing to talk about this was there ever
• 15:31
  kind of Cumin. Like where you were like because
• 15:37
  when you first said that it kind of sounded like maybe you were
• 15:39
  like a child or something but like early 20s that's you know
• 15:42
  you're a man and you know I can imagine what would be going on?
• 15:48
  I remember my mindset when I was 21.
• 15:52
  Like what were you? What were you thinking?
• 15:54
  Like we were you thinking was there a point where you're like?
• 15:56
  Okay this is it like shit. This this might be here or was
• 15:59
  it kind of like every day is different or like I don't know.
• 16:03
  Where was your mindset at generally speaking?
• 16:08
  I don't often say this piece when I share this story but
• 16:12
  there was a nanosecond that I really thought it was the end in
• 16:19
  a genuine State and that was when my doctor walked in and
• 16:24
  provided the results and she said, John John.
• 16:29
  You are in congestive, heart failure and your hearts only
• 16:32
  pumping at this. This percent.
• 16:35
  And all I could think about is the words congestive which I was
• 16:38
  like that sounds kind of like a cold.
• 16:40
  Okay. Harp that seems like a very
• 16:42
  important muscle failure. That that the only goes one way.
• 16:46
  Right? Like the other times when things
• 16:48
  fail like your engine they don't come back.
• 16:51
  That's what I was like. Oh shit.
• 16:54
  Like this might be Jon Jon's time which was a really amazing.
• 17:01
  Caterpillar butterfly moment as well because I knew it couldn't
• 17:04
  be over and I knew if I believed it was over it would be over.
• 17:08
  And so I be a I was insane. I knew I was going to get out.
• 17:11
  I knew for whatever reason I was going to beat the stupid virus
• 17:16
  and get out and essentially with the virus data was attacked, the
• 17:19
  the heart wall in the heart muscle itself has moved past the
• 17:22
  wall and into the muscle and it was it was a lot to find but
• 17:26
  that's that's been my whole belief about life and if I can
• 17:30
  go on a quick additional piece that I learned watching my heart
• 17:36
  rate in the hospital bed made me realize what life is supposed to
• 17:41
  be. And what I mean by that is all
• 17:43
  of our those start here and there's time that things get
• 17:47
  better and the best best best and he hit a peak and we don't
• 17:50
  think it could get any better than that Peak.
• 17:52
  And guess what? It can.
• 17:54
  Then, things started going downhill, like shit.
• 17:56
  And only go past the point where we started.
• 17:58
  We hit even further. At my God, this is a really bums
• 18:01
  day, you know what, then it goes up a little bit, then it stays
• 18:04
  stagnant and then it does it again.
• 18:07
  And that is literally what our heart is telling us to do.
• 18:11
  That is a heartbeat. It's literally what we should be
• 18:14
  experiencing, we needed the Peaks and The Valleys to
• 18:18
  experience, life literally with our heart.
• 18:22
  So why would we enjoy those moments of high and low in life?
• 18:26
  And I'm getting chills all over because that's what But I left
• 18:28
  that hospital bed, but I knew I experienced this and this and
• 18:33
  I'm going to for the rest of my life as I want to live.
• 18:37
  Thanks. Thanks for sharing some
• 18:39
  credible. I will say, just yet tagging on
• 18:42
  to that. I have to set a similar, kind of
• 18:46
  suppose Outlook was life in terms of the, you know, you have
• 18:48
  to embrace the highs and the lows, but I've never actually
• 18:50
  drawn the actual literal analogy that you've just made, and to
• 18:54
  me, it just sounds so obvious and simple, but yeah, it's
• 18:58
  Anyway, I mean when you're watching it for weeks right on
• 19:01
  the computer screen, you have to make something with the guy the
• 19:04
  universe or God is putting this in front of my face every day
• 19:08
  for what reason, hopefully, I'm learning something from it,
• 19:11
  right? And then I realized what will
• 19:14
  you get if you go, if you go flat line, that's a no way to
• 19:17
  live and be, you know, that is in terms of like the the kind of
• 19:22
  positivity that you have. Because something like that, you
• 19:27
  know, it's life changing. It changes how you think, I
• 19:30
  don't like in my own personal life.
• 19:31
  I have these shifts, sometimes it's every couple of years.
• 19:34
  Sometimes it can be in the space of a couple of months.
• 19:36
  It really depends. I'm not going to ask like where
• 19:41
  you're the same person, but did you have the same kind of level
• 19:44
  of positivity then that you have now or was that something that
• 19:47
  you kind of? You know, you came out hospital
• 19:49
  and like, okay, you know, chapter 2, chapter 3, like tell
• 19:54
  us a little bit about that. I always had the power.
• 19:59
  I just didn't know how to harness it if that makes sense.
• 20:01
  I always had all of this energy and inside positivity that I
• 20:07
  just didn't know how to execute a radiate in the proper way.
• 20:10
  And often times, especially in my younger years, it came off as
• 20:13
  annoying, right? Or we're not very pleasant.
• 20:17
  And As I Grew Older, especially after that experience.
• 20:19
  It was like, you have to be very clear with what your intention
• 20:23
  is, and what your intent for the world, is with your message, and
• 20:27
  that That. But it's a two-point.
• 20:28
  Yes, I was the same person, but it's like, when a, which finally
• 20:31
  knows her powers, you're like, now I know what to do with them
• 20:34
  and that's really fun. But now, I know I use my powers
• 20:38
  for good as much as possible. I know that any powerful being
• 20:42
  in the world has the ability to use their powers for good, or
• 20:45
  for evil, and I really believe that.
• 20:46
  That's why I'm here to Spread spread the lights.
• 20:49
  Grab the positivity, spread the joy.
• 20:52
  And it really went into overdrive after heart failure.
• 20:53
  No Doubt. The unjust I'm taking the exact
• 21:20
  same thing, you know. Add to that person again this
• 21:27
  upon things. Okay, well hopefully this this
• 21:32
  meeting can continue after the interview.
• 21:38
  Yeah, I mean if something else John John and his sense of humor
• 21:43
  or reason alone sometimes this sometimes this I've never seen
• 21:51
  you like this, this is always been oh thank you.
• 21:56
  Okay, let's bring it back to your children's books.
• 21:58
  Again, this might sound like a silly question but I was kind of
• 22:03
  intrigued because you do actually write adult books as
• 22:06
  well. I believe you wrote a book on
• 22:09
  stand up but in terms of the children's books, is it
• 22:16
  difficult to write books for children?
• 22:17
  I mean, you know, do you have to kind of Did I speak speak to
• 22:24
  kids or like try and put yourself in a different mindset?
• 22:26
  Like what's the process? You go through to try and to try
• 22:29
  and do that like talk to me about that?
• 22:33
  Yeah, it's kind of the opposite of what we were just talking
• 22:35
  about being. So, in tune with your intention,
• 22:39
  that you have to be able to convey your intention and
• 22:41
  message in the most simplest of terms, which is often times of
• 22:45
  struggle for me, right? Because I, you know, I tend to
• 22:48
  go on and on I may use too many words, big words, little words,
• 22:51
  whatever. And so to convey a message.
• 22:54
  So pure that, not only a child understands that but but really
• 22:58
  resonates with them and then rhyming because all my books are
• 23:01
  rhyming, I just love it. Okay.
• 23:04
  That was one thing. I wouldn't say it was a
• 23:06
  struggle. I just thought it was really an
• 23:07
  interesting exercise for an adult because how often are you
• 23:13
  told speak with as little words as possible and try to convey
• 23:16
  your message? And it's like oh not very often.
• 23:21
  So if you're just trying to convey what, this art form is in
• 23:23
  the purest form in 20 Pages, how can you do that?
• 23:27
  And that was fun for me, but I, but I do think there's a place
• 23:32
  for both. I think I don't know that I
• 23:33
  could speak in Rhymes and children terms every day.
• 23:40
  That's right on a side note, before I ask you another
• 23:47
  question on that that whole concept of you're trying to do
• 23:51
  things in a simple terms as possible.
• 23:54
  Like, I always find that frustrating like, for some
• 23:56
  reason that just brought up this memory of when I was Universe,
• 23:59
  he and this has happened a few times throughout my life but you
• 24:02
  know, you get that. Scenario where you've just met a
• 24:03
  bunch of people, right? And yeah, I'm pretty easygoing.
• 24:07
  I can get on with a group of people and stuff.
• 24:09
  It's, you know, I don't like I care.
• 24:11
  Less now, back in the day, I was like kind of nervous but now I'm
• 24:14
  just like whatever like, who cares.
• 24:16
  But I will always hate this scenario of where you walk into
• 24:19
  the classroom or whatever and it's like stand-up.
• 24:24
  Tell us a fact about yourself and a lie about yourself and
• 24:28
  like talk about yourself and I don't know use one word to sum
• 24:32
  yourself. Up and it's like without
• 24:34
  sounding eat egotistical. That is literally impossible to
• 24:39
  do like to know me and its sole fact.
• 24:42
  I'm kind of elaborate. Why are you kind of?
• 24:47
  Well, I don't know. Anyway, it's true.
• 25:02
  I'm John John, I have two parrots and they know how to say
• 25:06
  my entire is family's names. The teacher, my mom would pick
• 25:09
  me up and said that is so wonderful.
• 25:11
  John told us about the two parents you have and on the we
• 25:14
  don't have parents but you have to make it interesting.
• 25:17
  I mean, he's boring to me as a child.
• 25:29
  I've often had these scenarios in life People ask me like tell
• 25:34
  me about yourself and I'm like my mind just goes blank and I'm
• 25:37
  my shit man. I must just be a really boring
• 25:40
  person. Like and then, and then, and
• 25:43
  then I start like, when I go away, I look at everything I'm
• 25:45
  into, and I'm like, oh, I could have said, like this, and this,
• 25:48
  this and this. But in those scenarios, I'm
• 25:52
  like, ah, I mean, all I really do is like YouTube and stuff.
• 25:57
  That's not really interesting, is it?
• 25:58
  That's because I expect that you're supposed to just talk
• 26:00
  about extravagant Hobbies, like, Like, who?
• 26:03
  I don't know, skiing in the Alps and, you know, I do this.
• 26:07
  And I don't know. Just everything I do.
• 26:09
  Sounds kind of wherever, I don't know.
• 26:12
  I just get like weird in those situations.
• 26:18
  You think it's funny because there is no doubt about it.
• 27:01
  Look at this bad boy. This is the first reveal of my
• 27:03
  Ceramics coffee mug. Welcome her.
• 27:10
  Well, signature there. Are you going to speak in to
• 27:13
  sell these on your store this much or something?
• 27:18
  That would be hilarious. Now, that would be this.
• 27:20
  Thank you for the plug. That would be this charge on
• 27:22
  merch here available at John. I got to tell you you should you
• 27:39
  should definitely consider selling them because I think
• 27:41
  that's actually a really good little like I would buy one of
• 27:45
  those looks good. It's nice color, you know it's
• 27:48
  simple but like nice you know I it kind of reminds me of
• 27:51
  something I've seen before possibly that kind of like
• 27:55
  Australian patent thing you get sometimes, I don't know what I'm
• 27:58
  saying but the pattern kind of looks like reminds me of
• 28:02
  something also. Those who are listening.
• 28:14
  I would recommend, you just watch on YouTube, but swiftly
• 28:19
  on. I don't feel like I can return
• 28:22
  to the kids books at this point. The last one, final question,
• 28:29
  what would you say that? Like the main differences
• 28:31
  between writing books for kids and writing books for adults?
• 28:34
  Like what What's the main differences between the two?
• 28:38
  I think the biggest thing like we were just saying that I think
• 28:41
  is just simply known that your words have to be simple enough
• 28:46
  and powerful enough to still have the same message, but the
• 28:49
  same is also true when you're writing adult books, right?
• 28:51
  You can be there already but the similarities you still have to
• 28:55
  be true with your intention. What, what do you want people to
• 28:58
  gain after reading your book, listening to your podcast,
• 29:02
  watching a video? What, what is it that people
• 29:04
  want to gain? That's the most important
• 29:06
  message. We are writing.
• 29:08
  Anything is carries that book medium particles, any sort of
• 29:12
  Journalism like that or creating content online.
• 29:15
  The you knowing what you want, people, what do you want to make
• 29:18
  people feel? And hopefully it's goodness, you
• 29:20
  know? Thanks for.
• 29:23
  Thanks for sharing though. So according to various sources
• 29:26
  online. I think I found this even on
• 29:28
  your Amazon, or your website. I can't remember which one it
• 29:31
  was. But basically, it says that
• 29:33
  you're currently working on your sixth book, six books out.
• 29:38
  Tell us about the process and what the book will actually be
• 29:43
  about. Perfect.
• 29:46
  So you had the book I'm really really excited about.
• 29:48
  It's going to highlight some of my room.
• 29:51
  The one thing I can share this going to highlight a lot of my
• 29:53
  passions. There's elements of professional
• 29:55
  wrestling in it, there's an element of spirituality in it
• 29:59
  and of course a lot of self in it.
• 30:01
  This is not even my first full fiction novel and I'm really
• 30:07
  excited about it. I don't know where it will go
• 30:10
  and I'm currently in the planning stages from as far as
• 30:13
  character development along with them.
• 30:15
  No storyline. And then once kind of that's
• 30:18
  broken down, I kind of have a backwards way of working for the
• 30:22
  book. I always think about the biggest
• 30:24
  piece to, you know, the P. What's what is the thing in the
• 30:28
  book and kind of trailing off and this side and this side for
• 30:32
  the peak but it's a lot of fun. And recently, you know, I took a
• 30:35
  break from YouTube being in podcasting and its really being
• 30:38
  able to reset me too. Did you get back into that?
• 30:41
  Because you know, as you know, if you're creating constantly,
• 30:43
  it's really tough to add new New to it, you know, especially with
• 30:48
  other things are going well, you know, such of the podcasts and
• 30:50
  YouTube and things like that. Absolutely.
• 30:54
  Just on that point as well about approaching stories, kind of
• 30:58
  reminds me of what Eric Bischoff.
• 30:59
  Always says about writing stories.
• 31:01
  For those who don't know. Eric Bischoff famously was.
• 31:05
  I believe the chief Executive officer of WCW.
• 31:11
  So that's world championship wrestling head honcho, at WCW.
• 31:16
  And basically, he worked there for many years and then you
• 31:19
  obviously work for the WWF WWE as a character and also behind
• 31:23
  the scenes guy. Anyway, he's also worked in TV
• 31:26
  and a bunch of other mediums and he always talks about when
• 31:29
  you're approaching a story goes on and on, and on about this but
• 31:32
  like that you should have your beginning middle and end which
• 31:36
  sounds like a really obvious thing to say.
• 31:37
  But he always says You should kind of like have your ending in
• 31:40
  mind first and kind of work your way backwards and it kind of
• 31:43
  sounds like you're sort of saying the same thing and sense
• 31:45
  of like you have to have that main main point that you want to
• 31:48
  hammer home and then everything else kind of like unravels
• 31:51
  slowly. Just interesting.
• 31:54
  And yeah, yeah, it's so true. It's like you have to think
• 31:57
  about what it is. That's that's intriguing.
• 32:00
  Exactly, right. Is this kind of that that ending
• 32:02
  ending to beginning? Because you have to because that
• 32:05
  also assists in build up, and you can use that analogy.
• 32:08
  G for anything, right? If you, if they create a movie,
• 32:12
  right there, are certain media that happens two weeks prior
• 32:15
  right? A month prior they might be
• 32:17
  doing press junkets and things like that months before that it
• 32:19
  be social media posting. So you're building up to exactly
• 32:22
  your parent. The grand poobah.
• 32:24
  The grand finale here at the end.
• 32:26
  So yeah, it's pretty cool. So just moving on, you're the
• 32:31
  owner of John, John & Co which your website describes as being
• 32:36
  a firm specializing in coach. In comedy and Consulting.
• 32:41
  I was going to Define it myself, but I figured I'd just take your
• 32:44
  words because that kind of puts it across better.
• 32:48
  So, talk to us about the services that you offer and sort
• 32:51
  of how you got into this. Perfect Day, open jobs on a
• 32:56
  code, 10 years ago, when I wanted to create more improv
• 32:59
  programs in high schools and middle schools.
• 33:02
  And so what happens, oftentimes is there was a time of the
• 33:05
  recession. When I began that a line of our
• 33:07
  feet, our funding was getting cut in the states.
• 33:10
  So there wasn't an outlet for theater classes anymore.
• 33:14
  So what I did is I pray really smoothie.
• 33:16
  We go into schools and say, Hey listen, I'll put either a
• 33:18
  theater program in here or an improper.
• 33:21
  I'm here and we'll just do after school stuff.
• 33:24
  Kids can do it and we'll just jump in.
• 33:25
  Here's this nominal fee for the school to pay, which was
• 33:28
  substantially less than having a program teacher, Etc.
• 33:32
  And then it grew, right? We started with one school
• 33:34
  through two schools and we have five schools and repeat over 20
• 33:38
  school. So I had to hire a whole staff
• 33:40
  of teachers to go teach these classes and so that was really
• 33:44
  really wild. So that really is that really is
• 33:49
  what it entails for as far as our comedy division.
• 33:51
  The other thing is obviously we do live shows and things like
• 33:53
  that. The coaching side of my business
• 33:57
  is mainly life coaching, so I'm a certified professional life
• 34:00
  coach in a CPC as well. And so, I do offer life coaching
• 34:04
  services for those who are interested.
• 34:06
  It's not my primary source of income or business, but I am
• 34:09
  passionate and I, of course, had a few private clients that I
• 34:11
  work with today. And then if the course, the
• 34:15
  Consulting is some of my favorite work and that's
• 34:18
  Consulting. Assisting people with book
• 34:19
  publishing production and of course, comedy Consulting.
