Episode #405
Liz Miele started doing stand-up at 16, got profiled by The New Yorker at 18, and earned her first TV credit on Comedy Central by 22. Miele has produced and starred in multiple web series, and written a book, “Why Cats Are Assholes” which came out in 2021. She has released four comedy albums, and the video versions of two of them have racked up millions of views apiece on YouTube. In September 2022, she released her newest special, The Ghost Of Academic Future, also on YouTube. Miele sat down with me to talk about being an early adapter of technology and taking risks as a comedian, launching her own tech startup, and adapting to how you never know what or when something might go viral thanks to ever-changing algorithms.
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Last things first, congratulations on your brand new YouTube special, The Ghost of Academic Future. I know you did a live stream when you put it up. How did that feel to be watching it along with like YouTube chatters?
I’m not watching it. I watched it so many times that it’s like, I can’t — like it’s happening and you can’t completely mute it, because people will be like hahaha and you’re like, what are people hahaha-ing? So, just loud enough for me to know where in my set I am, so that I can respond appropriately to people responding to that joke, but I don’t want to hear most of those jokes ever. It’s just, between writing them, perfecting them, touring them for two years and then editing and watching it 80 times. I actually, I don’t know how many people talk about how much you hate your stuff by the time it comes out. You don’t have a real barometer of what it is anymore, because it’s so saturated in your mind. So something you originally thought was funny. You’re just like, is it funny? I don’t even know. And then even when you think something is cool and crafty. You’re like is it? It skews your perspective. And I learned that with all my albums that I’ve done but very much when I did the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I performed my hour, every day for 30 days. And I would call it the law of diminishing returns. The first two weeks you’re like I’m the best I’ve ever been. And then towards the end you’re like, I’m a robot and I hate all these words. I never want these words in my mouth again. It’s just too long and it’s too much and I really wish I could take some of that because I’m a control freak and also there’s no one else to do that kind of work anyway. There’s so much that I wish I could give to somebody else.
It’s interesting you say that because it’s a different dynamic from you touring this hour on the road. Pandemic notwithstanding. You do this hour doing clubs every weekend. You’re speaking to me now from from Colorado where you’re headlining. And you might not get as sick of it as fast or it just hits you differently from performing it. Say at Edinburgh, where you’re in the same room night after night for 30 days.
So in the beginning you’re perfecting it and you don’t know what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. That’s my favorite part. Making it better and crafting it and seeing and trying something and it working or not. The puzzle part of it is my absolute favorite. And then when it starts working, it’s like really exciting. There’s like a month where you’re just like, when you feel pretty. You know what I mean? There’s like a month where you’re just like, I think I’m the prettiest person in the room. That’s how the jokes make you feel. And then eventually you know what’s gonna work and that feeling of excitement just diminishes a little bit each time. And then there’s certain rooms, the way they react bring you back up. So you might be at 50% of enjoying that joke because you know it works and you know how people are gonna react, but sometimes a different reaction or an odd reaction, or something weird will happen in the room or even just putting it in a different order or adding a tag to it, there’s all these things you can do to kind of juge the excitement. But when it’s done done, like it’s been filmed, there’s no way to fix it other than cutting it and then you watch it 80 times. It starts to tank fast in your enjoyment.
Do you then get any enjoyment out of cutting it? Because I know you’ve found a lot of success in social media, whether it’s Instagram or Twitter, or even YouTube, of cutting up that special into three-minute, two-minute chunks.
It’s exciting when a new audience sees it and having different responses. Even now with people seeing the whole special, a lot of people would be like, loved it, my favorite jokes were like ‘makeup joke.’ They’ll list a bunch of stuff and it’s all different. Nobody’s repeating the same jokes and that’s kind of crazy. If I had to give an assessment of what I think my best bits, the ones that I think from performing them hit the hardest, to what people will be like these are my favorite, that kind of brings back a little bit of the excitement. Same thing where putting a clip out, it goes viral, and more people discover my brand or my sense of humor or just even this joke specifically. It give more excitement but I’ve done this before where like it’s a bit that’s dead in my heart. I don’t even perform it on stage anymore. I’m just using the clip to kind of get word out about a tour or something and it’ll go viral. So a million people start liking it and being excited about it. And then I’ll rewatch it to try to feel how they feel. And I still can’t find it. I’m just not as excited as these people are because it’s just too many years and too much time removed.
