We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chris Chemel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Chris, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Almost all entrepreneurs have had to decide whether to start now or later? There are always pros and cons for waiting and so we’d love to hear what you think about your decision in retrospect. If you could go back in time, would you have started your business sooner, later or at the exact time you started?

I did try to do stand-up comedy and photography earlier in life. When I first tried photography I was wholly uneducated on the subject and had zero clue what I was doing. That didn’t remove the feelings I had when I saw something amazing, and wanted to capture that image. I’d have ideas of what something could look like and imagine these beautiful compositions, but was woefully inexperienced and underequipped to execute my vision. That was a serious demoralizer and put my photography goals in to cold storage, close to the dumpster even.

Very similar with stand-up comedy. I started when I was in my late twenties, the same time I got married, had a child, moved to to a new state for work and became active in community events. Being spread across so many activities forced me to make hard decisions on what I need to focus on. Stand-up comedy is tough to do, especially starting out doing open mics. When I did great on my first ever open mic, I felt on top of the world!
My wife was supportive, I got a new group of friends and acquaintances, but when my next 5 open mics were complete bombs, my wife’s support evaporated and it negatively impacted my other ambitions and efforts.

Without the support at home, and having other more important responsibilities to address, ending my initial effort into stand-up comedy was a smart decision looking back. I doubt I had the maturity and understanding of what was truly needed of me to be a better stand-up comedian at that time. However, I do wonder where I would be sometimes if I had stuck it out with comedy. Fairly certain I would be a cautionary tale about throwing your life away to chase silly dreams. Sometimes you need more time to grow and mature to chase dreams. I would not have the financial stability I have now if I didn’t focus on my career in my 20s/30s, where I can chase two dreams at the same time.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Chemelshots is the name of my brand, its wordplay of my last name Chemel, and shots referring to jokes and photography. Chemel pronounced phonetically has the “Sh’ sound, like Shots does.
Correctly pronouncing my name or Chemelshots is a litmus test for me. If you do it right, you either know me well, or are particularly clever. If you mispronounce it, that’s fine, you’re in good company with 99.9% of the population.

I also sell designs that I have created that I’ve put on articles of clothing. I call it ‘Stand-up Core’ fashion, apparel that comedians would wear. Designs based on my jokes, standup themes and requests from other comedians of what they’d want to wear.

All three of these are a satisfying my need for creative outlets. Capturing live art performances and the emotions they bring, crafting my perspective and view points into laughable statements and putting myself on stage to say them, and making clothing to help communicate those statements.

My photography has a much wider appeal however. It transcends the comedy universe and allows me to play with light, and that allows me to tinker with the basic unit of perception. I am extremely ambitious with my jokes aiming to ridicule the status quo, established religion, even things as basic as language and the numbering system, I see faults in the core pillars of our society, and my chore is to make that funny. Its a Herculean task with Sisyphistic results but I enjoy my role in this Divine Comedy.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think a key aspect that helped me was I was helping others. Highlighting the faces and jokes of people who aren’t me, who aren’t part of the inner cliches, people just starting out or coming in from the outside.
Doing stand-up is tough, its all you, no one else, so having outside help to show your efforts in a literal good light, it makes that journey a little less bleak.

What I like about this dynamic is its 100% fun for me. It doesn’t feel like anything other than capturing human events. In my opinion any comedy scene needs a lot of talented people and many different faces and voices. When people go out to see local comedy, they aren’t hoping to see one singular funny person, they’re going out to see lots of funny people. If the comedy scene is good, they’re going to do it more often, and tell their friends about it.

Service to others is service to self.
Having great photos, video and social media content about the comedians in the scene raises all boats.
I’ll continue to take pictures with the hopes of fostering a healthy and vibrate comedy community that can bring in more people to more shows.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I like it when strangers compliment my work. They have no investment into me and I can’t help them, so when people I’ve never met approach me about my work, or comment on my content, it is very rewarding.

When someone tells me I did great after a set, or pulls me aside to tell me how they liked a joke, or a tag they’d have added, I enjoy that a lot. They listened and processed the things I said and it made them want to engage with me in person. That gives lasting feelings to me, knowing that what I said caused them to seek me out. Ideally I am only causing people with good intentions to seek me out, but that’s part of the game I suppose.

It is rewarding when I see that content I’ve made has had more viewing time than time it took to make. I am still finding a balance between what I find to be funny and entertaining well produced content, and what the algorithm tells me is funny and entertaining. Social media rewards posts on a different measurement system than what I use, so if I find that my content has generated more view time than it took to make, I consider that a sweet reward, as I’ve “created” time through my content. I’ve invested X amount of hours into a piece of content that generated XX amount of view hours, that is very rewarding to me.
Of course content that follows what the algorithm likes is a sure fire way to generate that time surplus, but I also like when it happens regardless of how wide spread it goes.

I also find it rewarding to see friends, peers, contemporaries and people whose names I know in the scene wear my clothing. I may not be someone’s favorite joke teller, or they may not appreciate my opinion on their perspective of reality, but I do feel glad when I see folks wear my designs and merch. To me it says “I don’t think you are clever, and I fear you are going to burn in hell, but thanks for the shirt, it prevents people from seeing my nipples and back hair, and I thank you for that”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chemelshots.com
• Instagram: chemelshots
• Facebook: chemelshots
• Youtube: chemelshots
• Other: Chemelshots everywhere there is social media that I care to participate in. Just search Chemelshots a lot, and often, ideally using a VPN so I show up everywhere.

Image Credits

I took all these pictures, these are all mine.