David: Hello there! Welcome to another episode of Lexicon Late Night with me, David, along with Justin as always. So in this series we talk about some of the best storytellers of all time. We’ve previously covered many comedians already in our episodes, but today we’re going to talk about one of the biggest comedians in the world right now, Shane Gillis, and the lessons that he can teach us about storytelling.

Justin : That’s right folks. Shane Gillis, like you said, one of the biggest comedians in the world right now, probably my favorite, I was going to say up and coming, but he’s pretty much made it at this point, comedians going right now. His special on Netflix, Beautiful Dogs, is like, it’s the best special I’ve seen in years. We’ve done plenty of comedians already. We’re keeping up with this trend. Someday he might even see this video. We did one on Mark Normand and he commented on our YouTube video.

David: Praise Allah.

Justin : Yeah, that’s right. So, we’ll see what Shane thinks of this.

David: Definitely. We always choose people who have interesting stories to tell, right?

Justin : Yeah.

David: Just going from they were good and then they were famous. That’s not an interesting story. Shane Gillis has a very unique voice, a unique persona, an interesting career journey, and I think we can learn a lot for business leaders from the challenges that he’s faced and overcome.

Justin : Yeah. Yeah. And people seem to think he’s like this meteoric rise that just happened seemingly overnight. Because if you’re paying attention to kind of, you know,

the mainstream kind of comedy world, he does seem like he came out of nowhere. But this man was grinding for a very long time, starting out at the open mics in Philly and then in New York for many years, and now being one of the biggest comedians in the world with, I think, the one of the most popular podcasts on Patreon. It’s certainly the…

Or it was the number one for a minute.

David: It’s the number one money received.

Justin : Yeah. Yeah. All those ads for nicotine products and sports gambling and all of that.

David: That’ll do it. That’ll do it. Okay. So first lesson, then. I think you’ve alluded to it already. It’s about perseverance.

Justin : Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

David: It’s not an overnight story. And very few businesses are. Lexicon’s ten years old in January.

Justin : Right.

David: Fly by night.

Justin : And it’s not just working hard. It’s, so yes, perseverance in terms of sticking at it but also bouncing back. He had one of the pretty, one of the biggest, like public setbacks that we’ve seen in comedy history recently, where he was hired to be a cast member on Saturday Night Live. And then they found some clips from his podcast of him doing some stuff that we don’t need to get into. I thought it was actually pretty funny if you go look at the clips. But then was fired from SNL without ever having worked on the show, so you can’t imagine the kind of roller coaster ride of like, oh my God, I’ve made it. Oh, whoops.

David: Yeah. The first person who had no fame to get canceled, right?

Justin : Yeah, yeah. Dave Chappelle, I think, said that at one point he was like, yeah, exactly worded like that, I think canceled before you were even famous. Yeah.

David: Preemptive cancellation. So that was obviously, I would imagine, devastating for him.

Justin : Yeah.

David: At that point. But he did not let it defeat him.

Justin : No. Yeah. He went and did his own skits on the YouTube channel Gilly and Keeves. Some pretty funny stuff that I don’t think SNL would have even let him do. Like Trump speed dating is one thing that comes to mind. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.

David: And he probably wouldn’t definitely wouldn’t have got that onto SNL. And he might not have even ever dared to do that if, because if you’re going to go on SNL, your career path is probably a bit milquetoast. For sure. He probably would have had to take the edges off his comedy, for sure, and he wouldn’t have been the Shane Gillis that we know now. He would have just been some random SNL guy that no one’s ever heard of.

Justin : Yeah, yeah. So it’s almost like for the best. And interestingly, very much like the first ever episode we ever did was Norm MacDonald who was actually on SNL but got fired. Yeah. So they have that in common.

David: They do, yeah.

Justin : But then he came back recently and, fairly recently, and hosted SNL and had some funny sketches on the show showing what he could have done for them.

David: He was much nicer than Norm was when he went back.

Justin : Yeah, he was pretty nice about it. And there’s some funny sketches in there too. The Trump shoes comes to mind.

