Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Funny Business

Episode Date: May 31, 2019

  Uber beats. Gap tanks. Williams-Sonoma soars. And Costco slips. Analysts Ron Gross and Jason Moser discuss these stories and dig into the latest from Okta, Ulta Beauty, and Zynga. Plus, comedian Greg Fitzsimmons talks Stitches, stand-up, and the business of comedy.  Thanks to Airbnb for supporting Motley Fool Money. Go to airbnb.com/fool and start hosting. You’ll receive a $100 Amazon Gift Card if you generate $500 in booking value by July 31. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's the Motley Fool Money radio show. I'm Chris Hill. Joining me in studio this week, senior analysts Jason Moser and Ron Gross. Good to see you as always, gentlemen. Hey, how you doing? We've got the latest headlines from Wall Street. We will dig into the business of comedy with our guest, Greg Fitzsimmons. And as always, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar.

but we begin with Uber's first report as a public company, and it was a doozy. And by that, I mean, Uber lost a billion dollars in just 90 days. Jason, we've seen unprofitable startups lose money, and investors will still buy the shares. You look at the stock, Uber's basically flat on Friday, and that tells me, among other things, that they're not really doing anything just yet to get Wall Street excited? I think that's a fair statement. I think the story for investors when it comes to Uber, it's figuring out all of the different ways they can leverage this network to make money. Today, that's the rideshare business, that's new mobility like scooters, the Uber

Eats business, Uber Freight. These are all pieces to that overall puzzle. For me, the 20% top-line growth. Maybe my expectations were just a little bit higher. That seemed kind of, you know, nothing to write home about. But by the same token, gross bookings were up 34% to $14.6 billion. Trips grew 36%, and that's good as well. I think if you look at the call, certainly the theme was Uber Eats. I think that's where they're really seeing the biggest opportunity, at least in the near term. Gross bookings for that side of the business worth $3.1 billion. It was up 117% excluding currency. They have 220,000 restaurants on board with that network. The thing is, with food delivery, the economics of it can

be tricky. There are expenses in maintaining that network. It's not always a no-brainer for the restaurants, either. And we're seeing Grubhub dealing with some of those challenges as more of the pure play there. Uber is an impressive business. It's an impressive network, I think, with a lot of potential. They're going to have to figure out, as they go along, a way to become profitable with these four main drivers. I know a lot of people are looking towards those self-driving cars, thinking that's really the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You just have to recognize, that's still at least a decade away. I feel like people who are thinking that we're going to be surrounded by these self-driving cars in

the next few years, that's just a naive point of view, in my opinion. I could be wrong, of course. I saw some interesting analyst comments that price competition with Lyft might be dying down, which would obviously be good for them. It would increase take rates, which is the amount of money that Uber can keep after paying drivers. So, you know, profitability must be right around the corner, if the corner's on the moon. But, you know, when you don't have profits, you talk about the path to profitability. That's the big buzzword. And path to profitability, which for me is just a euphemism for we don't make any money.

And, you know, I don't know how to value the stock if they don't make money. Well, but to that point, I mean, you go back to the top-line revenue, Jason. I mean, I think if Uber had come out in this quarter and grown top-line revenue 40%, 50%, something like that, I think that gets Wall Street a little bit more excited. As you said, 20%, it's like, well, that's fine, but it's only fine. It is. And if you compare that 20% to the growth that we were talking about with gross bookings and rides, I mean, I think that implies that perhaps there is still some price competition going on out there. I mean, I don't know that Uber is ever going to be

a business that can really realize much in the way of pricing power. I don't know that that's really a point, though. I mean, it's ultimately about the network effect and figuring out the different ways they can exploit this network on a global scale. I think they're doing the right thing. I mean, to Ron's point, that path to profitability is very unclear. I think it's going to take a long time to get there. Thankfully for investors today, the stock isn't really absurdly priced if you look at it on a price-to-sales metric. But, I mean, you also have to take that with a grain of salt and understand that profitability is going to be quite some time away. Last comment on competition, you see

