We were lucky to catch up with Andrew Packer recently and have shared our conversation below.
Andrew, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
People are getting to know me lately for bringing the important news to MEN around the world. This community that has grown around my content is more fun that I could have ever imagined. I can’t count the number of times I’ll be reading the comments and they’ll send me into deep belly laugh. Just a bunch of guys celebrating the best parts about being a man. But it’s not my only iron in the fire. Before I started making content, I started doing stand up comedy, about 9 years ago now. As a stand up comedian, a major milestone that you build towards is making your debut comedy special. All of the best jokes that I have developed from touring constantly throughout my career put together into one body of work with some unexpected surprises to make it truly ‘special’. I shot this back in February of this year, it has been in post production until now and is finally ready to release.
The comedy special is called “On Guard”, it’s the most challenging project I have ever made and the project that I am most proud of to date.
I feel very fortunate that this month’s release (Sept 19th) coincides with breaking the 1 million subscribers on youtube milestone. Most of my subscribers know me for MAN NEWS and I’m excited to introduce them to what I do on stage.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I got hooked on stand up comedy from a young age. I was 8 years old when my dad rented “Robin Williams: Live on Broadway” and we would go on to quote his bit about golf to this very day. From that day I was hooked as a fan, listening to so many greats, George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Dane Cook, Dave Chappelle, Russel Peters, the list goes on. Most teenagers would be listening to music on their Ipod, I would be listening to stand up comedy albums on repeat while delivering newspapers in my neighbourhood.
Cut to 3rd year university, I would procrastinate studying by reading the wikipedia bios of my favourite comedians and it finally clicked that each one of these people just started doing it at some point. So I signed up for an open mic, got obsessed with the craft and shortly after moved to Toronto to pursue a career in stand up full-time.
I started making social media content way more seriously when the pandemic hit. My dream was halted, this thing I had committed my identity to was now non-existent. This was very tough, I had never imagined a world where we wouldn’t be able to perform live in front of audiences. I was going through an existential crisis, among mental stress we all experienced during covid. But I was committed to being a comedian, and I was fortunate to have close friends who were finding success on TikTok, Neema Nazeri & Che Durena. They were building their fan bases despite the pandemic, so I shifted my attention to the social apps.
What sets me apart is my work ethic. I was not the funniest, but I would go out and perform on 10-15 shows and open mics each week for years to get better. I had no social media following, but I started making and posting 4-6 pieces of content per day, stayed persistent and eventually caught some traction. I love to learn, I love to make progress and I am fortunate to have a great inner circle, my wife (just married this month! We’ve been together for 12 years) and family, that supports/motivates me in what I do. It’s not the typical artist archetype or story, but it sets me apart; to quote one of my favourite artists, “Everything I’m not, makes me everything I am” (Kanye West). I am at a spot right now where I have worked extremely hard in the silliest direction, defining what I do makes me laugh and I really like that.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The best part is getting to feel connected to so many people when I share a part of my life through my craft and they connect to it. It makes me feel like I can make it through anything. It’s a common joke amongst comedians that when a major life event happens, even if it’s a tragedy, we’ll say “should be able to get a solid 10 minutes outta that”, referring to jokes that we will perform on stage. The process of making comedy requires life experience and it’s cathartic when you can flip something that you’ve struggled with, into a joke that makes you and others laugh.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
When I started pursuing a social media following seriously, I created a threshold that I needed to make 5 pieces of content per day. Sounds insane, but what it forced me to get really efficient and flow instead of overthinking my ideas. It forced me to learn the functionality in the apps really well, and ultimately design content specifically for the apps. So just make, don’t judge, if you have to judge, do it a couple days after it has been posted. For me, creativity thrives when things are in motion. So when I am creating, I try my best to not judge, otherwise I would never make anything.
Naturally, I started thinking about content as groups or series instead of isolated pieces. It’s easier to make multiple iterations of one good idea, than multiple individual good ideas.
Man News, was just an idea for a series that caught traction and now has endlessly gone on to be a staple in what I do. The idea spawned out of a major TikTok trend surrounding ‘The Rogue’ and ‘The Council of Men’ and then continued to evolve from there. I haven’t missed a day posting at least once in over a year and a half.
Here are a couple realizations that have helped me stay persistent with content.
Social media is mental minefield. If you feel like you are ‘behind’ or that ‘someone else is ahead of you’ just know that everyone working on these apps feels like this. It is how they are designed, to make you feel behind. It is a constant flow of more content than you could ever catch up to and, for me, accepting this reality helps free my mind of that pressure. I can just focus on what I want to make and be happy for what I see from others.
I got no views for a long time. It was really tough to make as much content as I was making at the beginning and watch video after video ‘bomb’. But, I had already bombed on stage so many times in my journey as a stand up comedian. When you bomb on stage (when no one laughs), a whole audience sees it, it’s very embarrassing and really shatters your ego. When you bomb online its means the video gets not views. This sucks but, if the video gets no views, then no one saw it….so in the eyes of the public, nothing took place. A tree fell in the forest and no one was there to hear it. Realizing this helped me get over the anxiety of my content getting low view counts and to keep pushing forward.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://andpacker.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andpacker/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andpacker
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-packer-14b44546/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/andpacker
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/andpacker
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@andpacker
Image Credits
stage shots – Yousef Abdel Rahman @piercethelight on IG Album art – Daniel Marchione @dmcreative.ca on IG