Right? You’re watching the massive coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II and you’re thinking, are London cops really better? I don’t know.
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Right now there’s a huge battle going on between Instagram and TikTok. Have you learned this a difference between the audiences for your clips on that?
Well first of all, I did well on TikTok when I first started using it, when it first kind of came out but the algorithm has changed so much and they’ve constricted the artists so much that a lot of my stuff gets muted. I had a video get muted because of copyright infringement. I own all my stuff. So now I’m writing letters to it. It’s a robot. So you want to be like your robot’s dumb. I own everything. There’s no forward motion to me unmuting this, and when they mute you, even if they go, ‘Hey, we’re wrong’, which they’ve also done. I got a bit muted for like violating rules or whatever. And I just say the word sex. It’s like a very clean joke and I just say the word sex. It is not dirty. There’s no reason. And they muted it and it was going fine. It was like I got like 17,000 views in genuinely like 20 minutes. And then they muted it and I was like, why? I just say the word sex, and so they unmute it like an hour later and then it stops. There’s nothing you can do. So it’s the same restrictions of late-night. Maybe even more restrictive language- and topic-wise, with none of the benefits! So for me, it’s like, TikTok, sadly, is the future and I have to play that game, but I hate it. It’s not just made for comedy, but comedy is about expressing myself without restrictions and there’s too many restrictions on TikTok. So I really do not like TikTok. Instagram is dying for different reasons where they have put too much emphasis on videos even though that’s something that has helped my career and I’m grateful for it. The fact that they got rid of IGTV, which, I’m long winded as you can hear me talk right now. But I have longer bits and my success was in the fact that they opened it up to 10 minutes or more really, and that’s where I started to see success. So now that we’re back to a minute, minute and a half, I’m back to being restricted and I can’t even put a full joke out sometimes. And they are giving so much emphasis to Reels that you can’t be anybody other than this performer. I hate being on Instagram as a consumer. I’ve muted half of my friends because I’m like I can’t. I don’t want don’t want to watch your bits every day. I want to see a picture of a cat and a rainbow and somebody’s earrings that they made. Like all the stuff that I liked as a consumer of Instagram isn’t there and I find myself on it less. So I think both of them have algorithmically put a stronghold on themselves that I think is going to tank both of them at some point.
As a comedian, you can’t do the tricks that the TikTok stars have done where they just find substitute words like corn for porn, or unalived for dead, like there’s all these language tricks.
Yeah, and it’s just like what hieroglyphics — what are we doing here? Like this is stupid. Also, we’re all fucking adults! It’s all because of China and blah blah blah but like it’s just dumb. It’s a dumb app. Like all of them are dumb. I’m grateful for them. I have a career because of them. But I can’t tell you how many times I like throw my phone at my bed and I’m just like, this is dumb. I’m playing this dumb game I don’t want to be playing.
Is that how you feel as a comedian, too? It’s a game where you’re always trying to adapt. I feel like you’ve been ahead of the curve on a lot of things. That not just because you started at 16.