• 34:22
  So I love coming in. Watching a comedy show, for
• 34:25
  example, and just giving some feedback and some coaching on
• 34:28
  kind of the Sciences of Comedy. I've been the comedy industry
• 34:32
  for 15 plus years. And there are certain things
• 34:35
  that I've learned throughout the years.
• 34:37
  And I've talked about this a little bit there there, certain
• 34:38
  Sciences to Comedy, literal. Things like, you can flexion
• 34:42
  letters, how you end a sentence. Those things lately make people
• 34:46
  laugh. So I often times go in and try
• 34:48
  to add those small factors and people shows and that's one of
• 34:52
  my favorite things to do through John John ago.
• 34:55
  Totes us a little bit about this life coaching thing because I'll
• 34:58
  be honest, I've heard people joke about this and for some
• 35:02
  reason, I don't know if you're familiar with the English TV,
• 35:05
  show Peep Show by any chance of doing if you seen that.
• 35:08
  I guess there's a funny part in that episode in that, where
• 35:12
  Jeremy for those who don't know. It's two guys living in a flat
• 35:16
  together and they're basically both imbeciles for different
• 35:20
  reasons, but Jeremy is kind of the younger more.
• 35:25
  I guess you could say, cooler one, sort of anyway.
• 35:28
  He decides that he will become a life coach, which is actually
• 35:32
  ridiculous because his life is just a mess.
• 35:35
  So, it's like, why the hell is he giving coaching on life
• 35:38
  skills? But like, I don't know.
• 35:41
  I kind of thought, like, at the time I was like, okay, that
• 35:43
  sounds a bit silly, but I guess they're, yeah, that must
• 35:46
  actually be a proper profession. So, talk to me a little bit
• 35:48
  about, like, what is involved in that how you help people and
• 35:52
  such now, I think the biggest piece to being a help in any any
• 35:58
  day to day, life is the ability to listen.
• 36:01
  And I think that's often what we need in this world.
• 36:03
  So I think that's one of the primary functions when I work
• 36:05
  for people with this coaching is listening.
• 36:08
  And the other thing that is really interesting is a really
• 36:10
  common misconception and don't get me wrong.
• 36:13
  I've done a lot of life coach characters on stage, kind of
• 36:16
  poking. Fun at the motivational speaker
• 36:17
  in this, that and the other. But one thing to keep in mind, a
• 36:20
  lot of life coaching is actually helping the You'll navigate
• 36:24
  themselves, the number one rule, when you get your certification,
• 36:29
  you're actually not providing any advice to anyone, right?
• 36:33
  It's not like a therapist or a psychiatrist, there is no direct
• 36:37
  advice that you're providing. People are the life coach.
• 36:40
  You are asking the questions? I mean, I'll give you an
• 36:42
  example, right? What is something that you're
• 36:45
  struggling with today? And you might provide me an
• 36:47
  answer, right? And then I may ask you something
• 36:49
  very simple, like, what could you do more of And you're
• 36:52
  literally telling me your plan of action, all right?
• 36:56
  And that situation, what could you do?
• 36:57
  Less of and you're literally answering.
• 36:59
  So it's my role to help you navigate the answers.
• 37:03
  You already have because I have no idea how to navigate your
• 37:06
  life, right. I can help and Add additional
• 37:12
  tidbits that the key is answering questions with your
• 37:14
  client so they can pave the way, right?
• 37:17
  Because we all know rationally, what we could do less of in a
• 37:19
  situation or more of. And of course, those questions
• 37:21
  become a little bit more advanced into our details.
• 37:24
  When we set goals and things like that, I just think it's
• 37:27
  accountability, right? Not everyone has a friend who
• 37:30
  can hold them accountable and especially in this time.
• 37:34
  Some people do not phone call to call someone to hold them
• 37:36
  accountable. And I think that's one thing
• 37:38
  that's really been helpful in this, in this Time has been this
• 37:41
  this coaching. So yeah, that's kind of a
• 37:43
  coaching in a nutshell but it's funny.
• 37:45
  You say that because I hear that very often, like I'm, I do very
• 37:48
  little speaking, really, in most of my sessions, I really help
• 37:51
  people navigate where are you going with it?
• 37:53
  And what what do you want to accomplish with your goals
• 37:57
  because they're your goals? I don't want to tell you.
• 37:59
  If you're if you're interested in going down the YouTube path
• 38:02
  is by no means when the deter you to tell you to join the
• 38:04
  Army, right? I mean there's why would you
• 38:07
  let's figure out this path better for you, right?
• 38:11
  So thanks for sharing that money.
• 38:14
  Well, justjust on a final note on that, like what's like your
• 38:18
  kind of best-case scenario worst-case scenario, best
• 38:21
  experience. Worst.
• 38:22
  Experience with life coaching trap will try and have it
• 38:25
  balanced Deliverance. It's like he's something I did a
• 38:28
  succeeded at. Here's something that not so
• 38:29
  good. Yeah, that was almost
• 38:33
  challenging. Yeah.
• 38:35
  I think the most challenging thing that was tough to overcome
• 38:39
  and we did over sometime. We we were working with a client
• 38:42
  who just was in their own way and what I mean by that and
• 38:47
  those questions I asked you earlier, what can you do?
• 38:49
  More of or what you can do, less of in any situation, no matter
• 38:53
  how right or wrong you are. You can be reflective and figure
• 38:56
  that out when you're unable to just jump that hurdle, it's
• 39:00
  going to be really tough to dive into anything else.
• 39:02
  And that's why it's a is just being being open with yourself.
• 39:05
  If you're not a fool yourself, there's no one who can help you.
• 39:07
  Not even the most professional professionals.
• 39:09
  Do you name it? Do you mean like when you say
• 39:14
  that? Like if you're not able to sort
• 39:16
  of sit there and be real to yourself like they're okay.
• 39:20
  So like if it, let's say you ask me that and I say, oh, there is
• 39:23
  nothing I can do to change then it's like me not being
• 39:26
  realistic. Is that kind of what you mean by
• 39:28
  that? Yeah.
• 39:29
  In a sense for sure and my job is to help get you to a point
• 39:33
  and that examples, like, okay, now at the surface level, it
• 39:37
  seems like there's nothing else could be done, right?
• 39:40
  You were late. Because of traffic at the
• 39:42
  surface level. That seems like there's nothing
• 39:45
  else that could be done in the situation and yes, I know.
• 39:47
  That's exactly what I'm saying. But people who aren't able to
• 39:49
  attend take that next step. Those are tough, but those who
• 39:52
  are, right? It's all right.
• 39:53
  Well, I could have made you thought about traffic and left
• 39:56
  even earlier than I ever have now that's just, that's, that's,
• 40:01
  that's working in a place of solution.
• 40:03
  I think that's really helpful. And the flip side, of course,
• 40:07
  seeing people navigate and Soaring with their life and
• 40:12
  their passion, there is nothing more cool and I had a client who
• 40:16
  published a book and that was. So so cool for me to see, it was
• 40:20
  a dream, a person, she was 16, right?
• 40:22
  And so, we work together on having goals holding ourselves
• 40:26
  accountable and getting it published, whether you go
• 40:29
  through an independent publishing agency whether you do
• 40:31
  it's called robe as I call it, or if you go through a
• 40:33
  traditional agency, you have three Outlets, but here's the
• 40:36
  deal, you can do it. Now, let's go down those paths.
• 40:39
  And that's one thing that I think is helpful It's my life
• 40:42
  coaching Services, specifically is my knowledge of some of these
• 40:46
  avenues that most of my clients are into podcasting YouTube,
• 40:50
  and, of course publishing. So I think that definitely
• 40:53
  helps, but I would say that's probably the most gratifying is
• 40:56
  knowing you were a small stepping stone in.
• 40:59
  Someone achieving their life's goal.
• 41:01
  That is so cool. You know, if we could all work
• 41:03
  like Bob The world would be a much much better place.
• 41:06
  I'd say. Couldn't agree more.
• 41:09
  I tried to do that as much as I can, as well.
• 41:12
  Yeah. Also, just bring it back to
• 41:16
  John. John & Co for a second.
• 41:17
  Now, I'm like, you, I'm very, very active on social media.
• 41:24
  You'll often see me posting loads, and loads, and loads.
• 41:26
  And, yes, it is all me. One thing I do to get around
• 41:29
  that, though is to schedule everything ahead of time.
• 41:32
  So that, you know, I could be Playing basketball or something
• 41:36
  in my latest video drops and Bob I did.
• 41:38
  Anyway it's like sensible. It helps it saves Time by blah
• 41:41
  blah but the principal point being that I'm doing everything.
• 41:45
  I'm still spending that time doing it and I've kind of been
• 41:49
  confused about this, right? Because you've got your own
• 41:51
  personal brand and then you've got such as John John Lennon.
• 41:55
  And then you've got John John & Co which I Now understand is is
• 41:58
  like fully independent. Okay, I'll explain so on if you
• 42:02
  take like Twitter as an example, you've got your John John & Co
• 42:05
  and then you've got a thing called boom, boom promotions
• 42:09
  that right? We got that right, yeah, right.
• 42:11
  So I understand booming promotions is kind of just like
• 42:15
  networking and as it sounds promotions, trying to increase
• 42:19
  awareness connect promote other people, so on, and so forth,
• 42:23
  right? And then John, John & Co is
• 42:26
  slightly different. In the sense that yeah, that's
• 42:27
  actually a company where you're offering services and its own
• 42:32
  entity but you do promote with that as well.
• 42:35
  And the interesting thing it took me a little bit of a while
• 42:37
  to fully get my head around this.
• 42:39
  But we've your two YouTube channels, one.
• 42:42
  Is the John John & Co one? It's kind of like it sounds you
• 42:46
  know, you pass other people doing things like podcast and
• 42:50
  such together and then your own personal channel is for things
• 42:54
  like the unboxing that you mentioned and and I guess Vlogs
• 42:57
  and other things that you're doing in your life.
• 43:00
  So basically, the point being that you're very, and I've said
• 43:04
  this to you before that, you know, very professional with how
• 43:06
  you approach these things. Clearly very business minded and
• 43:10
  orientated with that. Do you actually have like a team
• 43:14
  working for you? In terms of, like, for the
• 43:17
  Social Media stuff? Or is that all you talk to us
• 43:20
  about that? Yeah, so I am, I have different
• 43:23
  teams. A lot of what I do is Consulting
• 43:25
  with other businesses, if I have a.
• 43:28
  Yeah. So there are a lot of posts that
• 43:30
  I take control over, but there are organization that handles,
• 43:33
  some of the marketing forming, some of the imagery, especially
• 43:36
  the scheduling of posts that I definitely have helped with now,
• 43:42
  That's John's on ago. I do.
• 43:44
  Run that ship primarily myself now, boom.
• 43:47
  Boom. Promos is actually me and four
• 43:49
  other creators who are promoting and helping.
• 43:51
  I just started that as your point just a networking piece to
• 43:55
  help help out. I knew I had a following of some
• 43:57
  sort so I figured, hey, let me jump in and see if I can help
• 44:00
  promote my friends. People, I love other streamers
• 44:02
  and things like that, but in a nutshell, here's probably the
• 44:05
  easiest way for me to describe it.
• 44:07
  John, John & Co is all of my business stuff, anything
• 44:10
  associated with my business and gerund Land and is any of my
• 44:13
  personal stuff. So, to your point, my Vlogs and
• 44:17
  unboxing. I just, you know what, I've
• 44:19
  started that channel little over a year and a half ago, I just
• 44:22
  didn't feel like it was suited for John, John McCone, you know,
• 44:24
  there was people who may have no paid me to take improv classes
• 44:28
  that this just made no sense to post on John ago.
• 44:31
  That great. What?
• 44:32
  Yeah, but everything that kind of falls under that umbrella
• 44:36
  like the podcast and anything like that is typically under
• 44:38
  John John & Co. And I really like to try to keep
• 44:41
  John John Lannan. All my personal fun stuff,
• 44:44
  especially on my YouTube. You know, it's that's my passion
• 44:47
  project. I don't really, you know, if
• 44:49
  that picks up great but I truly do that YouTube channel for my
• 44:53
  own soul. I have the exact same problem
• 44:55
  with my branding right? Because if you go and let my
• 44:58
  LinkedIn right it's like I'm a different person.
• 45:01
  It's all because that my my specialism I suppose that my
• 45:05
  wife studied at University was marketing, right?
• 45:08
  So it's all business marketing, all that stuff, all the day jobs
• 45:11
  I've ever had and there's In no mention at all of anything that
• 45:14
  I do online. And I thought about it, I
• 45:17
  thought about like just putting like content creator or stuff,
• 45:19
  because I do a lot of stuff there, and I could write it in a
• 45:22
  way that's compelling. I mean, you know, I do lots of
• 45:25
  social media, marketing, and all of this stuff and I'm sure many
• 45:28
  of us could do the same thing, but it's like like you said, it
• 45:31
  doesn't feel like appropriate. And the only way I've been able
• 45:35
  to come up with a way to have everything on the same platform
• 45:38
  is to have my own website and then you know it's by category
• 45:42
  and But even there, the it's different.
• 45:44
  It's like the greater amount of time is in terms of information
• 45:50
  is spent on on explaining that the services that I offer, but
• 45:53
  then when it comes to like YouTube podcast, it's very
• 45:57
  little information. It's to the point.
• 46:00
  It's different, I don't know, the vibe is different, but
• 46:03
  basically in the reason I bring that up, is that I get what you
• 46:06
  mean, it, you have to kind of establish these things
• 46:08
  differently and to give the right kind of perception.
• 46:12
  As well, the way it works in that sense so I think that's a
• 46:17
  very smart move on your point. Just just briefly before we move
• 46:20
  on like who or what inspired you in terms of that kind of
• 46:25
  business mindedness? Because a lot of the way that
• 46:28
  you approach things is exactly the way that I've learnt both
• 46:31
  through my studies and just through experience of stuff.
• 46:35
  But like I don't often see that because a lot of the people that
• 46:37
  I talk to that, I know, you know, they'll have a very basic
• 46:41
  level of how to promote themselves.
• 46:42
  Ourselves. But not necessarily that
• 46:44
  understanding of how to present themselves professionally even
• 46:48
  the way that they talk, you know, if you drop into a John
• 46:50
  John Lannan podcast or a twitch stream, you every single time,
• 46:55
  doesn't matter if there's like one person in.
• 46:56
  Now, 50 people in there, like, you always, you have this very
• 47:00
  professional tone the whole time.
• 47:02
  So, talk to me a little bit about, you know, where that
• 47:06
  comes from. Yeah, I think that comes from a
• 47:09
  myriad of different places and Inspirations the the one that
• 47:14
  always sticks. So true to me is studying on
• 47:18
  Comedy studies in Chicago at college or as you guys say
• 47:21
  overseas at University. I love that by the way and I had
• 47:28
  a dance teacher. Yes, I wasn't dance class
• 47:30
  because it's part of the prerequisite.
• 47:31
  However, I do this dance class and a professor named Dennis
• 47:34
  wise. He actually told us on the first
• 47:37
  day of class because I want you all to go out there and get
• 47:40
  business cards. And then he asked, he goes now,
• 47:43
  what would you put on your business card?
• 47:44
  We asked a student and she said her name, and I would say
• 47:49
  student underneath he goes back, right there.
• 47:53
  Is what I need to change here as they were like.
• 47:55
  What is he talking? We're all students.
• 47:57
  Here he goes. You all need to leave here
• 47:58
  today. Vistaprint, those 500 free
• 48:01
  business cards with shipping and I want you to do a business
• 48:05
  course pose pose yet, right? I'm sorry.
• 48:09
  But that company, right? I'm sick options when companies
• 48:13
  do this. Yeah, I agree. 500 free business
• 48:17
  cards. Yeah.
• 48:18
  Shipping $15. Yeah.
• 48:21
  What is the fucking freezer? It's not at all right, actually
• 48:30
  put their vistaprint.com on the back so pay for it, people,
• 48:33
  okay? But my students.
• 48:38
  I want y'all to go to Vistaprint or whatever business card story
• 48:43
  like to go to, is that what you put your names on there and I
• 48:47
  want you to put what you're going to be underneath it.
• 48:51
  That's cool. So John John Landon you're going
• 48:53
  to be actor, Michelle, you're going to be dancer, Robert
• 48:58
  you're going to be singer and that was the first time, it made
• 49:01
  sense to me. I'm going to be a student
• 49:03
  forever, but I have to Define what my craft is now.
• 49:08
  And so, of course, I put comedian and it's interesting
• 49:11
  that that is really shaped my entire life and even business,
• 49:15
  right? Comedy is the Forefront of every
• 49:18
  other 10 of the company. I'm comedy to the Forefront of
• 49:20
  all my passion projects, comedies of the Forefront when
• 49:23
  I'm talking to people just in general.
• 49:26
  And so that was really impactful in my life.
• 49:27
  And I remember saying, and a lot of people didn't get the message
• 49:30
  right on that level. I'm like, he's saying you need
• 49:34
  to be who you be? Andrew Paul says it perfectly.
• 49:38
  Be yourself and deliver it all times.
• 49:40
  That's what people want, just be yourself and try to deliver that
• 49:43
  at all costs. Yeah, it's kind of like that
• 49:48
  saying of, you know where the clothes for the I'm butchering
• 49:54
  the saying but like you know, where the clothes for the job,
• 49:56
  you want the similar mindset, you know, but I think it does
• 49:59
  kind of hold true that your attitude needs to be that.
• 50:02
  I mean certainly ever since I started taking YouTube properly
• 50:06
  in seriously last year my Approach and I guess the vibe
• 50:12
  and everything has been different.
• 50:13
  I would this podcast Most professional thing I've ever
• 50:18
  created and I guess I do takes of inspiration from certain
• 50:24
  people because I thought about different ways I could do it.