David: Yeah. So in terms of lessons for business, like hopefully you never are at a point in your business where you completely fail and you have to start again from zero. But if you are, that is a great opportunity to do things differently, to zig while others zagging.

Like at Lexicon, we started off as a writing company and then kind of just emerged over the years with what was happening in the industry. We pivoted to social media, websites for a little while, personal branding, and LinkedIn management as of today.

And there’s been failures over the way. There’s been many, you know, specifically Covid era, nightmares that we’ve dealt with. But I think for any good business, you just got to stay as true to what you’re passionate about as you can. Obviously, Gillis he’s a natural comedian. He’s a hilarious dude.

Justin : Yeah, he’s kind of undeniable. So he he just kept at it without having the platform that maybe he deserved or thought he would have. He just had to kind of make his own way through other means. So making his own YouTube videos, keeping at the standup, continuing with the podcast, kind of having to zig where everyone else was zagging and it worked out.

David: Absolutely.

Justin : Yeah.

David: So keep going. Persevere even when it’s rough. If you genuinely believe in yourself, it’ll work out.

Justin : Mhm. Yeah. And so we mentioned this in the intro, it’s kind of the second point is having those long form pieces of content. So the podcast, which ironically, is what got him in trouble and preemptively fired from SNL to begin with. But now, like you said, most ad revenue or most revenue podcast on Patreon. Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast. It’s hilarious. And now it’s doing extremely well. I think when they started it, they probably had no idea that it was going to get popular.

David: Just two mates hanging out.

Justin : Right. I mean, during Covid, me and some of the other comedian friends. So like Lex Morales, Chris Raufeisen, And Rick Diez, who’s now kind of making his own waves as a standup comedian, he was on Kill Tony recently-ish, and now he’s getting booked all over the place and I’m here. But anyway, we just did this podcast for fun,

which I think is probably what him and Matt McCusker, his co-host, had in mind. And then he kind of started blowing up. And then they found these controversial clips. And then, yeah, that kind of caused its own problems. But the point I’m trying to make here is for people who become fans of him and discover him now that he’s more popular, they can go back and there’s this massive back catalog of countless, countless hours of this hilarious podcast.

David: Like with Patrice.

Justin : Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like the Black Phillip Show? Yeah. Or all his Opie and Anthony appearances.

David: I think a third of our episodes so far have been comedians so there’s a theme here. Certainly for comedians, podcasting is, because they’re, most of them at least, are naturally funny. So just riffing and talking about whatever. They’re all smart people with opinions and a strong character, and that allows you to if you want to watch the long form stuff like the full episode of this, please do. But most people will see the snippet or the clip, and that’s how they’re going to get into it. How are you going to get into probably how people find comedians these days.

Justin : Yeah for sure. Like all these YouTube and Instagram shorts.

David: Yeah, even TikTok potentially. Yeah,

Justin : I gotta start doing this stuff.

David: Yes. But for business leaders, long form content, whether it’s white papers that you write, that you turn into quote images and infographics or ideally things like this where you genuinely have a conversation with somebody and you get to the core of an issue when you’re able to then help promote that person, help promote yourself in bite size format. And that’s a trend that’s definitely going to continue, and I think even get bigger in the years to come, because with AI, there’s going to be so much generic content that actually hearing people speak and give their opinions and hopefully share some personality. Yeah, that’s only going to get more and more important.

Justin : Yeah. This is something that AI can’t do yet is record videos.: And I think yeah like authentic actually you on camera speaking that type of communication is going to be at a premium because of, as you’ve said, social media is just flooded with this generic ChatGPT generated content. So it’s like, why would I bother reading something you didn’t even bother writing? Obviously, we took some time and effort to make these videos and the guys behind the cameras editing it and everything. So you’re here actually showing your personality and how you could help potential clients succeed. That’s going to be valuable in the years to come. Yeah.

David: And as from Shane Gillis, it is a meritocracy. There’s a lot of mediocre people out there saying mediocre things. But he rose because he’s fascinating. And I think if you have something interesting to say, you will too. Yeah.