Yeah, I am. And I’m an early adopter of most apps. I experiment with most apps. I’ve pushed my friends on a lot of these apps because I think being an early adopter, being ahead of the curve, gives you an edge and I feel that way, with even risk taking in my career. I probably went out to Europe before I was ready, but it was something I wanted to do. And I felt like I’ve already bombed in Ohio might as well bomb in Belgium. At least my Instagram will look cool, because I’ll have all these cool pictures and I’ll eat chocolate. Ahead of the curve can be replaced with open to risk taking. People will be like: Oh, I put this video up in and it only got four views, so I deleted it. Well, you don’t know if it’ll get more. You’re just embarrassed that you got four views. If nobody saw it, nobody knows that happened. Who gives a shit? So there’s also this ability to withstand the uncomfortableness of change and withstand the uncomfortableness of failure. That actually gives me my edge because the first time I started posting videos on IGTV, it was like a new thing for IG. I was getting like 400 views. It wasn’t working out but I kept trying to adapt and see what people are doing. I knew it was going to be helpful to me. And then I was one of the first people that started to kind of take off on IGTV because I knew that that was right for me. Same with I’ve been putting stuff on YouTube. It’s so funny how everybody’s like now putting stuff on YouTube, and they should. I mean, better late than never the best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago. The second best time is now. I’ll never not tell people to do it, even if you’re behind the curve, but I do think it’s sometimes funny where people will be like, Liz is doing well. And I was like, Yeah, I’m putting videos on there since like 2007. I’ve always kind of incorporated YouTube into my life. And I’ve always kind of used social media, at least in the last 10-12 years because in a lot of ways TV wasn’t accepting of me. I got a little bit of TV, but not the same way my friends did. And I refused to believe that if I’m not on TV that I don’t have value as a comic, especially when our art form is live. So the whole point of TV and now the whole point of social media is to get people to come see you live and to support your career. I still make 50% of my money performing live. I’ve now kind of been able to get a little bit off the road and make money with royalties from all my albums, make money from YouTube, make money from my book. So I think if you love to perform everything should be supporting that avenue. And that’s the whole point of TV and the whole point of social media, not the other way around. To build a fan base and nobody comes to see you live. I mean, who gives a shit? That’s at least my perspective. I don’t I don’t need somebody to tell me I’m funny. I need somebody to go pay $20 and see me be funny.
That reminds me, correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like you were one of the first, if not the first, to talk to me about using texting for updates?
I started a tech startup that helps comics onboard fans via text onto their mailing list.
There was a period before the pandemic. You had a different business card. You use this phone number and then you would get real texts from the comedian. And then I saw a bunch of people do it.
So mine’s a little different. Like there are text-based ways of keeping in touch with comedians. Mine’s different. Mines’s more just an onboarding app. So basically, I have the code word CATS and if you text CATS, so my phone number which is 206-207-5422, you’ll get a text that asks for your email. You put in your email, then you get a text that asks for your zip code. You put in your zip code and then you’ll get a thank you message. My thank you message now it’s probably something like hey, my special’s out click here to watch it. Follow me on Instagram. You can do that here. So it’s like this kind of short little tweet like thank you message. Then all that information, your email and your zip code goes into a CSV file. And for me, it automatically goes into my MailChimp so that when I do send out an email for, let’s do Denver since I’m here, when I send out emails to people in Denver, it’ll only go to people in Denver. Hey everybody, I’m touring Denver. And then because I have that zip code. I’ll put that in and I’ll find everybody that’s within an hour and a half of Denver. It’ll be like come see me in Denver. So mine’s more an onboarding to use my mailing lists. A lot of my decisions are based on me and my gut, which is I don’t really like text based. Texting is still really personal. And people are still holding their email close to their chest still, too, and they don’t want it to be spammed up. But I think you’re more willing to give away your email than your phone number. Personally: There’s this skincare brand that I love. I love them, I give them my money every two months when I need their skincare stuff. And I get alerts with discounts and they’re expensive, so I want those discounts. But they message me every day. I just bought you! I wanted a discount but I think it’s a friend and then it’s not a friend. It’s a discount. I just bought $200 for your skincare. No! So for me, I shield it currently away from tech space. I might change my mind. But this is just what I’ve set up for myself and then I have like 30 comics that use my thing again to just onboard those emails onto their MailChimp.
And how did you decide that was something that you wanted to start yourself?