• 50:27
  I could just say do it with no research and just talk and that
• 50:30
  is possible. But I feel like I prefer to do
• 50:33
  like proper interviews at least initially the first time, you
• 50:36
  know, just to kind of showcase someone and get an idea, but the
• 50:38
  point being that, that kind of approach is not something that I
• 50:44
  envisioned, like, I thought to myself, like I Have done this
• 50:46
  earlier. You know what I mean?
• 50:47
  Like a year ago or two years ago and it's like no, I wouldn't
• 50:50
  have worked because I wouldn't have had that kind of I guess
• 50:54
  that realization point that you use spoken about throughout this
• 50:57
  conversation. So far that you I feel like you
• 50:59
  have to go through certain hurdles in life and realize
• 51:02
  certain things. And also, you know, I wrote one
• 51:06
  of these bullshit quotes on my white on my Facebook or Twitter
• 51:10
  or whatever it was earlier basically saying that, you know,
• 51:15
  sometimes in life you got, you gotta like 10, just outright,
• 51:21
  you should realize, once you realize, you know, your
• 51:24
  potential then, that's where the success begins.
• 51:28
  But I think a lot of people kind of give up too easily and as you
• 51:32
  said you know you know they're not kind of consistent with it,
• 51:36
  you know. They kind of they don't always
• 51:39
  show up like he's something like really simple right?
• 51:43
  Every time I do this I go make the effort and like do my hair
• 51:47
  and look presentable. Right, which sounds like
• 51:51
  something really obvious. But you know what?
• 51:54
  When I was doing the tcj podcast, I was looking back like
• 51:58
  today, just randomly and I was looking at, like, how many
• 52:00
  videos of myself where I look like shit?
• 52:02
  As I was no wonder that no one wanted to like watch this
• 52:05
  because it's just the why would you want to watch some guy who
• 52:07
  looks like homeless and half and I'll try to be me but you get my
• 52:11
  point. Like just not presentable and it
• 52:13
  kind of if you're trying to present a certain image and a
• 52:17
  certain thing to Them. And you try to be taken.
• 52:19
  Seriously, you've got to present yourself in that in that way and
• 52:23
  it's not just like the actual look of something.
• 52:26
  But also, the format and and the tone and and like what people
• 52:31
  can expect, and it goes back to everything that you were saying
• 52:34
  before about, you know, dividing up and having certain things
• 52:38
  that people expect on certain channels and so on and so forth.
• 52:44
  Yeah. Actually just before we move on,
• 52:46
  you mentioned about unboxing and this was Like a thing that I
• 52:49
  wasn't gonna fix out onto for too long, but I am kind of
• 52:52
  intrigued about this because it's not something I've ever
• 52:55
  particularly been interested in. Like I get the appeal in the
• 53:00
  sense that if it's like a collector's item or something,
• 53:02
  interesting that not many people going to get access to then,
• 53:05
  it's pretty cool. But talk to us about the appeal
• 53:07
  of this, because you do this consistently.
• 53:09
  So, obviously, there is something that you enjoy about
• 53:12
  it, otherwise you wouldn't keep doing it.
• 53:14
  So what's the appeal of unboxing videos?
• 53:18
  I think if you like Christmas or birthdays unboxing is for you
• 53:34
  at all until I am so stoked like it's Christmas.
• 53:37
  I will. It's just sitting there and I
• 53:39
  know I need to do it. I will not record it because
• 53:42
  it's exactly your point. What we were saying earlier that
• 53:44
  intentionally reads it, it feels like work, people are going to
• 53:47
  read Right? If I have any ounce of thought
• 53:50
  that this feels like, oh God, I got to do this, someone can have
• 53:53
  an ounce of that and feel that and maybe have an opinion about
• 53:56
  look. Now that that's my big appeal
• 53:59
  with the actual doing it, I want to get excited, it's really,
• 54:02
  really fun and positive but I love surprises that I can
• 54:06
  control. So I don't love surprises that
• 54:09
  are you know, surprise parties might not be my thing and things
• 54:12
  like that. Right?
• 54:13
  But surprises in a box, literally is so appealing.
• 54:17
  Ealing to me so I have no idea what I'm going to get week in
• 54:20
  and week out and to exactly your point some of the stuff, you
• 54:23
  know, sitting on my bookshelf here next to me and some of it
• 54:26
  is in my storage unit that we're going to be doing some really
• 54:28
  cool projects with at the end of this year but it's really going
• 54:33
  to be utilized again. But the joy, it brings me and
• 54:36
  frankly all the different different people and different
• 54:40
  walks of life. That's been the coolest thing.
• 54:43
  And the one thing that's been really gratifying and really
• 54:45
  rewarding has been my UWE unboxings, right?
• 54:50
  My WWE and atw and wrestling videos have done really well on
• 54:53
  that channel. It's some of the best content as
• 54:56
  far as viewership is and it's enabled me to meet some really
• 55:00
  cool people around the world just to know that they're also
• 55:03
  passionate about wrestling, you know.
• 55:05
  And so that's one thing that's been really really cool as well
• 55:07
  and then, you know, like I do wrestling boxes Avengers.
• 55:10
  I do you know, Golden Girls, Bob Ross and the Myriad of different
• 55:14
  things and so people come in and tune in, you know, did Current
• 55:17
  people come in to tune in and it's really, you know, it always
• 55:21
  blows me away that people watch these videos and sit there and
• 55:26
  enjoy these videos. It like words can't express what
• 55:29
  joy? That gives my heart.
• 55:30
  You know, just that people are laughing with me on a Saturday
• 55:33
  morning, like, if that's, that's all I want.
• 55:35
  Just one person to enjoy one piece of content, I put out and
• 55:39
  these unboxings have done that and the unboxings have done,
• 55:42
  that more for me than any other of my projects I've done.
• 55:46
  And I think it's because We talked about earlier it's the
• 55:48
  one thing I didn't do for business and I could have I
• 55:51
  could have done it with the you know the John John It Go page
• 55:53
  which already had a thousand subscribers data data data, but
• 55:57
  I started spatch, I started with the 50-something subscribers.
• 56:00
  I've had from 2010-2011 and I said, you know this, I'm going
• 56:05
  to do this and ironically that's the one that's doing the best
• 56:08
  and I think it's back to what we were saying earlier.
• 56:10
  If you you're passionate about it and your intent is pure Okay,
• 56:14
  not succeed. You know, I think your point
• 56:16
  actually about having that right energy in that mindset is so so
• 56:22
  important. You know, it's funny actually
• 56:25
  I'm gonna go on a bit of a serious Point actually because I
• 56:30
  always do this anyway with everything that I do.
• 56:33
  You know. I just won't record if I feel
• 56:36
  that way but occasionally I will have like a bad mental health
• 56:41
  day and I actually started today As a bad mental health day and
• 56:45
  my first thought was, oh shit, I have a podcast with John-John
• 56:49
  and I was like I don't I can't like do the podcast with a bad
• 56:53
  attitude because a wouldn't work be it was just rude and see it's
• 56:58
  like ways and it just wouldn't be acceptable professional.
• 57:05
  So the thought did kind of crossed my mind of like
• 57:08
  rescheduling all of this. And like I know you would
• 57:11
  understand and stuff but like at the same time, I'm I really
• 57:14
  wanted to do it and I think about obviously mental health is
• 57:17
  that like you don't always have a control over it.
• 57:20
  Like for me I'm positive like pretty much 90% of the time
• 57:25
  where I get like this one day, where it's like and today was
• 57:32
  one of those days and unfortunately about an hour
• 57:34
  before I felt like, okay, I'm on my way I'm going to do this, but
• 57:40
  Like, I would say, that's the only time that I ever feel like
• 57:42
  I don't sort of can't do it, but that's actually more of a
• 57:45
  physical thing as well. Like physically, not physically,
• 57:48
  and mentally, but yeah, there are some days when it's just
• 57:51
  like you. Like you said, you just don't
• 57:53
  feel kind of interested. And I think a lot of the people
• 57:57
  that do YouTube that are trying to pursue it, get caught up in
• 58:02
  that making content, just trying to get the views, trying to get
• 58:05
  the attention. And that's one of the reasons
• 58:07
  that I don't produce certain things on my Channel anymore.
• 58:10
  Like you won't see me doing reaction videos anymore because
• 58:14
  it's a lot of effort for something that I'm not really.
• 58:16
  That interested in the only one that I did actually enjoy, was
• 58:21
  looking at like old band videos that I did because that was
• 58:25
  something I did. And it was actually funny, but
• 58:27
  everything else was just like, you know, actually the 11.
• 58:31
  Why did reactor wrestling thing was?
• 58:33
  Kind of cool, but at the same time, I'd already seen that
• 58:36
  video before. It's not like it was fake but it
• 58:39
  Like my first genuine reaction. As I don't ever want to do fake
• 58:42
  stuff, either on it to be 100% real.
• 58:46
  But yeah, basically, just I really dig that point.
• 58:50
  I couldn't agree more that point, but yeah, let's move it
• 58:54
  on. Let's talk about podcasts
• 58:57
  because that's a big part of what you do.
• 59:00
  I actually, like, I already knew that you did podcast but when I
• 59:02
  did my research I found out you did way more than I thought you
• 59:05
  did last. Like, how does this guy have
• 59:07
  time? Like this is so Let's start with
• 59:10
  you have a podcast called that podcast.
• 59:12
  So talk to me about sort of what you guys discussed generally
• 59:16
  and, you know, like how you kind of got into that in terms of
• 59:19
  deciding to do that particular podcast, for sure.
• 59:23
  So on that podcast is with me and my co-host L, pity L, pity
• 59:28
  is a really good friend of mine. We've been besties now ten plus
• 59:30
  years, we actually were receptionist together at a job
• 59:34
  eons ago. That's all we got a kindred
• 59:37
  spirit. I got really you know, make Tell
• 59:39
  my friends that work, but she was one of the people I made
• 59:41
  friends with we began hanging outside of work.
• 59:44
  She started helping me with some Jon, a co-production.
• 59:47
  She was my executive producer and, and Lori has been one of
• 59:49
  the most instrumental people with the John-John opposed
• 59:52
  staff, for eons. I mean, like I said, eight plus
• 59:55
  years and actually the working with us and she's really helped
• 59:57
  executive produce all of the initial John.
• 59:59
  John happy hours live shows and some other improv ensembles we
• 1:00:04
  had. Anyway so we decided one bow.
• 1:00:07
  Listen we should create something And she has a
• 1:00:10
  background in the radio. She actually comes from a radio
• 1:00:13
  background. So I think, why don't we do a
• 1:00:15
  podcast and radio is always been sort of a goal, but I never felt
• 1:00:20
  like I had a radio voice. And what's really interesting
• 1:00:24
  is, so I just disagree with that entirely, by the way, what you
• 1:00:27
  have, which is your waist exactly my point.
• 1:00:39
  Think about a radio voice. I'm like, I don't how the radio
• 1:00:42
  Gaga's to be fed that but that's, that's that I know what
• 1:00:46
  you mean, but that's that. That's the thing we used to that
• 1:00:52
  but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's good.
• 1:00:54
  That's just what we do. Go at, you think there's so many
• 1:00:58
  radio hosts that don't do that, great.
• 1:01:00
  I'll it be great. If someone like yourself went
• 1:01:02
  and did that because then we wouldn't have to hear other
• 1:01:05
  people going. Hello.
• 1:01:06
  It's w45 on the west. Network and it's like cares, 74
• 1:01:13
  degrees and traffic is lives but no you're exactly right that we
• 1:01:17
  just started up the podcast and then before you knew it we had
• 1:01:19
  listenership. And then you before you knew it,
• 1:01:22
  people were sending this PR. Then before you knew it, we were
• 1:01:24
  traveling across the country to go interview Queens from
• 1:01:27
  RuPaul's Drag Race some Queens in New York.
• 1:01:30
  I mean it just it was really crazy.
• 1:01:32
  We started that now about two and a half years ago, we're
• 1:01:37
  going to be revamping with some new shows but really it.
• 1:01:40
  We always say, it's three topics to post and one good time.
• 1:01:44
  So we never know what we're going to talk about.
• 1:01:45
  But the one thing that we do, which is unique in a lot of my
• 1:01:50
  Productions. As we do one take, that's it
• 1:01:53
  that gets published no matter what, no matter who, no matter
• 1:01:57
  how we're recording for anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour
• 1:02:01
  and a half, when it's done, we published, you know, there was
• 1:02:06
  time that we You know, we're talking about a certain subject
• 1:02:09
  or going online and you know, maybe an audio thing happened or
• 1:02:12
  we weren't recording, we don't go back to that.
• 1:02:15
  We're not going to just do it again because it's exactly what
• 1:02:17
  you're saying. Yeah, although it does it's not
• 1:02:20
  just doesn't feel authentic. My brain will remember that Joe
• 1:02:42
  moving on with podcasts. You're also a host on San
• 1:02:46
  Diego's, what it do podcast. How does this podcast differ
• 1:02:51
  from that podcast? And would you discuss on that
• 1:02:55
  perfect? So I'm I was one of the comedic
• 1:02:57
  relief and I had kind of like a game segment on what to do.
• 1:03:01
  Unfortunately what did you that bios probably know today.
• 1:03:03
  Come on in I had a really good time working with them for about
• 1:03:10
  a year and I was one of four co-hosts on the show, they were
• 1:03:14
  going to San Diego. I of course, I'm in Denver
• 1:03:16
  Colorado. So I called in a remote right?
• 1:03:19
  And that was a really, really good time for the time that I
• 1:03:21
  was a part of podcasts. Of course I'm grateful for that
• 1:03:25
  because that was one of the first long-term positions I had
• 1:03:29
  in a podcast that wasn't myself or that I had produced or had it
• 1:03:34
  would likely words a lot of creative control over We're one
• 1:03:38
  of two people, that's a lot of creative control, but was really
• 1:03:41
  cool to work under a producer knowing what my guidelines were
• 1:03:45
  doing, what I had to deliver in doing that.
• 1:03:47
  I've always wanted this. Like I've alike one of the
• 1:03:51
  frustrating things about doing my own podcast was that like I
• 1:03:54
  didn't want the tcga to podcast to end even though it was a lot
• 1:03:56
  of work and we were all doing it ourselves.
• 1:03:59
  What I really wanted was I wanted my own podcast and
• 1:04:02
  eventually I want a team that works for me so I can do it a
• 1:04:05
  ladder Reuben or something like that, right?
• 1:04:07
  But I also always really liked the idea of being a guest on
• 1:04:10
  someone else's podcast and not having to do anything except
• 1:04:14
  just show up. Because one thing I can do and
• 1:04:17
  again I'm not trying to toot my own horn.
• 1:04:19
  I'm just saying that I can talk forever which not everyone can
• 1:04:25
  do. I think I've learned over the
• 1:04:27
  years now that it's such a. Sometimes you have to push
• 1:04:30
  someone to get something out of them other times, you know, you
• 1:04:33
  just show up and do it and you don't need any prep or anything.
• 1:04:38
  And where is I do a lot of prep for my own podcast because
• 1:04:40
  that's the nature of it. And it's a one-man show showing
• 1:04:44
  up on someone else's podcast is easy.
• 1:04:46
  You just sit there and do what you do, right?
• 1:04:50
  So I completely get where you're coming from with that.
• 1:04:52
  Like, it's nice, especially, I mean, obviously what you're
• 1:04:54
  talking about is as more of a professional approach, like
• 1:04:57
  actually having being produced and having like, clear
• 1:05:01
  guidelines of what's going on and stuff and being Just
• 1:05:05
  informed. It's nice to be informed really,
• 1:05:06
  isn't it? Yeah for sure.
• 1:05:09
  And it's a cool different like they said earlier like I'm a
• 1:05:12
  student forever so it's cool to learn those other traits of
• 1:05:16
  produced thing for a different Vision maybe or things like
• 1:05:19
  that. So, yeah, that that's been a
• 1:05:21
  really good time and all those podcasts have truly helped, you
• 1:05:25
  know, my own podcast. You know, we started, of course,
• 1:05:29
  you know, I'm sure we'll get into a package on happy hour and
• 1:05:31
  then, of course, now the daily cup of John.
• 1:05:33
  John, it's all those projects have really helped guide me.
• 1:05:37
  To where I am today and I like you love guesting on podcast.
• 1:05:41
  I think it's one of the fun things because there is on one
• 1:05:46
  end. A total lack of control for the
• 1:05:48
  other side of that is just so wonderful that there's a total
• 1:05:51
  lack of control rights. If to be able to respond and
• 1:05:54
  react in the moment is really fun and gratifying to, so he's
• 1:05:58
  funny as well, different peoples approaches, because I remember
• 1:06:02
  when I came on your podcast, like I legit sat down maybe the
• 1:06:06
  week before. And I actually watched the whole
• 1:06:09
  pay-per-view and I've seen it before but I watched the whole
• 1:06:11
  thing, I sat down writing my notes and then when it came to
• 1:06:15
  the day I mean it did it did work out fine be it kind of went
• 1:06:18
  differently to how I thought it would go.
• 1:06:20
  I thought we were going to go sort of very in-depth like to
• 1:06:24
  the match itself but we kind of spoke more I guess kind of like
• 1:06:29
  how Conrad Thompson does his podcasts when he's kind of
• 1:06:35
  picking like a pay-per-view and he kind of talks about the time
• 1:06:37
  and the stuff that's going on at that particular time and sort of
• 1:06:40
  paints a picture for people of like what's going on in the
• 1:06:43
  industry at that point and it was similar were on your episode
• 1:06:46
  as well. And I was kind of like sit there
• 1:06:48
  thinking like I wonder if any of these guys just did like nothing
• 1:06:51
  they just showed up and like they're just able to do it
• 1:06:54
  because I would personally like I think I could do that but I
• 1:07:00
  would feel a bit like I wouldn't want to get caught off guard.
• 1:07:02
  Right. And the same time I also kind of
• 1:07:05
  felt like Isuzu This feeling of like guilt.
