The average person probably doesn’t think about the mechanics that go into coming out with a special. Like most things in life, there’s certainly a method to getting it right. Luck plays a small part in a comic breaking through, but hard work goes the farthest in the grand scheme of things. Michael Yo is making it clear that he’s putting in the work both onstage and offstage.
He knows what his audience is responding to, and most importantly, he knows who his audience is. That allows his comedy to thrive even further, and He’s seen the results with his clips going viral online. With his newest special, Snack Daddy, - which he released in conjunction with 800 Pound Gorilla - he has already noticed more traffic than his first special got upon being released. And it doesn’t show any sign of slowing down anytime soon.
Neither does Michael Yo, who is already at work thinking on what his next special will look like. He already knows the opening joke is his favorite thing he’s ever written. With just another 15-20 more minutes, that special will be ready to go. If that special is anything like this latest one, we guarantee it’ll be hilarious.
We recently spoke to Yo about releasing the new special as a half-hour versus an hour, his favorite jokes from the new special, the numbers side of things, knowing your audience, and creating a time capsule for his family.
I love how you start the special right away, with no long intro. Right into the jokes. Is that a conscious decision?
In my last special, I just start right onstage. Now just talking about me and not any other comics, the whole walk out intro is just an ego thing, to me. Like I would never do it for myself because people don’t really care about that. People care about the content and what you’re saying. So since I’m not on the level of a Tom Segura, Bert Kreischer, or Dave Chappelle and I’m not on the level where people will watch that, I’m trying to get to my best chance to win by getting straight to the comedy.
Even when I get to that level, I still think I will start right away. I never heard one of my friends go “Oh my god, did you see the way he walked out?” (Laughs). Maybe one special that ever happened, that was a Kat Williams one. But he had a DJ and all that stuff. But I just want to get straight to the comedy and give my best chance to win over the audience. Also, let’s be honest. With the algorithms now, you want to keep them in the first 30 seconds. If your intro’s too long, people could bounce. They won’t even get to your comedy. And it worked great in my last special. So I’m like “Hey, by 5 seconds in, you’ve gotta laugh.” That’s what I aim for.
And tell me about your decision to do a half-hour special verses a full hour. As a comic, I imagine you do a full hour when you’re taping the special.
My decision is it’s a new day, it’s a new hour. I actually think this one went too long, because it went 31.2. I wanted it under 30. I wanted it under 29. Because when people see under 30, they’re like “I can watch that.” We live in a different society. I love Dave Chappelle. He’s my favorite comic. But if his special is an hour, I won’t get through it in one sitting. And that’s me with Dave Chappelle, my favorite comic. So I just think the world right now we live in, they want to consume it very quick. Look at baseball, look at basketball. Look at all these sports that are shortening the game. They’re trying to make it quicker. I believe peoples’ attention span is a lot shorter, obviously, because we all have phones.
So my feeling was by making the special short, I can put out more quicker. And I hate to say this but today, it’s not just about the special itself, but it’s about all of the clickable moments from that special. Because the clips and the special combined sell tickets. For instance, my special did 800,000. But my clips together did closer to 60 million. So more people saw the clips than it felt like saw the actual special.
Sadly that’s the way things are headed. It is definitely our attention span, unfortunately.
That’s the thing. I never want to fight the obvious trend. I don’t want to be the person who - when the internet first came out - was like “Oh no. I don’t need the internet!” It’s like, “You’re so archaic.” I remember when Instagram was out, and it’s like “I don’t want to do that.” Then I was like “No, that’s the way to do it. You have to be apart of it.” If you’re a comic now, it’s not just being great. It’s a business. It’s a business show. It’s show business, but the business is first. You have to do everything to really be successful before. If you blew up before, that’s great. But if you didn’t, it’s a different time today.
And it does feel more special - by just putting up the half hour - for the people who come see you. Because now they get what they feel like is an exclusive 30 extra minutes of material. Also, it takes pressure off you to have to scrap a whole hour and create a brand-new hour.