Justin : Yeah, absolutely. And that kind of brings us to our third point, which is a point we often make on this show, is the strong brand or strong persona. I mean, the guy is essentially just being himself, but he does have a unique voice and a fresh perspective. I think it’s kind of he’s like the perfect comedian for this moment, especially in the US, where the country is so divided left and right and they’re at each other’s throats. And he’s kind of just this middle of the road voice of reason. He’s got his bit about having a Fox News Dad. Right. And yeah, you kind of. That’s what you want, right? You want a Fox News Dad. You don’t want MSNBC Dad. You don’t want a Fox News Mom because Fox News Mom smokes in the house, I think is the bit. Yeah. There’s more to it, but he’s got that. And then he was a comedian in New York City. So he’s got a lot of liberal friends. And he just kind of has this making fun of both sides approach that I think is like exactly kind of what the country needs right now.

David: For sure. Yeah. And I think persona probably has literally been every single episode. Yeah. But it is such a vital thing. We talk about marketing strategy a lot. And at that first phase, you really have to figure out what you want the world to see about you, because we all have multiple personas, right? Like you with your family versus you with me versus you in the comedy club. These are different personas. They’re all you, but they’re different versions of you. And I think people are a bit scared when it comes to personal branding, and especially on LinkedIn, to show too much of themselves. So they end up becoming just either ChatGPT writing or just generic and boring.

But you have to really determine: what voice do you wish to convey? And it should be, maybe not funny like Shane Gillis, but it certainly should be friendly and upbeat and engaging.

Justin : Yeah, right. Or at the very least, just like authentic. Like, if you’re just, if you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, then there’s no way you’re going to stand out. And you can also play to your strengths, bring in other interests. So like Shane Gillis is obviously a standup comedian. The whole point is being funny. But he’s obviously a pretty smart guy, obviously a history buff, and it’s kind of the same thing we said about Norm MacDonald is he’s like one of the smartest people in the room, just like acting like he’s one of the dumbest people in the room. And there’s a bit of that with Gillis, too. You can see they’re just kind of goofy bits on the surface, but there’s some depth to them, and he’s drawing in from kind of his historical knowledge and other interests and stuff like that. And you can do that as well like with any kind of social media content, whatever industry you’re in, you can find different angles and ways to pepper in things that make the content more interesting.

David: Yeah. And especially if you can just do what you like, like obviously the inspiration for this came from Norm on the Conan show 15 episodes ago now we’re into this thing, because that’s what we liked and what was fun for us. And we got to talk about things that we like. So not everyone’s going to want to make a late night show. But if there are topics that genuinely interest you as a business leader, try and find ways to deliver your more serious thought leadership through those those means. So whether it’s, you know, commenting on sports as an analogy for business or whatever it might be like, the more you can truly be yourself. And you spoke about Gillis’s love for history, like that Shane Gillis-Louis like 4 or 5 hour podcast about the presidents. It’s not funny necessarily, but it’s really engaging.

Justin : It’s a three part series of, I think, at least a couple hours each, where they literally went through, in chronological order, every single United States President and what made them interesting. It wasn’t, there was some hilarious parts, obviously, two of the funniest guys in the world. But it was it was genuinely fascinating just showing their like historical knowledge.

David: I watched all of it and I found it amazing because like, just yeah, they were clearly passionate about what they were doing. So even though I don’t really care much about American presidents, I wanted to watch it and I wanted to learn because passion is infectious and people will want to pay attention if you care about it yourself.

Justin : Right. Yeah. So that’s a good point. However esoteric your particular field is, if you’re super passionate about it, that’s going to come across obviously your potential clients, they’re aware of these things too. They’ll be interested. But you can even reach a broader audience that way because like if you’re fascinated with something and you can speak to it with some kind of energy and depth, people will be into it.

David: Absolutely. So go check out Shane Gillis. He’s got a free special on YouTube live from Live in Austin. Yeah. And he’s got a Netflix special, Beautiful Dogs.

Justin : That’s right.

David: With a great closer on that.

Justin : Yes. Yeah.

David: Beautiful Dogs. So lessons from today: perseverance, podcast, persona. The three P’s of marketing that you need.

Justin : Yeah.

David: You need to be aware of.

Justin : The three P’s.

David: Thank you for listening. And we’ll see you in the next episode.