Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sam Miller. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Sam , thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I have been a full-time comedian for over 3 years now. I believe my success can be attributed just as much to off-stage habits as much as on-stage talent. I have an amazing community, an amazing family, a therapist, and a gym membership (that I actually use). I try to do healthy things that make me uncomfortable. My first year was easier than my second year but my third year was better than those. The success that I’ve had over the last 6 months has been really surprising. It’s not that I haven’t worked hard but it feels exponential. I’ve been sober sixteen years and a lot of my comedy delves into issues like homelessness, addiction, incarceration, and recovery. Offline and online it seems I’m striking a nerve. I love the idea of giving past Sam advice on speeding up the process but unfortunatley the heartache and the inefficiency is part of the process.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

People had suggested that I do comedy for quite a while before I started. But when I actually started, I did it for a fairly selfish reason. It feels good to make people laugh. I have been funny for quite some time and the first time I set foot on a stage there was no going back. My DNA has been reorganized. Comedy is not something that I DO, it’s something that I am. Even if I couldn’t get paid like I do and I had to go back to having a day job I would not stop.
I had been active in recovery for about 6 years when I started and it was kind of scary just how it took hold of me. Very similar to when I started doing drugs as a teen. I tell this story a lot and I worry that people think it’s a work, but the first time I performed comedy in June of 2014 as I walked off stage I thought “Oh crap, I’m going to lose my marriage.”
But I didn’t. I lost some friendships, I could have handled things better for sure, I regret how impatient and stubborn I was at the beginning of my career. But in the end I realized that my priorities need to be as such.
1. My recovery. (Everything falls apart without that. If I relapse I will burn it down.)
2. My Family.
3. My Community.
4. My Comedy.
As long as I keep this order of operations I’m good. Even though comedy is 4th on that list you have to keep in mind that comedy relates to 1, 2, and 3. No part of me exists in a vacuum.
The business side of my job has all come around over the past 3 years primarily. Much of the “work” that I do is social media. I had a reel go viral on Facebook 3 years ago (It was a joke about me pretending to be a semi truck while making love to my wife) and that kind of gave me the mental greenlight to get after it. Other videos followed, and my following has grown. Social media is the most stressful part of my job. I get nervous when it slows down and I get nervous when things go viral. When I’m on stage I’m confident and experienced enough to handle a lot of situations from common hecklers to Amber alerts. But so much of what makes the social media stuff work (and not work) remains a mystery. I also maintain my own website, Myself and my retired Mother handle my finances, I buy my shirts from a friend and local distributor, I roll those shirts, I get records to sell from my label Stand Up! Records, I rent cars and book flights and hotels, and I do my best to focus on the stuff I can control.
What I am most proud of is that I’m a decent Father and Husband. I’m proud that I’m still involved in my own recovery. And even though I started comedy for selfish reasons, I’m very proud that other folks, especially other folks that are involved in or contemplating recovery, say that my comedy helps them. I believe them. That rules.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

There was a documentary I watched 5 years ago called “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” that affected me a great deal. The documentary was fairly bare bones but it centered on a man, his son, succession and what it means to find joy in absolutely mastering something that seems simple. Jiro’s Sushi restaurant had a Michelin Star and he got that star making sushi in a storefront in an active Subway. He didn’t make flashy or trendy sushi. Hee didn’t do fusion or any other attention seeking strategies. He just made simple, traditional sushi with an absolute steadfast tenacity for quality and consistency. He spent an inordinate time at seafood markets picking the best ingredients. He built relationships with fishermen and other suppliers to get the absolute best. His son was extremely skilled but felt an immense amount of pressure to live up to his fathers name. Not to mention, like most of us he had to deal with watching his father age.
My father passed away when I was 12. He was a lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, He flew fighter planes in Vietnam. Although my Father struggled with alcoholism and occasional violent outbursts I loved him. He was a maniac, but he was my maniac. It’s hard to appease him or impress him, him being dead and all but god damn do I try. I learned this in therapy not that long ago. The drive that I have, the same drive that has helped me make my career pop off, is not coming from the healthiest of places. I am at least in some ways trying to impress a ghost. I’m working on it though. Getting a therapist and utilizing that therapist might very well be the best business move I’ve ever made.
Also much like Jiro, the stand up comedy I’m doing is simple. I tell jokes. I tell stories. A comedian I really respect told me one time, “The best way to do comedy is talk about what makes you laugh and then invite other people along. That’s what I do. People don’t come to comedy shows to get shocked and impressed, they come to laugh and forget. There’s nothing complicated about that.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My first big comedy tour went through Idaho with a stop in Salt Lake City and then on to Denver. I was thinking about quitting my job, and I was terrified that I was going to let everyone down. I was scheduled to do two shows at rehab centers in Salt Lake, but both of those were canceled because of outbreaks. I called my wife. I was so ashamed. This whole comedy thing was a decision that my family and I made together. I wanted it so badly, and I did the math. I added the money from the shows I was already doing to the money I would be making if I said yes to the shows I wasn’t doing because of my job — t should be enough?

But here I was in Salt Lake. In a hotel I couldn’t afford to wait for a show that wasn’t happening anymore. This was before Bob and Tom, the Seattle International Comedy Competition, and viral videos; I was a “promising young comic.”

There are two routes from Salt Lake City to Denver. There’s a seven-and-a-half hour way through the not-exciting part of Wyoming and a southern route through Moab and Red Rocks that took a little over eight. I went for it. As I was writing this, I took a break to look for pictures of me on that beautiful drive, but back in the day, I didn’t take a lot of pictures.

It was stunning. I left at five in the morning thereabouts, and when the sun came up, I was in the mountains. I had never seen rocks that color in my life. I’d seen gray, yellow, green, and black, and combinations thereof, but never red. It was my first comedy tour, I was in the mountains somewhere between Salt Lake and Denver, and I was awestruck. I leaned against the hood of my Kia and ate an apple, breathing in cold morning air slowly through my nose. I felt like every exhale was expelling stress and every inhale was me accepting that I was jumping into chaos. If I was going to quit my job and do comedy full time, I had a shitload of work to do.

I had some okay shows in Denver; they were really fun but, money-wise, I was just covering expenses. I wound up getting a last-minute headlining gig in Fort Collins (I was actually filling in for Sam Tallent). I sold a bunch of shirts, and I managed to make enough money that night to not lose money on the tour as a whole. And the only reason I didn’t lose money on that tour was because of a random fluke.

I drove straight back to Olympia from Fort Collins. I spent 20 hours in a Kia Soul, driving through Wyoming at three in the morning. There were thunderstorms all around me on the horizon, but not one drop of rain fell on my car. I fell asleep at a rest area in southern Montana for a couple of hours and then powered through. I got home and gave my wife an all-time top ten hug and kiss.

My first real tour was over. I learned some things that worked but, even more, things that didn’t. And I have been doing better ever since.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sammillercomedy.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sammillercomedian/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/makeolympialaughagain
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sammillercomedian