I was touring with Hari Kondabolu for years. He’s a really good friend of mine and he had a way bigger fan base. So I’m opening up for him and he would be signing stuff and selling stuff and we’d would stand at a table together. And I’m bored out of my mind because only four people are coming up to me and we’re standing their for hours, and he had this clipboard for people to sign up for his mailing list, and I noticed there’ll be these lines for hours and he’d only get four signups. So I tied a pencil to the clipboard. And since I had nothing to do, I pushed it to the first person in line and told them to pass it back. So after I did that, he ended up getting 55 emails. And I was like, OK, so then I was like, You know what we should do? We should have these little cards we should put them on everybody’s table should tell people sign up. So they’re already sitting there already waiting for the show to start. So then he started getting more. I started doing it for myself, I start getting them, but then we’re doing data entry like every Sunday after shows. A lot of his fans are Indian. So they have these long names. Is this a real last name and I can’t read the handwriting. So I don’t know. So even when I do get an email, I wasn’t getting the correct email because everybody writes differently. So it’s like, how do I fix both the fact that the people are waiting in line already on their phones, and not signing up. The fact that I don’t want to read people’s handwriting and half the time I can’t, and I don’t want to do data entry every Sunday. This is boring. So I was in the UK and I was waiting for a bus and they had this thing that was like text this number to this number to find out when your bus is coming. And I did it into a little pre-populated thing is like your bus is two minutes away. And I was like oh, what if I could do that for people waiting in line or people just waiting for the show? I had done a tech conference. A corporate gig, and I reached out to this guy. I think his name was Brett. It’s been years. And I was like, I have this idea. So he was the one that was like this is how you might want to do this. He hooked me up with a coder. I used that coder for a little bit but eventually I ended up going with my friend. He was a bass player in a band but he got into coding and he now codes for I think the Rolling Stones website or something, but him and another friend of his, this guy Paul literally made the whole thing for me and you know at first it was just me and Hari beta testing it. But then eventually I just started telling friends about it. So like Maz Jobrani, brawny uses it Gary Gulman uses it. Alonzo Bodden was using it for a while Carmen Lynch. And it was just something that like, I don’t really make a lot of money from it. But I was like, I know this is helping me. I’m getting anywhere from 15 to hundreds of emails per show, depending on the show. And I don’t have to do any work and it’s building up my mailing list. And that’s stronger than social media. Because as we know, social media dies. MySpace is gone. Vine is gone. Facebook is a graveyard. Instagram is going to die soon. So how do I consistently get in touch with people? Let’s use something that’s evergreen like email, and do I think again that I might switch over to text at some point? Probably. Right now. Looking back to I should I have made it into a company? I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m going to do with this company. But right now I’m for very cheap helping myself and other people and I already set up the code for it. And it’s already kind of set in place, but it’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever done and it’s to support myself and my friends and yeah, I’m just really proud of myself and only like you and like the comics that have heard about it, and I haven’t really asked that many people it’s all been word of mouth so like, you know Shane Torres will call me up and be like, you have a tech company? And I’m told I need to ask you about it. And what’s even funnier is Gary Gulman is the one. I’ll see Gary and we’ll be talking and then he’ll turn to somebody you know Gary’s like what 6-5, 6-6 And I’m down here and he’ll look over at somebody be like, do you know Liz has this thing you should sign up for? It’s awesome. And then he starts doing the pitch and I was like, we were talking about alcohol. You are the most intimidating pitch man. I was like, do I have to pay you 10%? So it’s been cool. It’s like almost like this kind of secret thing about me that that some people know. And, you know, I want more. I want to help as many comics as possible.
Stand-up is a notoriously solo, isolating job. And yet, you’ve come up with these things that require a lot of collaboration, whether it’s the tech startup, or your 2013 animated web series that I neglected to email you back about.
See, I let go of my grudge, but you don’t let go of criticism.
It’s constructive!
I thought we had a great conversation.
We did. But see, it comes in handy because now that we’re talking almost a decade later, I can ask you about that. Because doing an animated web series I mean, even if you have the animation skills yourself, there’s a lot of collaboration that’s involved.
Absolutely. I’m actually, like, so jealous of Jim Tews. He has been animating his own stuff and animating stuff for other people. And I just think it’s amazing and I think it’s so cool. He can animate for himself. I have no artistic skills. I just like art. I like animation. Again, that was risk taking, early adopting.