For me, I have like three of four jokes that I shot that we didn’t put in this special. So I’m already ahead like 10-15 minutes for my next one. So all I need is literally another 15-20 minutes, and I can shoot another special. So that’s my mentality. It’s just a different game, so you have to play the game different. You can’t be like “I’m going to wait til it’s an hour.”
The only thing is some places want an hour. That’s different. But me, I love self-funding my stuff and putting it out. Because that honestly changed my life, and now it’s kicking up to the next level. It’s like “Oh, you can put it out yourself and this great company is out there like 800 Pound Gorilla that will help you put it out and get more eyes on it.” So for me, that’s the game right now.
That makes total sense. I love breaking down the mechanics and what goes into releasing a special and why it’s done a specific way.
Oh, me too. I’m a numbers guy. I’m on my YouTube analytics all the time. I love to watch the watch patterns. For instance, I put a clip up from my last special probably about a month ago. And it’s still crushing. In 4 weeks, it’s done like 700,000. But it’s like a 12 minute clip from my last special. I put up my new special, and it’s gotten in 2 days what my last special got in 12. I’m excited about that, but at the same time, the clip I released from my last special is crushing my special. So I’m like “Was it a mistake putting out the special?” And I’m like “No, because the channel is getting more attention.”
So I love watching the numbers. I’m obsessed. I probably go to my phone like 10,000 times a day just to look. Every hour, every minute to see how the numbers are doing. And my heart is hurting because a clip from my last special is beating my new special. But I know when that old special clip will get tired, the new special will keep growing and blow up. That’s what’s great about watching numbers and trying to figure it all out.
We’ve come a far way from the old model of your special airs on a network, and if you don’t get those numbers they want, that’s it.
You’re done. Yeah.
Now it’s evolving and you can find something that came out three years ago on YouTube and watch it like it came out yesterday.
Because to them it did. My friend Mark Cohen at the Comedy Cellar said “It’s a new joke if they’ve never heard it before.”
With the special itself, how long did you tour this hour before you felt it was ready?
You know what? I had it ready for probably like a year. What I wanted to do was work on new material on top of that. So when I go on tour, I’ll have some new stuff. So I had a year and wrote some other stuff. And then I really recorded like 55 minutes. I put in some throwaway jokes and cut it down. That first 30 is all together. How my show works is I do some crowd work up top that you don’t see, and I do a couple new jokes. And then where you see the special start, that’s about 20 minutes in. So that’s where I start this, because I knew I was going to start it there. And then if I like any of the other jokes and the way they came out, I was just going to rearrange the order if one really popped. And they did, but I felt like “Nah, I like this starting point.”
Because I have a joke for the next special that for me is my favorite joke. But in the political climate we live in - it’s not a political joke, it’s about races -, it’s during the election and I’m like “The last thing I want to do is talk about races in my first bit and then people click off it.” So I started with more of a female empowerment bit, because my audience is 65% female.
I think it’s important you said that and that you understand that’s your audience, because having a joke like that really does help reach who you need it to. Especially when the comedy landscape can sometimes feel more male-oriented at times. So it’s good that you didn’t want to isolate anyone.
Yeah. I know Joe Rogan and he’s put me on his podcast a couple of times. I remember when I got that big pop and he put me on Rogan the first time, I thought “Oh, maybe this is my crowd.” When you don’t know your voice exactly in comedy, you kind of just adapt to what’s hot right then and you go “Oh, let me check this out.” Nothing on Joe, it was me trying to find “Is this my audience?” I’m watching UFC and doing all this stuff. And I don’t want to call it bro stuff, but that’s just what it is. And it just didn’t fit me.
I got a call from my friend that loves analytics. I let him peak at my analytics all the time. And he goes “I want you to look at this. Why are you doing all that when your audience is 75% female?” And it just hit me. It’s like “Oh, because I’m still trying to find my voice. I know what my voice really is. I’m not that guy.” So it’s just coming to the realization of who I am.
And now I know my audience. They’re married couples who bring their kids who are 16 and up. And that’s who I am. That’s the kind of guy I want to be, because that’s the kind of family guy I am.
Now you talk about your family watching your last special after the fact. Because you bring them up at the end of your special, had they watched this set? Or do they wait until it’s fully edited and released?