• 1:07:08
  If you don't do the prep, like I've had podcasts, it's only
• 1:07:12
  happened, a couple of times. There was one interview that I
• 1:07:15
  did, where I knew the guy well enough that we pulled it off
• 1:07:19
  anyway. And I just was worrying over
• 1:07:21
  nothing but I didn't do any prep and that was weird, but it was
• 1:07:24
  okay. And then I've had more recent
• 1:07:27
  episodes where people have returned to the show and we did
• 1:07:31
  no prep on purpose because we'd already introduced the person.
• 1:07:34
  So it was just kind of like, let's just see what happens.
• 1:07:37
  And that is dangerous. I think because it depends on
• 1:07:41
  the person you're talking to because some people you can chat
• 1:07:45
  have fun. It works other people.
• 1:07:49
  You really gotta push for the conversation and maybe they
• 1:07:53
  don't always want to give it to you.
• 1:07:55
  I don't know it's dangerous but here that I absolutely hear
• 1:08:02
  that. Yeah, and I think that's the
• 1:08:04
  cool thing. It just it exercises, a
• 1:08:09
  different muscle in your brain, right?
• 1:08:10
  There's you know, because again, there's times that I improvised
• 1:08:13
  an entire show with that podcast.
• 1:08:15
  Whereas I might be reproduced and another show but I'm with
• 1:08:21
  you. There is that?
• 1:08:21
  That internal guilt I have irrational or not that I don't
• 1:08:24
  do proud, I watch that paper. He probably three or four times
• 1:08:27
  a week of which I know is a neurotic crazy decision.
• 1:08:30
  But it's a thing. It's like your moderate in the
• 1:08:31
  show about the entire Pay-Per-View, you should
• 1:08:35
  probably know what the fuck you're talking about.
• 1:08:38
  So guys, that was a great, great episode.
• 1:08:42
  I really enjoyed that. Oh no.
• 1:08:43
  It's my pleasure. I'd love to do it again.
• 1:08:45
  To be honest. It's a lot of fun because it was
• 1:08:48
  my first opportunity to talk about wrestling.
• 1:08:50
  And I've actually in the past when I was at Uni years ago, I
• 1:08:54
  thought about just doing a wrestling podcast and I'm not
• 1:08:58
  completely still against that idea.
• 1:09:00
  But I think I would, if I was going to do that, I'd want to be
• 1:09:03
  on someone else's show. Just I wouldn't want to run it
• 1:09:05
  myself because it's a lot of work.
• 1:09:08
  And you really have to, especially if you're doing like
• 1:09:09
  week to week, I think it's easier to do stuff.
• 1:09:12
  That's bygone. I think that's why Conrad
• 1:09:15
  Thompson's podcast works so well, like all the ones he does
• 1:09:18
  because they go back, they do their research and they talk
• 1:09:23
  about something that's already happened.
• 1:09:24
  Whereas, if you're talking about something that's happened, like,
• 1:09:26
  I don't know how these people do these regular podcasts, now,
• 1:09:29
  where they review everything, because I tell you what, I only
• 1:09:33
  watched the moment like aw and the Major WWE pay-per-view spit
• 1:09:39
  if I would watch like all the weekly programming just just W
• 1:09:42
  WAW that already takes up like a massive chunk of time and I like
• 1:09:47
  there's so many promotions as well.
• 1:09:51
  It would just be a lot to get into to do like a regular
• 1:09:53
  podcast. But there's so many things you
• 1:09:58
  can to worry about, no doubt but we'll get back to resting
• 1:10:01
  because I want to this desert desert.
• 1:10:05
  That's a few things I want to ask you about unrelated and then
• 1:10:08
  we'll come back to wrestling because that could go on for a
• 1:10:11
  while. Yeah.
• 1:10:13
  Just just to kind of close it on podcast, that's a good one.
• 1:10:18
  So obviously we know that you produce regular podcast that
• 1:10:21
  appear on Twitch and as I understand it always kind of
• 1:10:26
  appears. On Twitch first and then it is
• 1:10:28
  posted sort of later on YouTube. Pretty much straight afterwards
• 1:10:32
  and on podcast in platforms, such as Apple podcast and such.
• 1:10:37
  So obviously, you've always got already kind of laid out how the
• 1:10:41
  podcasts are actually. I didn't you get you didn't get
• 1:10:44
  much of a chance to properly, talk to us about that, talk to
• 1:10:47
  us a little bit about, you know, the setup for a cup of Jon Jon
• 1:10:52
  and Jon, Jon's happy hour just you know, like what Typically do
• 1:10:57
  like, I know what you do but like just pretend, like, none of
• 1:11:00
  us know. And it's, you know, people for
• 1:11:02
  those who don't know you, what do you do on that?
• 1:11:05
  And also just kind of like how you got into the mindset of
• 1:11:10
  like, you know, producing those because I'm one of them is as it
• 1:11:14
  sounds a morning kind of show. And then the other one is is
• 1:11:19
  just like a standard kind of podcast.
• 1:11:22
  So there's a Time differential there.
• 1:11:25
  So talk to us about Why? That that's the case and also
• 1:11:29
  the bigger question that I have for you is what are your kind of
• 1:11:31
  future goals and aspirations for these podcasts.
• 1:11:34
  That what's the ultimate thing that you're kind of building
• 1:11:37
  towards with this? Nice.
• 1:11:41
  Yeah, I know. So I think the two, the two
• 1:11:43
  primary podcast that I'm on today and are the probably the
• 1:11:46
  most regular that I am participating in this to your
• 1:11:48
  point, the John John happy hour. Now the John John happy hours
• 1:11:51
  the podcast that to your point Publishers on Twitch and it's
• 1:11:54
  usually a live video show then later publishes to the
• 1:11:58
  platform's the John John happy hour actually started through
• 1:12:01
  John's Island. Koulouri was one of the first
• 1:12:03
  producers on the show and they live variety show in Denver
• 1:12:07
  Colorado. So we actually use put on live
• 1:12:09
  shows to sold-out audiences. So, that's how it all started
• 1:12:12
  and then I realized, you know what, a couple different things
• 1:12:15
  may, I have the brand, the I have all of the logo in
• 1:12:18
  marketing, there's no reason to come up with a brand-new Grand
• 1:12:22
  concept for a podcast. Yeah, so I'll just continue the
• 1:12:26
  John John happy hour and so I got some really funny criticism
• 1:12:31
  so I was posting a lot more regularly and as you know as you
• 1:12:34
  post regularly your content length tends to go down.
• 1:12:38
  It is tough to put out an hour podcast, Cast every single day.
• 1:12:42
  Oh yeah at least for myself right, I probably can't execute
• 1:12:45
  and the reason I say an hour specifically is because the show
• 1:12:48
  is called the John John happy hour and so that's what the show
• 1:12:54
  was when it was a live show was 60 Minutes on the dot over and
• 1:12:58
  so I had a couple show that produced that were in the
• 1:13:00
  40-minute Mark, 50 minute Mark. And my brother actually said
• 1:13:04
  okay if you're going to call the John John happy hour, you got to
• 1:13:06
  have an hour or you should call the John John happy half hour.
• 1:13:10
  I said, you know, as much as I think that was as much as I
• 1:13:13
  could take that criticism saying, all kind of people
• 1:13:16
  understand it's around the happy hour time frame I realized, you
• 1:13:20
  know, that's good advice so I decided the Johnson happy hour
• 1:13:23
  is going to continue to be produced but it's a full-length
• 1:13:26
  hour-long show which includes variety segments and games and
• 1:13:30
  so that will happen a little bit less regular throughout the
• 1:13:32
  year. Similar to the old John, John
• 1:13:34
  happy, then I realize I still wanted a daily outlet for a
• 1:13:37
  couple different reasons to a inspire people.
• 1:13:41
  But what I say when I inspire people, oftentimes I'm saying
• 1:13:45
  the words so that I can be reminded of that myself, right?
• 1:13:48
  When I'm giving good advice. Ice universally.
• 1:13:51
  I actually need to hear that message again here.
• 1:13:54
  Still, I can execute it. So that's really what the cup of
• 1:13:57
  John John is it's 8 a.m. any day that I'm feeling up for it and
• 1:14:01
  so I get ready in the morning. You know anywhere between 5 and
• 1:14:04
  6 a.m. talk about my morning have my cup of John-John and my
• 1:14:08
  coffee and I just did just I usually have some sort of
• 1:14:12
  inspirational quote that might have us found the morning and
• 1:14:15
  those of them publishing and it's wild because we were we're
• 1:14:20
  approaching episode number 50 which is kind of my internal
• 1:14:23
  goal at the start of the year. And so we're just keep keep that
• 1:14:27
  going and answer your final question.
• 1:14:29
  I think the end goal. Especially when I was younger,
• 1:14:35
  the end goal was so much more important to me and it's really
• 1:14:38
  funny. I was experiencing a little bit
• 1:14:42
  of this just trying to get to episode number. 50, what I mean
• 1:14:45
  by that is I sup focusing on how good the content and how much I
• 1:14:48
  love doing. This was just to get to a
• 1:14:50
  number. Yeah.
• 1:14:51
  And I realized you loved doing this.
• 1:14:54
  Why do you wake up and do a podcast?
• 1:14:56
  Because it's like something you actually enjoy.
• 1:14:58
  So don't forget to enjoy that moment.
• 1:15:01
  And so I think that's the end goal.
• 1:15:02
  I want to enjoy them and I want to enjoy the things around
• 1:15:09
  feeling and I think, Ultimate do that on a financial level that I
• 1:15:14
  think is the end all be all right, to be able to truly do
• 1:15:19
  what you want when you want. Because you've worked your apps
• 1:15:22
  to get there that I think is my end goal.
• 1:15:24
  And lastly, I've never heard anyone in Hollywood who has made
• 1:15:28
  it big say this person has worked their ass off in the
• 1:15:32
  industry for 50 years and didn't make it.
• 1:15:36
  Everyone knows everyone, so if you keep working your ass off,
• 1:15:41
  it might be 50 years for me, might be 10 years for.
• 1:15:44
  You might be one year for me might be six months for you
• 1:15:47
  right? But but don't work your ass off
• 1:15:50
  and it'll be noticed. I really believe that in my
• 1:15:52
  heart and soul you know and I think there's going to be some
• 1:15:54
  cool things on the horizon for me and these projects you have
• 1:15:58
  that but that's it is just enjoying it and staying in the
• 1:16:01
  moment to continue to enjoy. Absolutely.
• 1:16:05
  So just You, I'm also available involved in a sort of a variety
• 1:16:09
  of different projects largely. That's Kind of just because I
• 1:16:14
  like to create what I like to create it's just kind of happen
• 1:16:17
  like that have a lot of interests and it's the same for
• 1:16:20
  you. When did you realize that you
• 1:16:23
  wanted to pursue all these different paths rather than just
• 1:16:26
  like one thing? It All Happened, very
• 1:16:33
  organically, growing up. I also had a lot of different
• 1:16:38
  jobs are like I'd work but they work at the amusement and again,
• 1:16:51
  Act nicely to what we have at the beginning as I think that's
• 1:16:55
  mental health, right? That's really all these projects
• 1:17:00
  kind of got into the publishing world and then I realized, you
• 1:17:03
  know, I should probably be on the line with this stuff.
• 1:17:05
  So I started podcasting, then the other stuff started picking
• 1:17:09
  up a little bit stronger and I have to make sure that gets
• 1:17:11
  cultivated. And how I view all of my
• 1:17:13
  projects is our life is kind of like the soil like a little
• 1:17:16
  garden and all these projects I do.
• 1:17:20
  Little seeds that I plant all over the place.
• 1:17:22
  Here's YouTube. Here's podcasting.
• 1:17:24
  Here's my books. Here's Live Comedy.
• 1:17:26
  Here's some other stuff I do. Because a, I'm a nurse, I mean,
• 1:17:32
  of give them enough water, but the other things as you've
• 1:17:35
  talked about the books to the beautiful Bush over here.
• 1:17:38
  The podcast is managed to grow into tomato plants and YouTube
• 1:17:42
  is starting to really formulate, and it's really about how we
• 1:17:44
  cultivate those things. And so that's really been it.
• 1:17:48
  I just I I kind of just do what I really want to do and and and
• 1:17:52
  bringing it back to John. John & Co, that's one of the
• 1:17:55
  primary reasons we started and because there was an Avenue is
• 1:17:58
  for me to do this, show at that. Either with that owner so I'm
• 1:18:01
  like screw it. Start your company of
• 1:18:03
  do-it-yourself. There's not a cast that starts
• 1:18:09
  at 8:00 a.m. and gives people a real nice.
• 1:18:11
  Screw it started, do it yourself.
• 1:18:12
  There's different improv book about improv for kids, doing
• 1:18:16
  yourself, you know, in that sense I think that's kind of,
• 1:18:21
  like just DIY my friends. Couldn't agree more.
• 1:18:25
  So we have a very similar mindset.
• 1:18:27
  I must say it's good to know. I think that's why we get along.
• 1:18:32
  To be honest. Probably there's a lot of
• 1:18:35
  similarities. Well, I like the I like your
• 1:18:39
  work ethic. I think I can, I can really
• 1:18:41
  respect that. I just like that.
• 1:18:44
  When someone someone works hard, especially when you're working
• 1:18:48
  with them. Because a lot of the time when I
• 1:18:51
  come in to think like okay. Thing pisses me off more when I
• 1:18:55
  oh I turn up to something especially if I've had to like
• 1:18:59
  physically turn up to something and I've made the effort and the
• 1:19:02
  people there like don't know what the fuck they're doing like
• 1:19:05
  that, it just really gets to me it I hate to be a dick but like
• 1:19:12
  be prepared. Do your work, put the work in,
• 1:19:16
  don't waste people's time and usually leads to preparedness.
• 1:19:19
  Do you know it's like but I move them right?
• 1:19:22
  I mean I knew that today we Talked about this is going to be
• 1:19:24
  a video podcast. So what did I do?
• 1:19:27
  I make sure that my morning will start.
• 1:19:28
  I showered I have my very cool button-down WrestleMania shirt
• 1:19:32
  on for you. It's a great show.
• 1:19:36
  Thank you. I wish I got paid for telling
• 1:19:38
  you that but it's still a nice. Lighting of the sound value,
• 1:19:54
  isn't there? It's like Hello.
• 1:19:56
  Can we get our shit together, man?
• 1:19:58
  And for me, that's really my OCD right?
• 1:20:00
  Like I can't, I have to have the stuff in line for me to feel at
• 1:20:06
  peace to be able to create a show and nothing particular
• 1:20:09
  erotic Nest. It's going to read when I used
• 1:20:11
  to, like, dig back in the day with the metal bands.
• 1:20:14
  I was in back in the day like there was one point where I was
• 1:20:18
  touring for about regular regular cooking for about three
• 1:20:21
  years in a row. All around London and the
• 1:20:24
  surrounding areas. And there would be so many times
• 1:20:28
  when we show up, and like, I don't know, sound engineer, is
• 1:20:32
  just terrible. And I saw those, they do this
• 1:20:36
  really, okay? There's this really awkward
• 1:20:37
  thing they were do sometimes which it will just give you an
• 1:20:41
  example of something. That's ridiculous, right?
• 1:20:42
  You turn up way ahead of time and give the show is that like I
• 1:20:47
  know doors open at nine. Yeah, you'll probably there at
• 1:20:50
  3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. That's the reality of the
• 1:20:53
  situation. And so you got all this time to
• 1:20:58
  prepare to do sound checks, right?
• 1:21:01
  And some sometimes they look they like to do sound checks for
• 1:21:04
  whatever reason where you play a whole song, right?
• 1:21:07
  I don't know why it's really weird but they like to do.
• 1:21:10
  That depends on the sound engineer, but there is these
• 1:21:13
  times, when it's so awkward, right?
• 1:21:16
  So let's say, you're the first band on, right?
• 1:21:19
  You do your soundtrack but like, people have a right?
• 1:21:23
  Five Doors have opened. So together, those people know
• 1:21:27
  this all too well, and they think that that's the gig and
• 1:21:31
  then they're clapping and then but that's a song from your set,
• 1:21:36
  right? So it's just awkward because you
• 1:21:41
  stopped playing, you just walk off and you go sit somewhere,
• 1:21:44
  and then nothing happens for like, 45 minutes.
• 1:21:47
  And everyone's kind of looking around a last word and then the
• 1:21:50
  gig starts and you get back on stage and then maybe you play
• 1:21:53
  that song, It's like, yeah, that's the worst.
• 1:22:00
  It happens in comedy to write like you're like doing your
• 1:22:03
  opening bit or your opening number because we doing the
• 1:22:06
  sound check in like people are walking in your like this is
• 1:22:08
  like the gold that no one needs to see if we did this hours ago.
• 1:22:12
  No one would have saw this you know right over here.
• 1:22:15
  That that's why I suppose we company.
• 1:22:17
  That's why you got a but have a set where you just walk around
• 1:22:20
  ripping like everyone in the audience because then It doesn't
• 1:22:24
  matter so much if like all your material that you got planned
• 1:22:27
  material because you can just freestyle and just rip the shit
• 1:22:29
  out of everyone in the crown. That is true.
• 1:22:33
  The one thing I will tell you, so I tend to improvise most of
• 1:22:36
  my shows but I tend to not go to the audience and here's why I
• 1:22:41
  say that a lot of comedians go that route.
• 1:22:44
  And now I tend to not really why I say that unless they're
• 1:22:47
  assholes, right, that's easy. But these are the people on your
• 1:22:50
  side, right? If you had these people laughing
• 1:22:52
  at you. Yes, they got to be Your side.
• 1:22:54
  So you got to make sure to. If you're going to go down that
• 1:22:56
  Route, 22 what you're saying is go down the route of the guy
• 1:22:59
  who's heckling you, but I love taking, take, 1/4 down.
• 1:23:04
  This is what talking about comedy, actually.