I started doing Kickstarter, I thought that would be a great way to raise money to do this thing that I had written. I’d written this animated series, or a pilot, actually, and I didn’t really have the connections to pitch it. So the next best idea was to try — basically, I did 12 episodes, mini episodes or like web series episodes that when you put it together makes my pilot, so I was just trying to find a unique way of making my pilot so people can see it. And I hired a bunch of animation students. They were like, seniors at MICA. It’s an art school in Baltimore. I actually had met them because I performed at their school and they had stayed in touch and they said, Hey, if you have any ideas for stuff, and I was like, I do, I will be contacting you. And then I did the Kickstarter. It was the first time I realized I had kind of cultivated a fan base because my goal was to raise I think it was like a little under 10 grand and I raised it in two days. So I gave myself 30 days to raise 10 grand and I raised it all and more in two days. So,, was this a success in the smaller version? Absolutely. It got made. People watched it. I was able to pitch it to people. It’s still something I’m really proud of. Did it ever get made in a bigger sense? No, but everything I’ve done has been a learning experience and everything I’ve done has built confidence for the next risk-taking and I think doing the regular webseries I did with Carmen Lynch and my friend Chris Vongsawat, Apt C3, to doing Damaged to doing my first album to doing my first self-produced special to writing the script I’m currently writing right now. Writing my book. Everything has been built off the fact that when I want to do something, I figure it out and I can do enough on my own but then when I do need people I know how to hire people and seek out people and I think while stand-up itself can be isolating. I have always been friendly, and had a lot of friends and utilize my friends and support my friends and they support me that even though like I was just on tour for almost a month straight. I was checking in on friends. I was FaceTiming with friends, I was Tweeting out go watch my friends specials. I’m still present in people’s lives so that I think sometimes people are like, Oh, well, I made all this stuff and nobody’s really supporting me. It’s like well how supportive are you being to other people? My favorite thing is to share the stuff I love. That’s how I got into stand-up. I literally would like watch Mitch Hedberg. I would tape him on VHS when he was repeated and then I would go to a sleepover and be like, Girls you have to watch this guy. He’s awesome. And I love sharing stand up and I feel like now 20 years into my career, I’m sharing my own ideas, but like, I get so excited that like to be like oh my god, like, have you seen Josh Gondelman’s special? He’s so funny. And I get to call him my friend. These people that I once watched or these people I started with are my friends and I think that’s the coolest part. So I think that collaboration aspect. Or even Damaged itself. I mean, DC Benny is in it, and Jermaine Fowler is in it, Ted Alexandro, Carmen Lynch, Adrienne Iapalucci is in it. People that I admire, I was friends with, and people that have blossomed, you know, even since then, Joe Machi in it. I was like Joe Machi, you have a cartoon voice and he’s like, OK. And that was before he popped off, before Jermaine popped off. Hari is in it. I feel cool that I can use my friends and be a part of something that might be parallel to comedy, but not exactly just stand-up.
So when the pandemic started, I know you joke quite a bit about it in your new special. But when it started and everything shut down for comedians. Did the pandemic in that time away and that time in quarantine, did that give you pause and thinking about maybe I should have been a veterinarian? You were writing a book about cats.
That’s true. It’s funny, my parents have kind of come around because my parents sold their animal hospital in November of 2020. They had two practices, something they built up for God almost 30 years and are financially set because of it. And my dad was like, Oh, if we’d left it to you, we wouldn’t actually have money to show for all our hard work. And so I was like, You’re welcome. Disappointing you has really changed your your retirement at the very least. No. I’ve never wavered in my love for stand-up. And most of my anger and frustration over the years has been due to I would say immaturity and the way the industry presses up against wounds, and how I felt about myself. And I think as I’ve matured as a person and matured as a comedian, and via good friends, experiences, therapy, and getting further in my career, I can take types of rejection with a grain of salt. If the pandemic had happened when I was in my 20s, I would have been a mess. I was still sad and I was still worried and I was still scared. But I would have been like this is happening to me. The whole world shut down. Millions of people have died. And I would legit have been like, oh my god, this is happening. To me. This is ruining my life. And I could see, now 37, at the time 35 when it started. This sucks. This is not the right time, because things were going really well. I do not like this, but we’re all in this together. How can I be supportive of my friends who are going through much harder things. Half of my friends were pregnant, got pregnant, like, you know what I mean? Which is like, not the time body. I was able to be there for other people. I was able to pivot. This is actually where I shine, which is I can’t do things the way I usually do. What’s a different way to do it? And that’s been my whole career is pivoting and finding different ways. I started and was a part of so many cool things I would have not done…. and I learned so much about myself.