They don’t watch it, because everyone’s in the green room. They’re with my kids. They never see the set. My mom was at the taping for the last one and was stressed out. Because she didn’t see it and I was joking, “I’ve got a joke about you.” With two kids their age, everyone’s just paying attention to the kids. So they’re not in the showroom, because my kids would just make too much noise. So they’re there, but have no idea what went on. (Laughs).
My mom was stressed out about the joke, so I got the whole family together to watch it. If I showed my mom too early, she’s going to give me notes and ask me to take out things. So literally when it came out, I sat everybody down the day before and we all watched it.
And what did they think?
Oh, my mom was so relieved. “Why didn’t you tell me the joke was nothing?” And they loved it.
You talk about your kids and you what you hope your son’s reaction is when he sees the special. Has that ever given you pause in terms of what to include?
Oh yeah. It is. For instance in my last special, my whole family pointed out that I called my son an “mfer.” But it wasn’t in a mean spirited way. I had this whole COVID joke where my son makes fun of me breathing, losing my breath. And I’m like “This little mfer makes fun of me.” But it wasn’t mean, it was just funny. But I got a lot of slack about it from my parents and my wife. I’m like “You all are too close to it. It’s funny and it’s one of the biggest moments in the special.” But if I could go back, yeah, I probably would’ve been like “This dude making fun of me.” Because the “mfer” made it funnier, but it didn’t make it that much funnier.
But that’s growing as a comic, too. Now it’s funny as a family man, I’m moving more and more towards the Nate Bargatze, Jim Gaffigan type. Because I feel like that’s who I am, now. And why not? I can be Bill Cosby without the pills. Why not? I can be him. Because I feel like I’m a cool dude. So I can be that cool dad that talks about his family, because that’s my lane and that’s what I enjoy talking about.
Here’s the thing. No matter what ethnicity or color they are, anybody can identify with someone in your family. And that’s what makes it so great. And that’s why the color doesn’t really matter. I’ll have people of all different colors going “Oh, my mom is like your mom!”
And what I love is now that they’re in the special, they have it as a time capsule.
And that’s why I put my parents in it. Because it’s our time capsule, too. My dad’s 80, my mom’s 74. So this is something I get to look back on, too. These are the moments that I have with my parents. And my son gets to look back on it and go “Hey, that’s my grandparents. And that’s my parents.” That means the world to me. That’s why I’m creating all these moments. That’s why I feel it’s so important to put them in every special.
I feel like it’s at the point where I’ve become a real life sitcom to people. I love that. They’re part of my life. “Oh, he’s going on tour. His daughter is 8 and his son is 6. What’s going on with their lives?” That’s what I love.
Finally, what joke took the longest to come together or is your favorite?
Well, the one that’s bleeped out at the end - which is a phenomenal joke, but YouTube said I would get flagged about hate speech against myself. But I had that thought 10 years ago, but I was just too green to pull it off and didn’t know how to pull it off. Then when I did this special, I was like “Oh my god.” I told the whole joke to my dad and he goes, “Besides the water fountain joke you wrote, that’s probably the best joke you’ve written. It’s so real, and yet it brings everybody in with an emotional story, and then it lets everybody off the hook at the end. And that’s where you get the huge laugh.”
And I’ve got to say, the story with your son with someone making the racist remark at school, you’re able to walk the tightrope with that joke.
Here’s what’s interesting. That really happened. I did punch it up, but they said “Say bigger with an N.” Between me and you, my son didn’t know what to say. So I thought in my mind “Biggern is hilarious.” So I added that to the joke. And now you have to have a conversation with your wife, “Does he need to know at 7 years old what that word means?” And I do feel that that joke will be in my next special and I’ll add onto it further. Because what I found out after we shot the special was the conversations me and my wife had, “Should we tell him? Should we not?” It was really funny. A black and Asian person trying to talk my white wife off the edge that other people are saying this around my son. So it’s fascinating.
My thing is, if you have a great joke and you have an add-on story to it, say the joke again. There’s no rules anymore. If it’s a great joke and you have another story to add to it and you’re always gaining new audiences? My theory is put it in there and then build on it.