• 1:23:06
  I was going to ask you about this later but let's, let's talk
• 1:23:08
  about it. Now, I've seen comedians bomb
• 1:23:12
  and I think I was always kind of Fair to this because I've seen
• 1:23:20
  you know, bands have a bad gig, you know, I've had a bad show,
• 1:23:24
  everyone's had a bad show so you appreciate it in a different
• 1:23:27
  way. When when you've kind of
• 1:23:29
  experience, something similar but bombing in the comedy show
• 1:23:32
  is kind of unique because while with a band if you have a bad
• 1:23:38
  song or a bad gig you walk off no one cares.
• 1:23:41
  You know you just it's a bad show and the next time you do
• 1:23:44
  better, right? But we've comedy it's like It's
• 1:23:47
  just you. It's a quiet room.
• 1:23:52
  Did I make like a for instance if I would fuck up in like a
• 1:23:55
  metal song for instance, I could hide that with like let's not
• 1:23:58
  forget her lyric. I could just like scream or
• 1:24:00
  something and it works, right? But you can't do that with
• 1:24:02
  comedy. You I mean you could try and
• 1:24:04
  free star, you can see something works.
• 1:24:06
  But if you're bomb in your bombing, right?
• 1:24:10
  Like before I get to my question for you, I just want to quickly
• 1:24:13
  tell this because I don't know if I've ever told this before
• 1:24:15
  this story. I was at a comedy show back in
• 1:24:19
  2013 or something, it was part of a work thing.
• 1:24:23
  We got to see a bunch of comedians, didn't know any of
• 1:24:25
  them. One of them actually was an
• 1:24:28
  up-and-coming comedian who then went on to like TV shows and
• 1:24:31
  stuff so it was kind of cool but the first guy that came on He
• 1:24:40
  quite, he was Scottish, and normally Scottish and comedy go
• 1:24:45
  together like bread and bar. It's just so many feet.
• 1:24:49
  But for whatever reason, this gentleman was not funny, it
• 1:24:54
  started off kind of like light humor.
• 1:24:58
  And this is the thing, right? So he wasn't actually the first
• 1:25:01
  comedian. The first comedian that came on
• 1:25:03
  did bombed as well, but it was a different kind of bomb.
• 1:25:07
  Um because it kind of he did that thing that people do when
• 1:25:11
  they run on stage and they're like, hey I like everyone's kind
• 1:25:15
  of like clapping and laughing for like a minute and then it
• 1:25:19
  gets like silent and they're still trying to do that and
• 1:25:21
  you're like, fuck one even during like people can't read
• 1:25:25
  the room and he just after that, he just died a death and then
• 1:25:31
  we'll add a few light laughs here and there.
• 1:25:33
  And that's why I say it didn't completely bomb because it was
• 1:25:35
  like, Like polite clap afterwards, no one hates him.
• 1:25:40
  Where is the guy? That that came on?
• 1:25:45
  That did bomb. He made the whole crowd.
• 1:25:48
  Turn on him and bear. In mind, we all know each other.
• 1:25:50
  We're a work group, right? And this is this is for us.
• 1:25:56
  Specifically, there's no one from the street, it's just us
• 1:25:59
  private show. So if you attack someone in the
• 1:26:03
  audience, like this guy does, we're going to defend each
• 1:26:07
  Below? What the fuck's your problem,
• 1:26:08
  mate, and this is what happened. This guy kept telling this
• 1:26:11
  really awful. It was Dennis bit about Hitler
• 1:26:14
  which normally would be true. Yeah, it's like here's a dark
• 1:26:19
  humor. There's lots to be if you do it.
• 1:26:21
  Well, it's funny. Right?
• 1:26:23
  But for whatever reason, he just kept saying, I'm not going to
• 1:26:27
  say the word, but he kept sort of saying about how Hitler was
• 1:26:31
  like a, you know, a see you next Tuesday.
• 1:26:34
  And for whatever reason, I think it Was a combination of his
• 1:26:38
  delivery and the fact that there was like a light laugh initially
• 1:26:41
  but he kept pushing it, trying to elicit, a certain reaction.
• 1:26:44
  I think because I think he wanted to kind of go into
• 1:26:46
  something else with it but because it didn't work the first
• 1:26:49
  time and he kept pushing it, we were just getting restless.
• 1:26:53
  Is that what you're trying to do?
• 1:26:54
  My it's not funny and someone in the crowd just kind of said,
• 1:26:57
  like he was one of my assistant managers at the time.
• 1:27:00
  It was like it's not funny, right?
• 1:27:03
  And so he starts attacking this guy that, oh, you bought sweater
• 1:27:07
  Wrong with you burner. And this the guy is just sit in
• 1:27:10
  the audience. Decide what you're not funny.
• 1:27:13
  Like you could tap me all you want, but you just you're
• 1:27:16
  terrible and so it turns into this thing where the comedian
• 1:27:20
  starts having a go at us and like go, all you're the worst
• 1:27:24
  crowd of over play too and you're all for Bubba black.
• 1:27:27
  And we just booed him off stage and it was, it was bad, it was
• 1:27:32
  brutal, but he really did deserve it and I don't normally
• 1:27:37
  I say that because with bombing normally in comedy, you know,
• 1:27:39
  just happens. It happens even to the very best
• 1:27:42
  comedians and you get through it and you go over it.
• 1:27:45
  But sometimes in these unique situations you do deserve it if
• 1:27:50
  you're an ass. So on that note, did you ever
• 1:27:55
  bomb and if so talk us through what happens?
• 1:28:01
  Cheer. Cheer, your first performer,
• 1:28:08
  you've probably bombed on some level.
• 1:28:10
  Yes. And for me, a lot of my shows
• 1:28:12
  like I said, is improvised. So one thing, especially in my
• 1:28:16
  early days, I'm doing comedy. There was this immense pressure
• 1:28:21
  to get a laugh. There was this immense pressure
• 1:28:23
  to get that instant gratification for the audience,
• 1:28:26
  but what thought did for me was took me out of the moment. what
• 1:28:31
  I mean by that is I'm in an improv scene, you know,
• 1:28:33
  traditional scene and someone says a line of dialogue to me
• 1:28:36
  and I may respond to that line of dialogue as an example, if I
• 1:28:40
  think for one second, as opposed to answering the dialogue, Is
• 1:28:45
  this going to be funny? Hmm.
• 1:28:47
  Is the audience going to laugh? If they don't, am I going to be
• 1:28:51
  a fool? Now I'm taking myself one, two,
• 1:28:54
  three, four steps away from the moment of just responding and
• 1:28:58
  that happens in stand up to right?
• 1:29:00
  We get so shell-shocked by a Moment of that you lose track,
• 1:29:08
  right? Looks like oh my God, they're
• 1:29:09
  attacking me. Oh my goodness this oh my
• 1:29:11
  goodness. This and I have taken yourself
• 1:29:13
  for moments out of the moment as opposed to just laugh.
• 1:29:15
  Thing in one thing I do when I bomb, it's really speaks to who
• 1:29:18
  I am. I'll say it.
• 1:29:20
  Yeah, you may have seen it on my life Twitches to.
• 1:29:23
  I'm like, well, this is a fucking shit show, is it?
• 1:29:24
  At least we can all agree on that.
• 1:29:45
  A lot of bad jokes that I may have made or things like that,
• 1:29:49
  which actually I was thinking about earlier, when you were
• 1:29:53
  speaking is kind of the timing in which we are doing our
• 1:29:57
  creativity now, right. I think about if I had a YouTube
• 1:30:01
  channel or a podcast, even 10 years ago, I would not be
• 1:30:05
  performing on the level that I am today, right?
• 1:30:09
  And I think that's all the lessons we've learned.
• 1:30:11
  And I thank my lucky stars for that but I was in front of a
• 1:30:13
  live audience for some of my shitty.
• 1:30:15
  Folks as opposed to online. You know?
• 1:30:17
  Because I think that it's a different thing, right?
• 1:30:20
  There's knocks it's 60 to 150 people when I was doing those
• 1:30:25
  shows who remember that one show.
• 1:30:27
  If you're not big-time enough, people are going to forgive you
• 1:30:30
  and see you next time. But that's one thing you hit
• 1:30:34
  uncommon. Look, I think it's really
• 1:30:35
  fascinating because it's one of the few Arts we have, but the
• 1:30:39
  audience sits Myself included. Well, comedian jumps on stage.
• 1:30:43
  What do we do? We say make me laugh.
• 1:30:47
  Like that's literally what we make them do and think about
• 1:30:50
  that immense pressure in comparison to any other art,
• 1:30:54
  music is similar right entertaining, but that's
• 1:30:58
  different than make me laugh. Like, living, your job is to
• 1:31:01
  make me haha. That is because comedy is
• 1:31:03
  subjective. So that's also a really
• 1:31:06
  interesting science. But you know what, I will say on
• 1:31:09
  this, I agree with you but I do think.
• 1:31:13
  That people's I don't know. I think it's somehow different
• 1:31:16
  to let things like music because I've seen live shows, right?
• 1:31:23
  And this is this is actually this is bizarre.
• 1:31:25
  Okay. So I've seen plenty of gigs over
• 1:31:26
  my over my years, of my time, listening to music.
• 1:31:31
  And when I became a musician I started listening to music
• 1:31:34
  differently and now I can never see a live show without looking
• 1:31:39
  at it through this lens because of being a musician.
• 1:31:41
  It's kind of ruined it but it's Me.
• 1:31:43
  But it's great. The same times weird if I see a
• 1:31:45
  band bomb, I can tell and I look at the rest of the crowd who
• 1:31:51
  probably mostly aren't musicians and they seem to love it and I'm
• 1:31:54
  like, okay. But then as you said with
• 1:31:59
  comedy, It's different like yeah.
• 1:32:03
  It's like everyone kind of comes in with seemingly with this
• 1:32:07
  attitude of like, well yeah made me laugh.
• 1:32:08
  Like who are you? How can you make me laugh?
• 1:32:10
  Kind of thing, which suggests implies that, you know, there's
• 1:32:13
  like a highbrow audience. There's like a high expectation
• 1:32:16
  already but then sometimes you have a crowd, you know.
• 1:32:19
  Like I've seen so many comedians where what they're saying is it
• 1:32:23
  to me, is just not funny, it's like, not bad.
• 1:32:26
  It's just, I don't know if you've got a very basic humor,
• 1:32:30
  then it's like, Huh, you know like if you just come on and do
• 1:32:34
  like fart jokes for instance, I mean me I think fart jokes can
• 1:32:37
  be funny if they're clever and told well, but ultimately if it
• 1:32:41
  is just like a standard fart joke, I don't know.
• 1:32:46
  I like my humor a bit more complex but then again, that
• 1:32:50
  speaks to you before about different tastes being
• 1:32:53
  subjective. Doesn't mean if I don't find it,
• 1:32:55
  funny, that isn't funny. And then so on.
• 1:32:57
  So that's why I think the comedy kind of stands alone and is
• 1:33:01
  different. to other mediums because it's like, And this
• 1:33:05
  other thing of like with music because it's so loud, right?
• 1:33:11
  Even if a few people are screaming shouting and like
• 1:33:14
  maybe not the whole venue, you can still hear that, right?
• 1:33:16
  And if not you can just drown out with the music, right?
• 1:33:20
  But of Comedy, you can't do that.
• 1:33:22
  So and that's the thing. Like you could have everyone
• 1:33:26
  laughing or only a few people, laughing or no one laughing.
• 1:33:31
  This is like just extreme after Extreme.
• 1:33:34
  I'd like each of them like largely the crowd yet,
• 1:33:38
  determines the show, you could have just done the best comedy
• 1:33:41
  set ever, but if the cloud a more often then I guess it's
• 1:33:46
  yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think it's, you're
• 1:33:49
  right, setting the right expectation for the audience to
• 1:33:53
  there's different types of Comedy, right?
• 1:33:55
  Mine is very similar to Whoopi Goldberg sin.
• 1:33:57
  It's very storytelling, right? Cool.
• 1:34:00
  And so, my kind of ours going. You're with that is my initial
• 1:34:05
  goal in comedy was to get people to laugh.
• 1:34:07
  That was my only intention I want you to laugh.
• 1:34:11
  But you know what? I actually love when I have an
• 1:34:13
  audience member who's like this, who tell me tell me more about
• 1:34:18
  that or so disgusted. At a way, something was
• 1:34:23
  perceived or like it. Oh, did he just?
• 1:34:26
  He couldn't have just said that. And I really love reactions
• 1:34:30
  because I don't think laughter is Is fun for 30 minutes
• 1:34:36
  straight. Yes, I think it is but I really
• 1:34:38
  love captain in people. In a story of making people feel
• 1:34:41
  stuff that's fun. You know?
• 1:34:42
  We were in my storytelling a very similar to when we talk
• 1:34:45
  about heart failure, right? It's a very serious subject but
• 1:34:47
  there's also a lot of humor in what we do, right?
• 1:34:49
  I mean there's a lot of really funny moments and I was going
• 1:34:51
  through in our failure, you know?
• 1:34:54
  And so I think that's kind of the key to Comedy.
• 1:34:56
  But yeah, it's all about a subjective and I think, Yeah, I
• 1:35:02
  think you just got to do what you love and do what you're
• 1:35:04
  passionate about and I don't I go to City.
• 1:35:06
  Totally, I couldn't agree with you more.
• 1:35:08
  Like, for me personally, I think the greatest of all time.
• 1:35:12
  All right, I still there's quite a few still, but I for me right
• 1:35:17
  now, it's got to be Dave Chappelle.
• 1:35:20
  And the reason I say that is that he does exactly what you're
• 1:35:23
  saying where he goes out and he doesn't even necessarily like do
• 1:35:28
  jokes or whatever. Like, he'll just talk.
• 1:35:31
  He would like. This is what I am amazed by him
• 1:35:33
  because my so much more than comedy.
• 1:35:35
  Like I'm just fascinated by the concept of like he can just go
• 1:35:38
  out and talk. Like I sometimes look at that
• 1:35:42
  and think like I could do that like I think I could do that and
• 1:35:46
  the thing is like you know, that he's worked on that long time.
• 1:35:49
  But now he's in like this kind of God likes and I know this is
• 1:35:53
  crazy for that. I'm saying this, but if you
• 1:35:56
  watch his comedy, now you'll see what I mean.
• 1:35:59
  Like if you haven't, if you're not familiar with Dave,
• 1:36:01
  Chappelle go check his stuff out in particular.
• 1:36:03
  Watch the show that he did recently that was sort of the
• 1:36:06
  first I think official show in the states.
• 1:36:10
  Post coffee. While I know we're still in
• 1:36:12
  covid-19 right now, but it's like the first probably show
• 1:36:15
  that's happened with an audience, but obviously measures
• 1:36:18
  were taken by blah. But this was directly after
• 1:36:20
  everything that happened with with, with George Floyd.
• 1:36:25
  And I was immediately intrigued because I write this is very
• 1:36:30
  serious subject. How's it going to make this
• 1:36:33
  funny? Like you can't.
• 1:36:35
  Yeah, it's funny but he found a way but he did exactly what you
• 1:36:41
  were saying. He came on and he spoke at
• 1:36:43
  length. He told stories, he got serious
• 1:36:45
  like really serious made you think and then he flips it and
• 1:36:51
  makes you laugh. And and but I think crucially as
• 1:36:54
  well, he doesn't make you feel bad for laughing evil.
• 1:36:56
  Like it's that sort of like clever humor where He drops it
• 1:37:01
  here and there and like yeah every comedian has their own
• 1:37:03
  style but like what you said like you never have a show where
• 1:37:07
  you're just laughing continuously for 30 minutes and
• 1:37:09
  I've seen shows like that but that's just TV and editing
• 1:37:14
  that's not actually real life like real life show.
• 1:37:18
  It's like haha and then no laughing for like five minutes
• 1:37:22
  and then more, ha ha. And then, but sometimes it does
• 1:37:24
  escalate. I don't know.
• 1:37:25
  But again, Estonia funnily enough, I saw a lot of
• 1:37:29
  excellent. Comedians.
• 1:37:30
  And there were some that I could not, I got it like, you know,
• 1:37:33
  you get that sort of laughing where it laughs so much that
• 1:37:36
  your face hurts and you like, please, stop making me laugh.
• 1:37:38
  It's painful. But yeah, anyway, I didn't
• 1:37:44
  actually on that topic because I want to bring it back to you.
• 1:37:47
  I try not to go off and too many times.
• 1:37:48
  It's who are your main Inspirations as a comedian.
• 1:37:53
  Who do you look to, or who kind of inspired you to become a
• 1:37:57
  comedian? Without question Whoopi
• 1:38:03
  Goldberg. I mean Whoopi Goldberg who I
• 1:38:05
  actually had the honor of meeting a little over a year and
• 1:38:08
  a half ago, in New York City for a press junket, such an amazing
• 1:38:12
  experience meeting her, but Whoopi Goldberg is one of my
• 1:38:15
  butt. Okay, so I've just learned this
• 1:38:18
  time recently, press junket, that's for those who don't know.
• 1:38:20
  It's essentially like a little interview you ask them about
• 1:38:22
  their latest project or whatever, how did that come to
• 1:38:27
  be? You know, what was the situation
• 1:38:31
  there that interviewing her for So, I was actually working with
• 1:38:35
  my friend, Chris, as a producer for one of his segments.
• 1:38:38
  He's a TV personality out here in the states, and so, he
• 1:38:41
  actually knows what B is an idol of mine.
• 1:38:43
  And so, he tapped into me and said, Hey, listen, we have this
• 1:38:46
  junket, this weekend. I was informed on a Thursday
• 1:38:50
  that the junk, it was happening on the side of Sunday.
