We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Matt Belknap a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Matt, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
I’m not sure if I have found *my* purpose, or if I even believe in an over-arching “life’s purpose,” but I do think it’s important to have *a* purpose, and I’ve found a few of them in my life. They tend to appear when I’m pursuing something else and reach a dead end.
At one such point in my life, I was aspiring to be a screenwriter, which meant a lot of time alone at a computer staring at a blank page. It was isolating, and ate away at my self-esteem. If I wasn’t progressing toward my goal, I felt lazy and worthless, and even when I did finish writing something, the momentary sense of accomplishment was soon undermined by the rejection (or silence) that followed when I sent it out to be considered.
To take my mind off this (or just procrastinate), I became immersed in the world of an online comedy message board that I had created. Discussing something I loved with people who loved it as much as I did was a welcome distraction from the inertia of my nonexistent career. This led me to begin attending local comedy shows and writing about them on the forum, which led to the comedians I was seeing perform every week reading my “recaps” of their sets. I became a minor Internet celebrity within the Los Angeles alternative comedy scene, albeit an anonymous one.
Eventually, I came out from behind my computer and got to know some of the comedians, and they got to know me as more than just a screen-name. They were just as passionate about comedy as I was, and discussing the form with them felt like a natural extension of the conversations we were having on the message board. Recaps of shows turned into interviews, which turned into an interview podcast, and even a fledgling comedy record label that a friend and I started to capture the work we were seeing in local clubs every week.
None of this was done with any thought to making money, much less a career in comedy — it was all in the name of fun. I was lucky to have a flexible work schedule that allowed me to devote so much time to what amounted to a hobby. But interacting with some of my favorite comedians and realizing they were just fans of comedy like me opened my mind to the possibility of turning this hobby into something more. I found a way to make myself useful by learning how to record comedians (both on-stage and in green rooms, offices and dining room tables). That part was easy. Finding the courage to ask people to trust me with their creative work was harder, but it helped that I really believed in them and genuinely thought the world should hear what they had to say.
Eighteen years later, the record label is going strong, with over a hundred releases from people like Patton Oswalt, Karen Kilgariff, Bob Odenkirk, Paul F. Tompkins, Jen Kirkman and Nate Bargatze, while one of the comedians I interviewed for the message board became my business partner in Never Not Funny, one of the longest-running comedy podcasts in the world, and one of the first to successfully monetize back in 2008. Jimmy Pardo and I started Never Not Funny in 2006 as little more than a fun thing to do in between his TV hosting and road gigs, and over time it has blossomed into a twice-weekly conversation with friends that reaches thousands of fans around the world. In both cases, my initial intention was to help amplify the voices of artists I loved who weren’t getting their due, and I still take pride in providing that service to the public. But from the feedback we receive at the podcast, I have also come to realize that humor is a powerful force in the world that helps people through difficult times. The work we create can be a welcome distraction, just like comedy was for me when I started down this path, and provide companionship to people who need it. Whether we realize it or not, when we set out to create something, one of the motivations must be the innate human desire to connect with others. I failed to achieve that with my writing, but over time I found another way to fulfill that need.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I produce and co-host Never Not Funny: The Jimmy Pardo Podcast, and I co-founded the comedy label aspecialthing records. Never Not Funny is available online at https://nevernotfunny.com/ and wherever you get podcasts, and aspecialthing records are available on all streaming platforms, at https://astrecords.com/.
October is Subtoberfest at Never Not Funny, our annual premium subscription drive! If you sign up for a Platinum subscription this month, you get a very cool enamel pin. Subscriptions start at $5/month and include an extra episode of our show every week, monthly bonus episodes, video of every episode that you can download or watch on our site, and cool perks like trading cards, socks and more. Learn more at https://nevernotfunny.com/
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Write. Being able to communicate effectively and capture people’s attention with the written word was how I made a name for myself on the Internet in the early 2000s, and even in an age of TikTok and podcasts, writing is a valuable skill. There’s no secret to getting better at this: you just have to do it a lot and accept feedback.
2. Play with new toys. For me, the new toy was message boards, which were a fun and exciting way to interact with strangers on the Internet before social media existed. I taught myself how to build a message board so that I could talk to the people I wanted to talk to: comedy fans. But there are always new toys to play with, whether it’s a new platform online or a new gadget for capturing video. Podcasting was another toy that I picked up early on. Follow your interests and play with these things until they bore you. One of them might end up becoming your job.
3. Say yes. For a few years, I pursued a lot of things that didn’t pan out, but a couple of them did. You don’t know which ones will catch on, so say yes to as many opportunities as you can. The ones you care about enough to stick with are the ones worth doing. Sometimes you have to create your own opportunities, and come up with your own ideas. But you still have to say “yes” to them, or they will never become anything more than a passing thought.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
Go for a walk. Sometimes I listen to a podcast while I walk — nothing connected to my own work, just something related to one of my outside interests. Sometimes it’s better to just walk in silence and let the stimuli of the world into your head to swirl around with your thoughts. Getting your heart-rate up and breathing more deeply seems to help with stress, so whatever you enjoy doing that provides that is probably a good choice.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://nevernotfunny.com
- Instagram: @nevernotfunny
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/nevernotfunny
- Twitter: @nevernotfunny
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/nevernotfunny
- Other: https://astrecords.com @aspecialthing (Twitter) @aspecialthingrecords (Insta)
Image Credits
Megan Berru Liezl Estipona
