Meet Kieron Harrell

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kieron Harrell. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kieron below.

Hi Kieron, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

I like this question a lot, because purpose is such a heavy word. And it’s a word I’ve been thinking about more lately. My purpose is to entertain, to make people laugh, to make people feel. I know those things to be true. I also know that the medium I go about achieving these things is through comedy. But sometimes we blur the lines between the medium that validates the purpose, versus the actual purpose itself. That’s been something I’ve been trying to be more aware of as of late.

I found my purpose early on. The cheesy story goes- When I was six years old, I was at the bank with my mother. As my mother was talking to the tellers, I was strutting around the bank doing my best impression of Louis Armstrong’s ‘What A Wonderful World’. I’m a little kid, singing in as deep of a voice as I can muster, while reciting every lyric to this song that was popular decades before my birth. The bank tellers were three women. And at some point they began to laugh. This is the first cognisant memory of me making people laugh. To this day I remember that feeling, this sort of rush that I felt once I realized their laughing was because of me. Not at me because I fell down or made myself look foolish. It was because they were entertained. I remember the high pitch “aww” that they said in unison. I remember not getting bashful, instead, it made me excited. They said “keep singing” and I remember throwing my arms out wide and singing even louder and deeper than I was before. Putting on a show for these three women and my mother in an empty bank. That has always stuck with me. And even as a kid I wore it as a badge of honor. I made adults laugh. And that makes me feel good. Comedy is mutually beneficial. Oftentimes, we don’t feel good. I think, for the most part, everyone is just coasting at fine. And that sucks because we’re all dying to feel good. We want to play and to laugh and to forget about the real world for a while. So be it an hour, or 15 minutes, or even 3 minutes on the train headed to Target. I’m able to make people feel good. And I don’t take that gift for granted. The world has a helluva way of trying to reinforce why we shouldn’t smile. But as a comic, it’s my job to remind people, if only for a night, we can.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’m a full time stand up comedian! I’ve been growing my acting portfolio as well, but the bread and butter is stand up comedy. Earlier this November I shot my first mini special for OFTV and have been on the road pretty consistently throughout the year.I’ve been doing stand up since 2018 and was able to make it my main source of income around mid 2023. I’m in a really fortunate position. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a challenge and I’m by no means living lavishly… I’m actually quite poor compared to my counterparts that are settling into their 9-5. But I’m happy, like really happy. I get to wake up every late afternoon, on my own time, scribble some thoughts, and go make a sea of people laugh. I’ve been working hard on being more present and grateful for where I am in my career. I’ve worked hard and though I want to be further, it’s a must that I enjoy where I am. One of my favorite new practices is to go to my home club, which is Laugh Factory Chicago. And when a comic is on stage, I’ll sit off to the side and just watch 300 people laugh, watch 300 people let go of whatever burdens they were carrying into the club, watch 300 people nudge their partners and say “you do that!”. Sometimes I truly just tear up looking at what my job is. My job is so important to me, I feel as if I’m doing something good. I have so much pride in my craft.

Of course this job comes with its stressors. And I don’t think most people really understand the workload element. We get told no 20x more than we hear a maybe or a yes. In the digital age, we are our own social media managers, marketing agents, booking agents, and road managers. And this juxtaposition is so funny to me because most of us are the laziest and most scatterbrained people you’ll ever meet. Yet we manage to work relentlessly to stay booked and growing. Years ago a comic said a line that stuck with me, he said “Comedians are entrepreneurs. We are just like them. Except, we have no investors”. It has perfectly summed up what the beginning of my comedy journey was like. But now, years in, after finding my footing and establishing good relationships.The job hasn’t gotten easier per se, but I’ve come to understand some of the patterns of the job. However, I’ve noticed that each time I “move up a class”, there are problems that need solving on that level too. A reason I think I love this job so much is because, from the joke telling to the networking, you realize its all just an intricate beautiful puzzle that needs solving, but will never be complete.

In 2025 I’m just working on hitting the road even more, gaining some followers because that makes the booking process significantly easier, and most importantly, remembering to enjoy everyday instead of wishing I was already on the Tonight show. This job is beautiful, and I feel you do a much better job at it when you remind yourself of that fact.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The three that immediately came to mind are Necessity, awareness, and certainty.