• 1:38:53
  And so, keep in mind, this is a flight from Denver to New York
• 1:38:56
  City. This was, this was a big
• 1:38:59
  undertaking to get there and sure enough I left at a midnight
• 1:39:02
  flight from Day arrived in New York City about 6:00 a.m. the
• 1:39:07
  junk was that 10 a.m. Holi.
• 1:39:12
  Its Holi cool pictures. You know little plug on my
• 1:39:14
  Instagram if you got a Johns Island yeah it was wild and so
• 1:39:17
  that morning we went to the Press junket.
• 1:39:18
  I had the privilege of meeting its wild.
• 1:39:21
  Tiffany haddish Mark Wahlberg, Tyler Perry Amber Riley, Whoopi
• 1:39:26
  Goldberg. I'm just book who's who of these
• 1:39:29
  two films and I got to be Whoopi and I meant I think Gonna be
• 1:39:34
  doing a video about that inner encounter because it was such an
• 1:39:38
  impactful experience in my life. And it's one of the few times
• 1:39:41
  that I left, I mean, I was pushing.
• 1:39:43
  I was sobbing, I met her and I was just sobbing.
• 1:39:46
  I'll go into the story a little bit as well, but I remember
• 1:39:51
  leaving and saying, I'm okay if I die now, don't that, and that
• 1:39:55
  is not something that It was one of these bucket list things.
• 1:40:00
  I'd be very honest with you, and I don't want this to sound
• 1:40:03
  crazy, but I am very grateful to be able to accomplish a lot of
• 1:40:06
  the goals I set out to do in this, right?
• 1:40:08
  Yeah. And a lot of that stuff is stuff
• 1:40:10
  we've ever done, but meeting Whoopi was something.
• 1:40:13
  So I never in a million years thought was humanly possible and
• 1:40:17
  to think that we manifested that and one thing unique about the
• 1:40:22
  Press junket, but you're not allowed to take pictures in a
• 1:40:24
  press junket for a lot of different reasons.
• 1:40:27
  We're not. Poster.
• 1:40:28
  So anyway, I'm sitting on the wall and it will be kind of
• 1:40:30
  season at the corner of her eye. She was hunting.
• 1:40:32
  Do you want a picture and begun star of Glee?
• 1:40:37
  She said, well baby, why don't you sit next to Whoopi?
• 1:40:40
  I want you to have your whoopee moment.
• 1:40:41
  And so, there's a picture of me right next to a being, and just
• 1:40:45
  tears streaming down my face in the Press junket chanting,
• 1:40:47
  chills in the Press junket chair, where she's being
• 1:40:49
  interviewed for the film. Not on the repair order side on
• 1:40:54
  the side where the actors are. It was such a So that picture is
• 1:40:58
  actually on Instagram. It was one of the greatest
• 1:41:01
  moments of my life. I'm gonna hunt this down off to,
• 1:41:03
  it's right. They say not to meet your Idols,
• 1:41:15
  but I got to tell you. This was a great experience to
• 1:41:20
  be so heavy. Oh yeah, because you never know,
• 1:41:25
  you might catch them on a rough morning.
• 1:41:27
  You know, at the end of the day, this is their job right there.
• 1:41:29
  Just pounding through interview, you know, I'm sorry, I don't, I
• 1:41:32
  don't, I don't agree with that. I will say like, yeah, we all
• 1:41:36
  have bad days and stuff but how you treat other human beings
• 1:41:40
  that that has nothing to do with being famous or not.
• 1:41:46
  Like I've met a lot of celebrities over the years and I
• 1:41:49
  can tell you the majority of them.
• 1:41:53
  Have been stuck up assholes holier-than-thou attitudes.
• 1:41:57
  I've said this as well, like, if I ever become famous, you'll
• 1:42:00
  never catch me like that. And I would say this again.
• 1:42:02
  Like if, if I ever do that, you have free rein to slap me in the
• 1:42:07
  face, if you see me because I just can't imagine being that
• 1:42:10
  person and I've met so many people that made me feel like
• 1:42:13
  this small book just because they were famous for sure.
• 1:42:18
  And like I can't wait for the day when I do eventually become
• 1:42:22
  famous and I run into these people for again and like
• 1:42:25
  they're all Pally because I just have a feeling because life is
• 1:42:28
  like that and I know it will, you know, to me because people
• 1:42:31
  change when They know who you are or what you can give them.
• 1:42:38
  I've noticed. Because I've had this like not
• 1:42:42
  even to do with like being a celebrity or anything but like
• 1:42:44
  you know, when people will know that you you are of used to them
• 1:42:48
  in some way and their attitude changes if they realize you're
• 1:42:51
  not and so on and I just find that as a very interesting
• 1:42:54
  thing. So it's really cool to hear that
• 1:42:56
  when a celebrity is decent and nice.
• 1:42:58
  Like I recently interviewed an Estonian celebrity which for
• 1:43:03
  international people that might not be a big deal.
• 1:43:05
  Me, it was a very big deal. I was very extremely nervous
• 1:43:08
  beforehand. The guy was a total gentleman,
• 1:43:11
  really nice and it went perfectly and I said to quite a
• 1:43:16
  few other people that, you know, Estonian celebrities are very
• 1:43:20
  nice. And I think the reason is that
• 1:43:21
  it's such a small country, it's not very well known.
• 1:43:24
  So this is kind of different but when you meet, like some of the
• 1:43:29
  world's biggest people like I guess they're getting that into
• 1:43:32
  that mindset of like well. You know who you I don't need to
• 1:43:36
  treat you like a normal human being and I met Bruce Dickinson
• 1:43:40
  one time and he was just that's why lat unfortunately.
• 1:43:46
  And that was really hard for me because I was a right in the
• 1:43:50
  middle of a band. Basically, I was working
• 1:43:52
  full-time at supermarket like 50 plus hours a week trying to make
• 1:43:57
  ends meet plus pushing this band.
• 1:43:58
  I was really young, like, 18, 19.
• 1:44:01
  I see my hero in the store. I want to talk to him, I Like
• 1:44:06
  fanboying or anything, but I just wanted to ask him a few
• 1:44:08
  questions and be like you know, thank you and all that.
• 1:44:11
  And he just couldn't be more off fish.
• 1:44:15
  If he tried and it's like, okay, fine.
• 1:44:17
  I get it. But like, come on, man.
• 1:44:19
  Like, do you have to be like that?
• 1:44:23
  Really. I mean, you chose that courage
• 1:44:25
  and I mean like, I don't know. I just that's that's just one
• 1:44:30
  thing I disagree with personally I just I feel like it's never
• 1:44:34
  acceptable and like, yeah, sure, we're all human.
• 1:44:36
  We do have these moments where maybe we don't want to talk to
• 1:44:39
  people, but be honest just say, hey, look listen, whoever person
• 1:44:44
  you are. I need say five minutes to
• 1:44:46
  myself. Maybe I'll come back or maybe
• 1:44:49
  now is not the right time, but be polite, be decent.
• 1:44:53
  Be Humane about it. Don't be a dick because Could
• 1:44:57
  ruin that person's day. I can't tell you how many times
• 1:45:00
  that has ruined my day and giving me a bad sound.
• 1:45:03
  Like a lot of the times. I've had other opportunities to
• 1:45:05
  meet celebrities and I might because of that I'm at now.
• 1:45:07
  Fuck it. They'll just be horrible like
• 1:45:09
  everyone else. It's really nice to hear that
• 1:45:12
  just going back to you. Sorry.
• 1:45:14
  That would be was nice and that you had like your own personal
• 1:45:17
  moment and it was it was good. You normally tell can't you with
• 1:45:22
  certain people, though? Like Whoopi seems very
• 1:45:24
  down-to-earth. Obviously you can vouch for that
• 1:45:29
  but like you know, like we're certain people, it's like that.
• 1:45:34
  Ok, for instance, all this stuff that's coming out about Ellen
• 1:45:36
  DeGeneres at the moment I won't go into too much detail but what
• 1:45:39
  I will say is when it sort of came out that she had this toxic
• 1:45:42
  work environment and she's like a certain way.
• 1:45:44
  I wasn't surprised because you can kind of tell in a way it's
• 1:45:50
  like that whole Hollywood thing of like here's what we're
• 1:45:54
  traying and then here's the reality.
• 1:45:57
  Tea. And when I heard the stories
• 1:45:59
  about, like the staff behind the scenes and like not being spoken
• 1:46:02
  to very nicely, I've seen that in real life, I've seen that
• 1:46:05
  happen behind the scenes on sets and stuff and it's like, I mean,
• 1:46:12
  you don't have to be like that because there's so many
• 1:46:14
  celebrities aren't like that. But anyway, enough of this,
• 1:46:44
  I suppose you have got to meet Robin before.
• 1:46:46
  Did you? Unfortunately not know that that
• 1:46:49
  was one on the bucket list. But unfortunately, never got to
• 1:46:53
  be Robin Williams. But was it they'll still such an
• 1:46:55
  inspiration to my core? I mean, why was it was it 2013
• 1:46:59
  that he passed away. I did just how just an
• 1:47:04
  anniversary was like, yeah. The years are all a blur.
• 1:47:08
  I want to say it was for Sarah to 2011 is resonating with me
• 1:47:12
  and I'm not sure why, but I'm not positive at all.
• 1:47:15
  Yeah no an incredible artist lost of course to you again
• 1:47:19
  mental illness and I think that's what's important.
• 1:47:21
  You know you got to take care of you, not to bring it back full
• 1:47:24
  circle but it's true. You know, if you don't take care
• 1:47:26
  of you no one else will. That is the true for the bring
• 1:47:31
  it back to a comedy. What did you get into comedy?
• 1:47:37
  Like talk to me about this sort of the process of deciding like
• 1:47:43
  This this right here is the thing that I like we obviously I
• 1:47:46
  asked you about like your choice to kind of to do it and pursue
• 1:47:49
  it but like was there a particular the say like a moment
• 1:47:54
  where you realize like this is what I want to do.
• 1:47:56
  Or was it like It's like it, as you've said earlier, in the
• 1:48:00
  podcast, like a series of kind of, I guess things that led you
• 1:48:05
  to that, like what was the thing, like?
• 1:48:06
  Okay, this is this is it, this is the thing, we have reserved.
• 1:48:11
  I think, for me, it is. So the first year my, my high
• 1:48:17
  school had a comedy group. And in my sophomore year, that's
• 1:48:19
  10th grade in the states, they had auditions, and I went to an
• 1:48:23
  audition and I absolutely bombed bombed by bombed.
• 1:48:29
  Didn't get cast nothing and that was because they actually did, I
• 1:48:33
  was very involved in our Marketing Group called Deca
• 1:48:36
  anyway, I didn't go to the two workshops prior to the audition.
• 1:48:41
  So I didn't really know what they were looking for.
• 1:48:44
  And so this kind of, so I go to the audition, I don't get cast
• 1:48:47
  and I'm crushed because I know I'm a funny person.
• 1:48:50
  I know I'd be a great asset to this.
• 1:48:51
  I'm just crushed. The other thing I'm embarrassed
• 1:48:54
  about is kind of looking like a fool.
• 1:48:56
  He had kind of what you said earlier.
• 1:48:57
  I don't want this reputation of being now Not a funny person
• 1:49:00
  because I bombed this audition. So, a year passes I go to every
• 1:49:04
  single show. I really just digest it.
• 1:49:08
  And again, this is a lot of who I am is Overcoming the odds.
• 1:49:13
  And so I decide I was harnessing in on what was starting the
• 1:49:16
  keywords next year they held auditions, I went to both
• 1:49:20
  workshops went to an audition. I was not asked to the
• 1:49:27
  callbacks. I was crushed.
• 1:49:31
  I asked the president of the club.
• 1:49:33
  Hey, can I just watch the callbacks?
• 1:49:34
  At least they again, no problems ice at first row, in the
• 1:49:37
  auditorium watching these, callbacks knowing that was my
• 1:49:40
  shot while. Tire group was behind me,
• 1:49:42
  looking and I later found out I was cast and I was later found
• 1:49:47
  out that I was not in the Callback because there was a
• 1:49:50
  group of 23 people that they've already selected to be on the
• 1:49:52
  cast, prior to a call back. So, I had my shot, I was in the
• 1:49:58
  in, but I still went to the callbacks because again, this is
• 1:50:02
  how bad I wanted it. And I point to saying all that
• 1:50:05
  is they saw that they saw the dry.
• 1:50:07
  They saw showed up, they I was there wanting it so bad.
• 1:50:11
  I got cast and that was the first improv comedy group I was
• 1:50:14
  ever on. And again, the highs and lows, I
• 1:50:16
  wasn't cast my first year. I could have given up on my
• 1:50:18
  dream, like it just think like my whole life has now been
• 1:50:23
  translated because of that. But I have people from high
• 1:50:25
  school, who bow and yang, we did improv together in high school.
• 1:50:28
  He's on a Saturday Night Live now.
• 1:50:31
  Well, I have my friend who I went to college with Shay
• 1:50:34
  Kool-Aid. She would.
• 1:50:35
  She just one RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars.
• 1:50:37
  So it's really interesting to see this art.
• 1:50:41
  Manifest in so many different forms and it all happen from a
• 1:50:45
  failed audition. What does it feel like?
• 1:50:47
  Because I've kind of got some friends who I guess I kind of
• 1:50:52
  famous. Like, not really.
• 1:50:54
  They're going that way, sort of but right there.
• 1:50:57
  Okay. Root anything that RuPaul does
• 1:50:58
  is like, huge. That guy's got like a huge
• 1:51:00
  Empire and such. So what does it feel like kind
• 1:51:03
  of having friends that have sort of already made that success and
• 1:51:08
  you're building it? I mean, we'll get to some of the
• 1:51:11
  The successes that you've already had, but you're very
• 1:51:14
  much in the building process, but I think that we view.
• 1:51:18
  The key difference is you're building your own brand and your
• 1:51:20
  own thing was those people have gone on to that particular shows
• 1:51:24
  and have sort of the Mast Fame through that.
• 1:51:26
  And you know, success is kind of relative to be fair as well
• 1:51:29
  because there is a big difference between being known
• 1:51:32
  and being famous and being successful.
• 1:51:34
  And I think this is the issue that a lot of people Miss
• 1:51:36
  sometimes as well. So just talk very briefly about
• 1:51:41
  Was, is it weird that they still speak to?
• 1:51:43
  You talk to me about that? Yes.
• 1:51:47
  I mean when we talk about ego, right?
• 1:51:50
  There's always an element of your ego that is bruised by the
• 1:51:55
  success of others. If you are a passionate Creator,
• 1:51:59
  there's other people who don't give a fuck.
• 1:52:01
  But here was the thing that I wish I was like that, by the
• 1:52:03
  way, but every one of my friends who made it and, and you get on
• 1:52:09
  earlier, you know, I would question that.
• 1:52:11
  The famous relative. There's always going to be
• 1:52:12
  someone who doesn't know you, right?
• 1:52:14
  Oh yeah one example right. When I publish 60 to be
• 1:52:18
  published and sold, 64 thousand copies of my initial book,
• 1:52:21
  16,000 kids and parents are holding my book so on one level
• 1:52:25
  your egos like I'm kind of famous.
• 1:52:28
  That's amazing. It's absolutely amazing.
• 1:52:31
  But the flip side is you can also be told you can walk down
• 1:52:36
  the street and not have one. You could sneeze and no one
• 1:52:39
  would even tell you bless you. So that's my point.
• 1:52:41
  Famous so relative, but get any kids, or I'm probably going to
• 1:52:44
  be recognized if I'm going. You know, the street, probably
• 1:52:47
  not. And so, anyway, the biggest
• 1:52:51
  piece for me, was realizing, I'm allowed to be envious and still
• 1:52:56
  happy for people where, that shift is when I become jealous.
• 1:53:01
  Yeah. Right.
• 1:53:02
  I can be envious of someone's success.
• 1:53:04
  That doesn't necessarily mean that I want their success, but I
• 1:53:07
  want to taste of it. And that's one thing as you get
• 1:53:09
  older and like, we all are Experience.
• 1:53:11
  Like once I hit my 30s it was like the path.
• 1:53:14
  I'm supposed to be on, is the path.
• 1:53:16
  I'm on and that's going to be different than any of my friends
• 1:53:19
  who are amazing at have made it and just like I was saying to
• 1:53:22
  you earlier. Some people make it in six
• 1:53:24
  months, some people like RuPaul. That you mentioned didn't become
• 1:53:27
  famous until their 40s. I mean, think about that, she
• 1:53:31
  was hustling as a drag queen and now he has an Empire but that
• 1:53:34
  took years decades of work. My point is we all have
• 1:53:37
  different paths and I think you reach it when you're able or
• 1:53:40
  mentally, I can handle it five ten years ago.
• 1:53:44
  I certainly shouldn't have even had the level of Fame I have
• 1:53:48
  today. That was in quotes for the
• 1:53:49
  people listening to audio. I would never want.
• 1:53:52
  I would have never wanted this kind of visibility for the
• 1:53:54
  things that I was saying. Then I'm sure the same thing.
• 1:53:56
  Will occurr 10 years from now, right?
• 1:53:58
  I can't believe that I wasn't on TV.
• 1:54:00
  I'm glad I only had podcast instead of being on TV saying
• 1:54:03
  this as an example. Yeah, no.
• 1:54:05
  Yeah, I agree with you on this point.
• 1:54:08
  I feel exactly the same way because I Together that, you
• 1:54:12
  know, I still get a little bit envious now.
• 1:54:13
  And again, you know, I have friends that are doing well on
• 1:54:15
  YouTube and such but it's true, like everyone's path is
• 1:54:18
  different. Everyone's time is different and
• 1:54:21
  it works out when it works out. And in a way I guess it is
• 1:54:24
  better to have a slow build rather than just sudden things
• 1:54:28
  happening, you know, especially with what we're doing as well.
