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

Loy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?

As a stand-up comedian, the journey to earning your first dollar is filled with small gigs that pay mere five or ten bucks scattered throughout the comedy scene. You’ll encounter tip jars passed around like Sunday Mass collections, where the audience chips in to support the performers. I can’t distinctly recall the moment I pocketed my very first comedy earnings, as it likely vanished into the abyss of parking meters and bar tabs at the shows I was performing in.

But what I do remember vividly is my first paycheck from a legitimate comedy club. It was a pivotal moment, coming after two years of honing my craft in laundromats, Chinese restaurants, and bar shows with tiny, unsuspecting crowds. This was a real comedy club, with a genuine audience that had willingly paid to witness comedy. It was the instant I started to believe I was on the right path, that my comedic journey had potential.

After the show, the club manager handed me a check for $50, with my name boldly on the ‘Pay To’ line. It felt like a monumental milestone in my career. I couldn’t help but stare at my name and the club’s name in the upper left corner. The moment was almost surreal until my gaze landed on the $50 printed next to my name. That’s when reality hit.

I began to do the math in my head, realizing that I had been paid $50 for just 10 minutes of stand-up comedy. It meant I could potentially earn $300 per hour – the highest hourly rate I had ever seen in my life. But then the weight of responsibilities crept into my head.

As I contemplated my rent, car payments, insurance, and even the basic necessity of food, my euphoria was quickly replaced with the realization that making a living in comedy was no longer a distant dream. It had become a tangible and considerably challenging endeavor. I would need to perform 22 sets a month just to cover my rent, another 12 sets to pay for my car, and the uncertainty of how many more to take care of daily expenses. Comedy had transitioned from being just an art form to a business with its own overhead costs, return on investment, key performance indicators, financial forecasts, and profit and loss reports

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?

Loy Lee, stand up comedian and content creator, and stand up guy. Hailing from the rich comedy breeding ground of Boston, MA, The starting point numerous comedic legends.

As a fifth-generation Chinese American, Loy possesses a unique ability to bridge cultural gaps and connect generations through humor. He skillfully uncovers the laughter within the differences and nuances of being both Chinese in America and, fundamentally, American.

Loy’s comedic journey has taken him across the globe, bringing humor that transcends language and culture. With his comedy, Loy achieves the remarkable feat of uniting people through humor, fostering respect and offering fresh perspectives.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I don’t get art, in general, but NFTs seemed like a pyramid scheme, and then I looked into the art as an industry. What I found out is that the art industry is a pyramid scheme for the ultra rich to wash money. NFTs are basically that, but for an end game that we all haven’t caught on to yet.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Comedy and Social Media run really parallel. Stand up comedy is about trying and failing over and over until you fail less. Stand up comedy is a square peg in a round hole scenario, where you dont look for a square hole, you jam the square peg into the round hole until something gives way. Stand up comedy is finding success in failure. A lot of times you don’t know why something works or doesn’t work. You don’t even need to know the why, but you got to figure out how to make it work or keep riding out what works until it doesn’t. That’s the stand up comedy process. Social Media is the same thing. You have to keep putting up content that doesn’t work until it does or until you figure out how to make it work It hurts when you spent time to making a piece of content, hours and hours and it only gets 12 views. You have to get up and do it again tomorrow and the next day until it works. When there isn’t any instant gratification, its hard to press on, but that is the exact thing you have to do. The pain is the process. Make the Square peg fit through constant effort.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.loyleecomedy.com
• Instagram: loyleecomedy
• Facebook: loyleecomedy
• Linkedin: loyleecomedy
• Twitter: loyleecomedy
• Youtube: loyleecomedy