Necessity. Do comedy because its a necessity. I don’t do comedy because I like it. I do comedy because I need it. It has truly been a means of survival for me since I first learned I could make people laugh. Making people laugh has saved my life on more occasions than I can count. And I don’t mean that flippantly. This isn’t a hobby for me, it is my life, for better or for worse. As a kid, as most comedians usually endured, I had my fair share of bullies. And people learn to navigate bullying through a bunch of different avenues. Mine was comedy. There’s some kid who hit his growth spurt before everyone else and for some reason, he has taken a liking to punching me in the face. So I figure, if I could just make this kid laugh. Find a way to relate to him. Sure, he may still punch me in front of the hottest girl in school, but he might punch me a little softer because I make him chuckle. My family was incredibly cruel to me growing up. I spent nights on end just sobbing in my room. But reenacting the events to my friends the next day, watching them laugh as I recount every sentence and play it up for dramatic effect. That makes it hurt less. I think people so often go through something tough and then block it out and refuse to speak on it. Don’t do that! That gives it power. Nothing is more powerful, in my opinion, than taking a thing that once made you cry, and making everyone laugh at it. That makes it small. It shows you your power.

Awareness. This one is simple. You gotta be aware. Comedy is, in its simplest form, storytelling. In order to tell a fair story. We have to be aware of what we did. What we did right, what we did wrong, and what we did that anyone else in that situation would do. We have to know our flaws and call them out before anyone else does. We have to be the people in the room that are watching everything and everyone. Comedy lies in the mundane. Everyone sees the mundane, comedians must see it through a lens that no one else thought to look through. This goes for all comedy style. Dark, observational, narrative based, self deprecating. We have to see both sides of the coin plus an additional side we made up for dramatic effect.

Finally, certainty. No one believes in a new comic. And if you’re a new comic who is believed in from the jump. Then your family is too supportive, stop doing comedy, if you have that much love and support, be a doctor. But seriously, the arts are daunting. It’s a tumultuous path to travel. You will be met with a lot of naysaying. There will be times where you don’t even believe in you. But what I have found to be more solid than belief, is certainty. Now, I am a man of faith, but when it comes to this career, my belief in booking that gig doesn’t get me that gig. My unbridled certainty does. Belief is important, but I have to be certain of the work I’m willing to put in to get in. I have to be certain that if a new joke bombs, that doesn’t mean I suck, it simply means the joke is new and I’m capable of reframing it to make it better. When a booker ignores my email, that doesn’t mean I’ll never work again, I’m certain that it means I should try other methods to gain their attention. In the simplest way possible, know what you want to do and know that you will stop at nothing to do it. This road is ever changing and we can’t predict 10 steps down the line, but just be certain of the next step. Another great quote I got told, “So many people will doubt you in your lifetime. Why would you ever allow one of those people to be yourself”.

Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?

The challenge I’m working on now is being able to easily move tickets. And that’s tough for a lot of us in the age of social media. A few clubs will book someone they have no faith in putting on a good show. But they know they’ll sell it out and make bank for the club. So, I feel as if I’m in a tricky spot, but the “correct” spot. Because I’m a comedian first. Before I started bothering clubs in different cities to headline. I got my 45 downpact. It took me years to build it. Years of open mics and showcases in the city, years of writing and rewriting, going on the road as a host and feature and trying the same jokes for completely different demographics of people, years of jokes that I personally loved but they weren’t doing well. To be fair to myself, I have amassed a nice following and every day I remind myself how fortunate of a position I’m in. I remind myself I do work the road and I have sold out weekends, it may not be every time but it has happened. It’s just that now, I’ve been focusing on making it possible to confidently hit up any space and say “Trust in me. The material is there and the people will be too”. I am working on this everyday! Because yes it’s a challenge, but everytime I’m faced with one, I get so excited to think about the feeling of gratitude I’ll feel once I overcome it. I’m building my online presence more and more. My linktree is easily accessible. I have a mailing list. It’s just that these things take time and God didn’t pour a lot of the patience gene into me when he made me. But all good things take time and consistent effort. I truly can’t wait to read this in the future and be able to tell myself we achieved that.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Conner Daly

Chris Walker

Diego Avila

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