• 1:54:33
  I feel that you know, it's better to grow an audience over
• 1:54:36
  time rather than rather than because the difficulty was just
• 1:54:39
  suddenly getting known In is that, you know you've got a like
• 1:54:46
  convince those people to stay whereas if you've had a growing
• 1:54:49
  audience to I've gotten to know you over time, I guess they're
• 1:54:52
  more tolerant more likely to stick around, you know, I feel
• 1:54:55
  like that's the difference there.
• 1:54:57
  Be is largely to do with your attitude.
• 1:54:59
  I feel like that's a very positive mindset to have and
• 1:55:02
  that's definitely the attitude. I have to to just kind of
• 1:55:07
  wrapping it up on the comedy side of things.
• 1:55:11
  You're a book called The Dollar pocket guide to improve so talk
• 1:55:18
  to us about this book. And I mean I guess it's kind of
• 1:55:24
  obvious like why you wrote it but Did you just tell us about
• 1:55:28
  what initially LED you to decide to wear that?
• 1:55:30
  Because it's a small kind of little book that's kind of got
• 1:55:32
  like tips and tricks and stuff but like yeah it took us to us
• 1:55:36
  about this book real quick. Yeah you know honestly it was a
• 1:55:40
  the reason I did that little book was just a supplement to
• 1:55:44
  what I was teaching with my school comedy because I
• 1:55:46
  realized, you know, I'm saying a lot of things and there's
• 1:55:50
  certain things that resonate with people but maybe we need a
• 1:55:52
  just a little finger reference, you know, I'm a visual learner.
• 1:55:55
  So having something tangible and be Look at I thought was
• 1:55:58
  beneficial. So that was the sole purpose of
• 1:56:01
  it and it was a buck so people really cool.
• 1:56:06
  Yeah, I mean, nothing too crazy on that one.
• 1:56:08
  Just kind of having a supplement for, for teaching, just a visual
• 1:56:11
  guide. So I mentioned before that, you
• 1:56:15
  know, you've kind of had successes on, you know, in your
• 1:56:18
  career as a TV presenter, which is what I mentioned at the
• 1:56:22
  beginning of this, this podcast episode.
• 1:56:24
  So I don't know the scale of this.
• 1:56:27
  This, I just know so far based on my research, but I know that
• 1:56:30
  you're a co-host for the televised Denver Pride, Parade.
• 1:56:35
  So talk to us about your experiences here and also just
• 1:56:38
  your experiences in general, being a TV presenter because
• 1:56:42
  it's not something that we're all accustomed to.
• 1:56:45
  I'm sure it differs to to YouTube and podcasting, talk to
• 1:56:49
  us about how you got that opportunity in your work with
• 1:56:52
  that and just fill us in on what it's like to be a TV presenter.
• 1:56:58
  Yeah, it working in TV is very, very cool.
• 1:57:01
  I've had a couple different opportunities and the biggest to
• 1:57:03
  your point was the televised broadcast of the pride parade.
• 1:57:07
  Now, this Pride Parade brings half a million people to the
• 1:57:10
  city millions of dollars in revenue and is aired on most of
• 1:57:14
  the channels that you can get here.
• 1:57:17
  Now that in itself was really, really, really cool to just be
• 1:57:22
  asked and the reason I think that honor is probably the most
• 1:57:25
  important to me is because it's a Entity that I'm very close to,
• 1:57:28
  of course, the lgbtqia community which I'm a part of, it was so
• 1:57:33
  cool to feel to be handed the torch to say, we trust you
• 1:57:39
  enough to do this, parade and announce this parade.
• 1:57:43
  And this parade is only been around, right?
• 1:57:45
  And it's relatively new night in 17 1975 Pride, parades as a
• 1:57:51
  whole came about in the 1960s, 1950s 1960s.
• 1:57:55
  I learned how many people televised that I learned that
• 1:57:59
  fruit so okay, I should explain. So when we were doing your
• 1:58:02
  variety show and you included your your clip from this, I
• 1:58:06
  didn't know that. Like I had no idea that the
• 1:58:10
  pride parades were that long ago.
• 1:58:13
  Like I thought it was something that I guess came around in the
• 1:58:16
  2000s or something. Cause that's when I started to
• 1:58:18
  hear about it more and more but it's kind of fascinating,
• 1:58:20
  there's been around for a while and it's been slowly building to
• 1:58:24
  the point it is today that's interested.
• 1:58:30
  The front yard. What we're talking about is the
• 1:58:31
  Stonewall riots of New York City which spawned protests and riots
• 1:58:36
  similar to what we're seeing today in this country.
• 1:58:38
  And a year later Pride was formed as a way to celebrate
• 1:58:42
  that and kind of those inequalities that we need to
• 1:58:45
  fight for and do your plant is grown amazingly.
• 1:58:47
  I mean, to think we have people like Wells, Fargo Bank walking
• 1:58:50
  in the parade Chase Bank, any grocery chain, the police force.
• 1:58:54
  It's just wild to me to think I want to see if I'm supporting
• 1:58:58
  being that you're part of Community.
• 1:59:01
  You're probably the best person to ask about this whenever I see
• 1:59:03
  these companies, right? It's pride and they're all
• 1:59:08
  suddenly like, you know. Yeah, you know, we support
• 1:59:12
  lgbtq, you know, we're for this and they change their logos and
• 1:59:15
  stuff. Like the cynic in me is like,
• 1:59:19
  yeah, BS. I don't believe for a second
• 1:59:22
  that you support this because from a business background, I
• 1:59:25
  explain why I have this attitude, right?
• 1:59:28
  A of Worked in a lot of companies.
• 1:59:30
  So I've seen the behind-the-scenes of how they
• 1:59:32
  actually treat people. Not saying every company is
• 1:59:34
  like, this depends how Progressive they are, how new
• 1:59:36
  they are, but the more established ones that you
• 1:59:38
  mentioned Wells Fargo's, that's company has been around for a
• 1:59:40
  while, right? I feel like they, they kind of
• 1:59:45
  do these things just so that they're kind of because it okay.
• 1:59:48
  Firstly, if they didn't, then it would give off the wrong
• 1:59:53
  impression. People would ask questions.
• 1:59:55
  Why don't you support this, what's wrong with you?
• 1:59:57
  So that's number one. Number two, Transfer PR and they
• 2:00:04
  companies, businesses are businesses, that's what they do,
• 2:00:07
  but I kind of group it in the same category as again.
• 2:00:11
  And I'm just being cynical, I'm not trying to be a dick.
• 2:00:14
  I'm just saying, how I see it right now?
• 2:00:17
  A lot of people with this opinion, it's great.
• 2:00:19
  Yeah, right. Because I'm a big supporter of
• 2:00:21
  lgbtq always have been, but I really don't like seeing
• 2:00:26
  anything fake or anything. That's like.
• 2:00:29
  Why? Not genuine.
• 2:00:33
  And when I see this, I kind of liken it to when companies do
• 2:00:37
  CSR and they're like, yeah, you know, we really care about, you
• 2:00:41
  know, she Assam we do all this and I'm like, well, you know,
• 2:00:44
  there's a lot of companies that do this so that they can offset
• 2:00:47
  tax. And it's will well known fact.
• 2:00:49
  That if you make enough donations, you can avoid a
• 2:00:51
  certain amount of tax, right? So I kind of group it in that
• 2:00:53
  same category of like they're doing it for the similar reason,
• 2:00:56
  but not so much for money, more to kind of like Get brownie
• 2:00:59
  points. And A improve, their overall
• 2:01:03
  reputation. You know, like let's say that
• 2:01:05
  you have a bad reputation as a company, you can instantly
• 2:01:09
  improve it by supporting a particular cause.
• 2:01:12
  All right? So that's true to a point,
• 2:01:15
  right? Because you're always going to
• 2:01:16
  have opposition no matter what stay and do you think, right?
• 2:01:19
  And so I think that's a good point.
• 2:01:21
  Yeah, you you're going to get all the lgbtqia people who are
• 2:01:24
  like heck, yeah. But you're also ostracizing an
• 2:01:26
  element and segment of people who might not agree, which I
• 2:01:29
  clearly disagree with But I do think it's interesting that you
• 2:01:32
  hit on that many people in the community have expressed concern
• 2:01:37
  about exactly what you said and here's my take on it.
• 2:01:41
  The reality is It's about visibility and awareness and
• 2:01:45
  when companies change their logo to be a rainbow that is
• 2:01:50
  awareness, whether we want to believe it or not, the secondary
• 2:01:53
  piece to that is the funding that's required.
• 2:01:56
  It costs a lot of money to be a sponsor as part of a Pride Fest
• 2:01:59
  and those sponsorships in those financial contributions which
• 2:02:03
  yes to your pet, get a benefit on the backend actually help a
• 2:02:06
  lot of at-risk lgbtqia people through organizations like the
• 2:02:10
  center. So it's really interesting.
• 2:02:12
  Ting. You say that I totally
• 2:02:13
  understand the side of it being a PR tactic, but we would be
• 2:02:18
  remiss to say, it's not benefiting people tremendously,
• 2:02:21
  including the business has no doubt about that, but these
• 2:02:24
  sponsorships in these huge corporate ties are what makes
• 2:02:28
  Pride happen, right? Are what's fund a lot of these
• 2:02:31
  lgbtqia centers for the homeless, transgender youth to
• 2:02:35
  have free testing for folks in on the poverty level?
• 2:02:39
  So yes, I hear what you're saying but I think awareness is
• 2:02:42
  key. And money is key.
• 2:02:44
  And if that if the only by-product is people feeling,
• 2:02:47
  it's fake, I'll take it any day. Yeah, I mean my issue more is
• 2:02:52
  that, you know, they don't actually do anything like I like
• 2:02:55
  to kind of see companies that actively do.
• 2:02:58
  So it's really good to hear that they're actually putting money
• 2:03:01
  into it and supporting the course like that to me is the
• 2:03:05
  definition of supporting like to me just changing your image is
• 2:03:10
  no different to like when some shit happens.
• 2:03:12
  In the world and you change your profile picture like in
• 2:03:15
  solidarity. It's like, okay, but what you
• 2:03:18
  actually doing so that's positive 2 here.
• 2:03:20
  I'm glad to hear that, and I'm a little less cynical now, so
• 2:03:23
  thank you. I appreciate that point.
• 2:03:27
  Because, like I said, it's like, Now, you can, multiply that
• 2:03:43
  times 50. That's a lot of money.
• 2:03:45
  They're putting towards the cause oftentimes more than some
• 2:03:52
  other communities, right? But I, but I think it's a really
• 2:03:54
  important thing is that you're pointing money makes the world
• 2:03:56
  go around and yes, unfortunately, they need some
• 2:03:59
  benefits to donate. Like I said, that's the
• 2:04:01
  byproduct. I think the funding is far more
• 2:04:04
  important than, than that, for me personally.
• 2:04:07
  Yeah, I agree. Just there was one question, I
• 2:04:11
  didn't ask you about comedy, which Going to leave it in ask
• 2:04:14
  because it's only fair. What's your best show today as a
• 2:04:17
  comedian? You know, we talked about
• 2:04:18
  bombing but what was like your S shoulder comes to memory like I
• 2:04:23
  don't know. Best reaction talk to us about
• 2:04:26
  that. Oh yeah, the my best show today
• 2:04:30
  to had to have happen in June of 2018, and that was actually the
• 2:04:35
  first year, I was the primary co-host for the pride parade and
• 2:04:41
  we actually did a comedy show. I have this really fun show
• 2:04:43
  called lipstick for your laugh. And basically what we do is we
• 2:04:46
  team three comedians against three, drag queens.
• 2:04:48
  We find out who's funnier and lip-syncing and laughs that's
• 2:04:51
  Julio. So we did this show it.
• 2:04:53
  Ran for two years and we did this Pride show and we had Six,
• 2:04:59
  seven thousand people watching the show and I I have never
• 2:05:06
  experienced that electricity. I'm the host for the show, so I
• 2:05:09
  really set the tone. I introduce everyone.
• 2:05:11
  I'm this that the other way would they would change that?
• 2:05:14
  They were watching in a venue, so giant nightclub.
• 2:05:20
  They do a lot of weddings and receptions there, but because
• 2:05:22
  the pride is so huge. Like I said the trucks 50,000
• 2:05:25
  visitors, Just for the pride parade.
• 2:05:28
  So now all of those people are coming to watch a show and they,
• 2:05:30
  of course, I'm limit stars who can come in ones around the
• 2:05:34
  building and I remember just seeing a sea of people, it was
• 2:05:38
  the first time I probably felt like this is probably what rock
• 2:05:40
  stars feel like yeah and the show was received because it was
• 2:05:46
  a nightclub sometimes these shows aren't the primary focus
• 2:05:49
  right there to party and you're just kind of the Bible in the
• 2:05:52
  background. Yeah we had captivated everyone
• 2:05:57
  in that building. Building to watch this show and
• 2:06:00
  we had seven of us on stage and it was probably the best show I
• 2:06:03
  had ever done. The performers killed it, the
• 2:06:07
  audience loved it, which in turn made me just like Thrive about
• 2:06:10
  energy, but that today was the best, show the lip sync for your
• 2:06:13
  life of June, 2018. I dream about chose like that.
• 2:06:17
  I mean, that was. And now, you know, especially
• 2:06:20
  being in the midst of the pandemic.
• 2:06:22
  I can't even fathom to 5,000 people, 6,000 people, 7,000
• 2:06:26
  people in a room. Jimmy, right?
• 2:06:29
  I mean it's it was really something special and then of
• 2:06:32
  course, it being deprived show because it was the night.
• 2:06:36
  Before I had gone on television, was really just really close.
• 2:06:40
  It was one of those years that I'm like, all right, I'm going
• 2:06:43
  the right direction. You know, congratulations on.
• 2:06:46
  That sounds amazing. I got to say is Awesome, it was
• 2:06:51
  cool. And then the performers to to
• 2:06:53
  give the performers that kind of venue because for a lot of us
• 2:06:56
  were low, you know, local or small time performers to give
• 2:07:00
  everyone that opportunity was so cool.
• 2:07:03
  I mean, just yeah. Three drag queens.
• 2:07:06
  Had probably one of our biggest shows.
• 2:07:07
  Three comedians on the biggest show, I did like Emily.
• 2:07:11
  It just it was very cool. So there's some took about
• 2:07:15
  wrestling. Finally, when did you get into
• 2:07:18
  professional wrestling and why do you love it so much?
• 2:07:25
  I think we were hitting on earlier, I love wrestling so
• 2:07:27
  much because of its innate ability to story.
• 2:07:32
  It's storytelling at some, of its finest when it's got doing
• 2:07:36
  well, I found wrestling as a young child primarily because my
• 2:07:43
  older brother loved something that had captivated me on a deep
• 2:07:46
  deep level. You know, you'll Kazuma Yokozuna
• 2:07:48
  and Bret Hart and then Razor Ramon for Shawn Michaels in the
• 2:07:50
  first ladder match for the eyes. Champ.
• 2:07:53
  I was captivated and then as I started getting a little bit
• 2:07:57
  dull older people like Edge just like Stone Cold, Jeff Hardy.
• 2:08:03
  China were so instrumental in taking me out of the place I was
• 2:08:10
  in which good bad or ugly and to be able to live through them.
• 2:08:16
  God it was so it was it was it was like when you get into a
• 2:08:20
  good book or a good movie, that's what wrestling good to
• 2:08:23
  me. So what it was and I think we
• 2:08:25
  all kind of okay I was just going to say so you make it kind
• 2:08:30
  of sound like you were going through something.
• 2:08:33
  Maybe not so nice and it was a form of escapism for you.
• 2:08:37
  Is that right? No doubt.
• 2:08:40
  Yeah, wrestling was a big form of escapism for me, dealing with
• 2:08:46
  a lot of different things from my childhood, obviously parents
• 2:08:49
  becoming separated, moving to a brand new country learning the
• 2:08:52
  language. A lot of things that were really
• 2:08:54
  tough for me, okay, as a wee little one, but wrestling was
• 2:08:58
  great for me and then I really lost touch.
• 2:09:01
  As you get older, right? It's is this judgment?
• 2:09:03
  That comes with wrestling? I used to watch wrestling.
• 2:09:05
  My God, it took me a lot of you. You know, I would watch it
• 2:09:09
  intermittently and most recently.
• 2:09:12
  The main event with Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair Ronda Rousey at
• 2:09:16
  WrestleMania. I was hooked right back.
• 2:09:20
  Interesting. And it was a fascinating because
• 2:09:23
  it was, it was real. Casual I was watching it here
• 2:09:26
  and there. Yeah, not like I do now, you
• 2:09:30
  know, I was watching every pay-per-view.
• 2:09:31
  I wasn't watching most of the show's atw Etc without that was
• 2:09:37
  that really re cultivated. I love for it.
• 2:09:39
  And now I'm of course, right back in the swing of things.
• 2:09:43
  And I think the YouTube peace really helps, you know, and it's
• 2:09:47
  also cool to see. I know you can relate to this.
• 2:09:50
  Well, it's really cool to see people.
• 2:09:51
  We love this childhood Heroes, go through things, right?
• 2:09:54
  Whether it be health issues, like I bring it up.
• 2:09:58
  Try or even though it's another turmoil, like Jeff Hardy.
• 2:10:01
  It's really cool to see them kind of Triumph and returned in
• 2:10:04
  similar to us, right? Like we've all grown up, we know
• 2:10:07
  different things and now now let's present it to the world.
• 2:10:11
  So I'm going to say on that topic when I saw that edge
• 2:10:13
  documentary, as I, oh my God, man, because I was blown away
• 2:10:18
  seeing him at the Royal Rumble. Like, obviously they were, he
• 2:10:22
  was dropping, he's dropping hints for ages and it was like,
• 2:10:26
  I don't know. They do.
• 2:10:26
  Actually, it's kept saying, it's bollocks, but then every now and
• 2:10:29
  again, they be like, oh, he's at the PC, or who, you know, was
• 2:10:32
  getting checked out of the medical facility, or he was
• 2:10:34
  training in a ring. And it's like, it's gonna
• 2:10:36
  happen, it's gonna happen. And then when you see it happen.