I suppose it helps that you already had filmed your special
Already in the bag,
Right, you filmed at the end of 2019 that you could read release during the pandemic and you’ve been able to see some fruits of that I mean, at least in terms of the validation of view counts. Absolutely over a million and a half people have watched Self Help Me.
Absolutely. And I’ve Quadrupled my fan base. I think I had 15 or 20,000 subscribers when I released it and now I’m close to 85K. I put out an old my album Emotionally Exhausting, which is at least eight or nine years old. I put the video of that out in March of 2020 because it was my 18th comedy anniversary and it had been two weeks of the pandemic and we were stuck inside and I just wanted to prove to people I was trying to sell my specialty that I had a fan base. I mean it has almost 3 million views. That’s not even me.I’m just like, whoa. And then that supported me putting out my actual special when I knew I had to put it out on YouTube and that has 1.5 million views again, completely unexpected. Because of that special I now have an agent and a manager, two things I didn’t have at the beginning of the pandemic. Really funny to get them in October of 2020 when there was nothing for any of them to do. But I ended up doing more self tapes and auditioning more and booking some stuff. Clearly now I’m touring again. I’ve finished a script and my manager and my agent are helping with that. Self producing that special self releasing that special and everything from behind it that I did on my own. Everything builds on itself and I am where I am because of the risks I took, not even 10 years ago, but probably when I was 16, 17, 18, 19 years old.
But if you were 16 now
I’d be dead.
Do you think you’d still be clamoring to get to the comedy clubs in New York City or do you think you would have focused all this video platforms?
I mean, if I was a 16 year old in 2020, I bet you I’d be making video. I wouldn’t be dancing. I would be like trying to tell jokes and stuff, which is I mean there’s tons of embarrassing stuff on the on the internet. But thank God I didn’t grow up with the internet like that. I joined MySpace, I must have been 19, 20, because I joined Facebook for a boy. So I think I was 21 or 22 when I joined Facebook so I think I was on MySpace when I was like 20. And I didn’t know how to use them. It was just a thing you did to connect to your friends. It wasn’t until I started using it as a tool for comedy that it kind of changed the game for me. I’m liking pictures of babies. Half of the accounts I follow are cat accounts. But most of these things are work tools. I would not be on Facebook right now, if I didn’t use it to sell tickets.
When we spoke in 2016, I asked you one of the questions I was asking everybody back then was like where are you? Where do you want to see yourself in five years? Of course, in 2016, we didn’t know that five years will include the Trump administration and a pandemic. But what you told me back then was you liked what you were doing. You just want to be paid more and well if I could be tri-coastal, in New York, LA and London, that would be amazing. Having said all that, how are your goals different now?
Well, I accomplished all of them, which is pretty dope. I am almost in the exact same place. I want to be doing what I’m doing now but paid more. I want to be doing what I’m doing now and have more creative outlets. I want to continue to build my fan base and reach more people and have more to say about where things go and earn more money. But I’ve been telling people this for a couple of years now, if this is it. If I peaked? If I’m not going to make another thing this is exactly, I’ve reached the top of my success? I did pretty good. Pretty proud of myself. It’s a pretty good life and I’m really grateful. So I try to keep with that being grateful and then also finding different ways to push myself and challenge myself and find different ways to express myself creatively. That’s been a book. That’s been web series, that’s been scripts and writing. But I did a podcast, we literally just ended a almost two and a half year podcast this week. So I think for me, I just want to keep challenging myself and I would like to pay for more stuff with my money.
I’m grateful that you took time out of your touring to sit down with me, and it’s been a joy to know you all these years and to follow your career, and I look forward to seeing where you go next.
Thanks buddy. I’m grateful that I know you and that I’ve been able to harass you for over 10 years. How nice is that?
Pretty nice.
Yeah, we’ve been annoying each other for a long time. And I think that’s really, I think it’s beautiful.
It’s love.
Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it.
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