• 2:10:40
  Oh my God, man. That was, that was incredible.
• 2:10:44
  Yeah, yeah. I'm incredibly our, I had a very
• 2:10:48
  similar experience to you, actually.
• 2:10:49
  We've wrestling discovered it when I was a kid randomly and
• 2:10:56
  also, I had a childhood friend, Christopher shot Christopher who
• 2:11:01
  got me into it properly? Like he kind of made me, see it
• 2:11:04
  sort of in the lens that I see it now because when I first saw
• 2:11:06
  it, it was all, I could churches who hurt this hurts wearing, you
• 2:11:09
  know, I was very young and then I got bit older and he kind of
• 2:11:13
  introduced me to the, you know, like Brock Hogan at WrestleMania
• 2:11:17
  or Stone Cold Steve Austin or cane.
• 2:11:20
  And I guess I kind of got into the theatrics and characters
• 2:11:25
  through him and then I I think the video games after that were
• 2:11:29
  kept me in the loop for a while. I do good.
• 2:11:33
  Good call back. Yeah, the video games were
• 2:11:36
  really back in the day, there were really good things like
• 2:11:38
  SmackDown vs. Raw, Here Comes pain, will those
• 2:11:41
  ones plus? I don't know.
• 2:11:43
  I would watch like Roman Smackdown in the early 2000s
• 2:11:47
  mid-2000s and they're kind of like you, I just, you know, life
• 2:11:50
  happens, you drop off and then I got a back into it.
• 2:11:57
  About 2016. I think I was at University and
• 2:12:02
  I don't know why I got back into it.
• 2:12:03
  I think I'd it just kind of happened somehow and then I
• 2:12:09
  started speaking to people and I was all these characters I
• 2:12:11
  didn't know about and I just got back into it and then before you
• 2:12:14
  know it you're back in the loop, right?
• 2:12:16
  And I caught up with a bunch of stuff but yeah, it's totally
• 2:12:19
  changed now from what we were discussing their those
• 2:12:22
  larger-than-life characters. It's dare, I say it's more.
• 2:12:27
  Spore orientated, which kind of back in the day was what it was
• 2:12:33
  about. But it goes it's a cyclical
• 2:12:36
  business in many, in many respects and the in-ring product
• 2:12:40
  is changing all the time. But yeah, that attitudes towards
• 2:12:46
  wrestling has never changed and on that topic - topic.
• 2:12:54
  I mean, I can't believe that. I actually wrote this question
• 2:12:57
  down because this I'm reading this back now and it looks done.
• 2:12:59
  I'm just going to say the question and we can laugh and
• 2:13:02
  then I'll rephrase it. So, I wrote down here.
• 2:13:05
  Have you ever received hate for liking wrestling?
• 2:13:09
  If so how did you, how did you come by it?
• 2:13:11
  Now, of course you have. I know, I have.
• 2:13:15
  So, my revised question. Is when those people would kind
• 2:13:21
  of give you crap for. It is one thing obviously, when
• 2:13:24
  we were kids, you know, it was the whole it's fake.
• 2:13:27
  Don't, you know, it's fake baba. But but as an adult man, it's
• 2:13:31
  different, I know when I was in a Estonia, one point about a
• 2:13:34
  year or two back. I was filming a commercial
• 2:13:37
  randomly and I got talking to someone about my hobbies.
• 2:13:40
  I don't know why. And I mentioned, I like
• 2:13:42
  wrestling and he just his face was stunned.
• 2:13:44
  It was like, you like wrestling. And I really nonchalantly went
• 2:13:48
  like, Yeah, like sort of like, and like, kind of waiting for
• 2:13:52
  him to say something and he was just like, okay?
• 2:13:56
  And then it's like, all right. So like yeah, as another man
• 2:14:01
  like to be about, The comments, you get now and how you deal
• 2:14:07
  with that. Yeah, you know, it's funny.
• 2:14:10
  I was with a family friend, a couple weeks ago, I said, you
• 2:14:13
  know, I love wrestling and she said, oh, we know, you know, I
• 2:14:19
  think there is this stigma that comes across with wrestling.
• 2:14:22
  But, you know, I think it's, it's back to what you were
• 2:14:24
  saying earlier. Like, if you just kind to one
• 2:14:26
  another who fucking cares, what your favorite thing is, right?
• 2:14:30
  Yeah, I think there's a pigeon's just to cut you in there real
• 2:14:32
  quick. Like that works with most
• 2:14:34
  things, but for some reason, people love to just attack
• 2:14:38
  wrestling, okay? One thing.
• 2:14:39
  If you said, like, all my favorite friend is like, I don't
• 2:14:42
  know. Imagine Dragons.
• 2:14:43
  Everyone's like, oh, your taste is shit but then that's the end
• 2:14:47
  of the conversation. Where's your wrestling?
• 2:14:48
  It's like a fucking half an hour conversation of what.
• 2:14:51
  But why would you watch that? And don't, you know that it's
• 2:14:54
  not real and what about this? And it's almost like like you're
• 2:14:59
  a kid and your parents have found out you doing drugs and
• 2:15:02
  then like we could have to have a intervention and talk about
• 2:15:07
  why this is an issue like somehow.
• 2:15:09
  Now, I feel like it's different, you know.
• 2:15:11
  For sure, I think you hit on a really interesting subject which
• 2:15:15
  is people's view of wrestling ring being an elementary form of
• 2:15:21
  art. When I think it's twofold
• 2:15:24
  because I don't think and I think it gets so much shit
• 2:15:26
  because it can't fall into each category cleanly.
• 2:15:29
  And what I mean by that is it doesn't fit into sports cleanly.
• 2:15:33
  Yeah. But I could tell you it's
• 2:15:35
  exactly like a drag show or even a theater production but it
• 2:15:38
  doesn't fit into theater. Equally as nicely as it does
• 2:15:44
  Sports. It's in this very weird Middle
• 2:15:46
  Ground of sports entertainment, which is what they Brandon.
• 2:15:50
  And I think when you can't put yourself into it, people will
• 2:15:54
  watch soap operas, which is bullshit, right there.
• 2:15:56
  Those things are hilariously nonsensical, right?
• 2:15:59
  But we don't really and we there's an error when people
• 2:16:02
  watch it but there's not that same stigma like when you watch
• 2:16:04
  wrestling, right? I think it's really interesting
• 2:16:06
  because Days of Our Lives is so specifically TV.
• 2:16:11
  Reese and with wrestling, we know that there's elements of
• 2:16:14
  it, that's absolutely staged and written and things like that.
• 2:16:18
  But there's also this marketing of it being a real sport.
• 2:16:21
  Yeah. So I you know, I can't answer
• 2:16:23
  that question. Cleanly, to be honest, it's such
• 2:16:25
  a muddied, even you kind of hit on a very important point there
• 2:16:30
  because if I do enough, I made a video about TV.
• 2:16:33
  Oh, can you hear me? I can still hear you.
• 2:16:37
  Yes, excellent. I'm just going here for a while.
• 2:16:40
  Yes, for these. Yeah, so hit on a really good
• 2:16:44
  point. Like, I made a video recently
• 2:16:46
  about soap, operas funnily enough, and I'd said how
• 2:16:51
  nonsensical they are and how it's crazy that they continue.
• 2:16:54
  And one of the things I said life is like, okay.
• 2:16:56
  If you're talking about the ridiculous root of it, then it's
• 2:16:59
  kind of funny. How, you know, why would they
• 2:17:01
  live on the same street? And like, why would, why would
• 2:17:04
  they continue to live in this horrible?
• 2:17:06
  Sweat, all these horrible things happen.
• 2:17:07
  And that for instance, in England, we have this particular
• 2:17:11
  one called EastEnders, right? And basically it's just a bunch
• 2:17:15
  of people living in the fictional part of London, right?
• 2:17:18
  And there's a really funny thing that if anything really goes bad
• 2:17:20
  and they can't be there for some reason, they always go to Spain,
• 2:17:25
  it's like oh we're going to Spain or he went away to Spain
• 2:17:29
  and it's like this, it's ridiculous.
• 2:17:32
  And with wrestling There. Yeah, there were plenty of
• 2:17:36
  things in it that because the whole point of the conversation
• 2:17:39
  is being able to suspend your disbelief.
• 2:17:41
  And that's why I always get, I always defend it because I don't
• 2:17:45
  see it any different to like watching a movie watching a
• 2:17:49
  theater production, you could just sit there and be like, it's
• 2:17:51
  not real and it's like, well, it's not, of course, it's not
• 2:17:53
  real, its story and that's what racing is.
• 2:17:56
  I think people fixate too much on the sport element, but the
• 2:17:59
  thing is to say, it's sport is not incorrect because there is a
• 2:18:02
  sports element to it and Entertainment is a good way of
• 2:18:08
  describing I known as a lot of people against that term, but if
• 2:18:11
  you look at what wrestling is at its core at least today, that is
• 2:18:16
  kind of an accurate representation.
• 2:18:19
  I think the only toys but I will challenge that part in what
• 2:18:23
  other sport or entertainment falls under the same category as
• 2:18:28
  Sports entertainment. Right?
• 2:18:30
  And what I mean by that is you can Define Sports as a myriad of
• 2:18:32
  different sports entertainment. And I think when you pigeonhole
• 2:18:36
  yourself, I think you're exactly right.
• 2:18:38
  I think it makes sense to me, Sports entertainment.
• 2:18:41
  But is there anything other than wrestling that we passports
• 2:18:43
  entertainment? I don't know of anything, right?
• 2:18:47
  So it's nothing to compare to. So I think that's a really good
• 2:18:49
  point. You hit on like it the name
• 2:18:51
  makes sense. But in the same respect yet, for
• 2:18:54
  me ever monopolized. It's only, it's only good as a
• 2:18:57
  label really, to be honest to, to properly, Define it, but I
• 2:19:00
  agree with your point for me. The only issues with wrestling.
• 2:19:05
  If like nonsensical nurse is this little things, like when
• 2:19:10
  they do like an Irish Whip or Janine, or like, if there's this
• 2:19:15
  thing that really fucking irritates me, right where you
• 2:19:18
  have like one guy or a couple of guys standing outside the ring
• 2:19:22
  and there's a guy waiting to jump off like the top rope or
• 2:19:26
  like over the ring ropes and like they're all just standing
• 2:19:29
  waiting there little lady, right?
• 2:19:32
  It really fucks me off and like, I know it, I know it.
• 2:19:35
  Stayed. I know it's not real but if it's
• 2:19:36
  supposed to be a simulated fight and this is the medium with
• 2:19:40
  which they choose to fight, right?
• 2:19:42
  Sometimes they do it really well, like, if you have a good
• 2:19:45
  guy versus a bad guy, right? Like, MJ f is really good at
• 2:19:49
  this. The, aw wrestler right here.
• 2:19:51
  Uh, he fights like a bad guy, but he does it logically, right?
• 2:19:54
  So he go wrestle a little bit, but also be a decade and, and
• 2:19:59
  treated like a proper fight and try to win by cheating, because
• 2:20:01
  he's a bad guy, and that's what you do, right?
• 2:20:05
  And if you look at it like like that then yeah the good guy
• 2:20:10
  fights the wrestling style because he wants to win nobly
• 2:20:13
  and skillfully but bad guy doesn't give a fuck and we'll
• 2:20:17
  just just do whatever to win, right?
• 2:20:20
  And I think that's like how it should be there shouldn't be too
• 2:20:25
  much of this kind of I don't know how to put it like
• 2:20:29
  nonsensical stuff. I've had some of the industry
• 2:20:32
  Guy saying you know because we're just fans at the The very
• 2:20:35
  but I've heard people like Jim Ross, say like you know what,
• 2:20:37
  why they doing the whole standing awaiting thing and the
• 2:20:40
  thing is I think there's also ways you can do it to make it
• 2:20:45
  like not kind of fake. Like for example not fake last
• 2:20:50
  among work to make it like logical to keep to continue.
• 2:20:54
  Okay? If the point is to continue to
• 2:20:57
  hook people on the idea of it being real or being able to
• 2:20:59
  suspend their disbelief, then you need to kind of make sure
• 2:21:02
  everything is logical. So if you have a guy standing
• 2:21:05
  out Wait, yeah, right. I think there's two ways you can
• 2:21:08
  do that evil one. He's bewildered is like and at
• 2:21:14
  the last minute, he sees the guy jumping and he's like, and then,
• 2:21:18
  you know, because I know they have to catch the guy.
• 2:21:20
  I know that's the whole point, like, but they can still do that
• 2:21:23
  and make it look like convincing, right?
• 2:21:26
  So that's one way you can do it. Or number two, You do.
• 2:21:30
  I saw this actually recently on an episode of aw there was Jake
• 2:21:35
  Hagar formerly Jack, Swagger from WWE.
• 2:21:39
  He now this wasn't him waiting to to be hit.
• 2:21:44
  He actually turned it into our kapow ER slam right?
• 2:21:47
  But he you could tell that he was going to do that.
• 2:21:49
  He wasn't waiting. He was like well I'm gonna get
• 2:21:51
  this guy and that's how it should be.
• 2:21:53
  Like, if you're gonna do getting hit it should be like a surprise
• 2:21:57
  at the last minute kind of thing.
• 2:21:59
  Don't mean totally. Yeah, I don't know.
• 2:22:02
  I just don't agree. You have some acting chops that
• 2:22:05
  I think, lack for sure because it that, that acting continues
• 2:22:09
  into the sports sports element. So you're pointing right?
• 2:22:12
  It's yes, I know that. The next step is to wait there,
• 2:22:15
  till someone falls on you, but the acting component is
• 2:22:19
  remaining in character that you're in a fight, you know, I
• 2:22:23
  think it's really, really fascinating.
• 2:22:24
  But overall, I love professional wrestling and I said, yeah, I
• 2:22:28
  just think it's a Even better live.
• 2:22:30
  You might think it's a really cool.
• 2:22:31
  Yes. Cool.
• 2:22:32
  Mediums to experience and I can't wait for it to be back
• 2:22:36
  when you say that me too, which of your favorite shows and
• 2:22:40
  promotions. I like, I really I mean, the two
• 2:22:45
  big ones right now are really wonderful.
• 2:22:46
  You never want. So I get into impact of things
• 2:22:48
  like that but I really am enjoying a ews inclusivity with
• 2:22:53
  those things and it looks like my phone is dying.
• 2:22:56
  Now. Choose so both the so we're
• 2:22:58
  going to probably have to wrap this up here soon.
• 2:23:00
  That's fine. All right, cool VI.
• 2:23:04
  Now definitely say ew in WWE. Fair enough and on a final kind
• 2:23:09
  of question actually because this is good timing.
• 2:23:11
  Do you have any kind of like upcoming projects that you want
• 2:23:14
  to share with us any final thoughts?
• 2:23:16
  You know, this is your time to kind of really plug your final
• 2:23:20
  kind of upcoming things and then everyone know what's coming from
• 2:23:23
  John John Lennon. Perfect.
• 2:23:26
  Now there's always, you know, me, there's always stuff for
• 2:23:28
  cooking both on the podcast. I things and YouTube course.
• 2:23:32
  The book is also being worked on.
• 2:23:34
  But one thing, you know, I'm going to speak a little bit of
• 2:23:36
  ambiguity because I have to, but if everyone could, please put
• 2:23:40
  some real good energy and Good Vibes out.
• 2:23:42
  There's a very cool project that I am very strongly being
• 2:23:45
  considered for which I want more than I've wanted anything in my
• 2:23:49
  life, that makes any sense at all.
• 2:23:52
  So all I ask is, if you guys are supportive of me on, Any level
• 2:23:55
  if you could just put some good Juju out to this thing
• 2:23:58
  happening. And I think it's going to, I
• 2:24:01
  really do in my heart believe, but that's kind of my big Focus
• 2:24:05
  right now. I might afford through a lot of
• 2:24:07
  the steps and I can't speak too much about it which I know is
• 2:24:10
  like, I hate doing that but I promise I'll be able to speak to
• 2:24:13
  it soon. Let's just keep putting Good
• 2:24:15
  Vibes out. It'll happen.
• 2:24:17
  Well definitely send us a link or something when you have that
• 2:24:20
  obviously also include all the links to your projects or at
• 2:24:23
  least on YouTube. Those listening on Spotify or
• 2:24:26
  podcast Google podcasts or wherever else you listen to the
• 2:24:29
  Christian we've podcast, like I said you is very easy age.
• 2:24:33
  If you type in John John Lannan on Google.
• 2:24:36
  He's done very good marketing for himself so you can find
• 2:24:39
  everything on there but yeah, if you can't find it there, look on
• 2:24:42
  my social medias and you'll find it there on the John, John
• 2:24:46
  Lennon episode of the podcast. I want to say a big thank you,
• 2:24:50
  John, John for appearing on here.
• 2:24:52
  It's been a real pleasure and I did it justice?
• 2:24:57
  Yes. No, it was wonderful.
• 2:24:58
  I thank you again. You know, I love working with
• 2:25:00
  you. And it's true.
• 2:25:01
  We can only talk for hours. My friends dying my hair, but
• 2:25:05
  it's really like you so much and thank you.
• 2:25:24
  Everyone listening to the Christian we've pulled cost, you
• 2:25:28
  know, like I said on Spotify, Apple podcast, Google podcasts
• 2:25:30
  and YouTube. If you want to appear on the
• 2:25:33
  Christian roof podcast, please get in touch.
• 2:25:36
  I would love to have you on the show.
• 2:25:38
  I love to meet people. I love to do this.
• 2:25:40
  I think interviews are the best part of it for me.
• 2:25:43
  And yeah until next time all the best and I see you in the next
• 2:25:48
  one. Peace out.
• 2:25:49
  One love Joe.