Lyft talking about, we're going to start to compete on brand, not on price. Good luck there. And I have a feeling that won't stick anyway. We're going to continue to see promotions for a long time to come. I think you're right. And one thing they kind of made, I started asking myself this question in regard to Uber and Lyft. While I don't know that there necessarily is a brand advantage to either one, I started asking myself about brand disloyalty and go back to when Uber was having all of those culture issues. And that sent a lot of people fleeing and using Lyft as an alternative there. And I mean, here at Fool HQ, we use Lyft as our provider versus Uber. And so, I wonder,

in some cases, when a company really screws up, maybe there's not the brand loyalty, but there could be brand disloyalty that comes into play that could affect even one of these businesses. Third quarter profits for Costco came in higher than expected, but shares falling a bit on Friday. Same-store sales in the U.S. were up 7%, Ron. That's strong. Very impressive. I think what's going on with the stock is disappointment over membership fee growth. Comps were just a little bit light, especially international. U.S. was strong. And the uncertainty surrounding tariffs and what that could mean. They did make some comments there about having to maybe resource some of their items from different areas around the globe.

I think have people a little bit shaky, but it was a solid quarter, especially when you account for the fact that they sold a $400,000 ring. I didn't even know they sold $400,000 rings, but look it up. They sold one during the quarter. Overall revenue up 7.4%, 7% gain in comps, as you said, in the U.S., but in Canada, only 1%, and 1% overall internationally, mostly hurt by the strong dollar. So, won't penalize them too much for that. e-commerce up 22%, always important for folks like Costco. In general, May has been a rough month for retail, but I was struck this week by the performance of the discount retailers. We saw results from Dollar Tree, Big Lots,

both those stocks up after their latest reports. Dollar General hitting a new all-time high. And you go back over the last five years, both Dollar General and Dollar Tree have beaten the market over the last five years. I mean, they're really executing well at those companies. Very strong performance out of all those types of dollar stores, those discounters. You know, Dollar Tree was the one that was kind of struggling, because they have Family Dollar as well, which was always kind of the weak link there. They had acquired them back in the day. And then, Starboard, the activist investor, came on board and said, you've got to sell them, you've got to get your house in order. They said, we're not

going to sell them, but we are going to make a lot of moves. We're going to close underperforming stores. We're going to remodel. So, that firmed them up nicely. And those stores continue to put up comp sales that are just impressive. So, they're executing well. Ulta Beauty shares falling a bit on Friday, despite first quarter profits coming in higher than expected. Jason, they also raised guidance for the full fiscal year. Are we not impressed? I'm very impressed. I mean, I remain impressed with this business. I mean, it's been one of the great investing stories of the past several years. And I mean, I think that really is primarily due to CEO Mary Dillon, what she has been able to do in executing her vision

since 2013. Shares have better than tripled under her watch. And I mean, I don't think there's any reason why we should expect that to continue. I mean, we look at the comps growth, top-line growth, all very strong, thanks to a healthy mix of traffic and increasing average tickets. Plan is to open around 80 new stores this year. They are steering away from quarterly guidance, which I'm refreshed to see that. I think they're focused a little bit more, we're just going to tell you what our strategy is for the year. We're not going to sit there and worry about the quarter-to-quarter understanding that retail is a bit more difficult to predict on that granular level, so to speak. They've really done a good job executing,

I think, on the loyalty customer. They have now 33 million loyalty members. 90% of their store count is essentially off-mall, so they don't have to worry about mall traffic. And Chris, what if I told you, Ron, you too, what if I told you Ulta is a tech company? Would you believe me? No, Jason, I would not. I mean, on the surface, they appear not to be a tech company. Let me tell you, I'm not going to say it's a tech company, but I will say they've made some impressive investments, at least in AI and augmented reality, believe it or not.

An acquisition at the end of last year, Glam, gives them the capability now within their app for customers to try on their products before ever even having to go to the store to potentially buy them. And so, ultimately, what I think that does, it translates to a better customer experience overall. They carry a lot of private label stuff, a lot of brand label stuff. So, it seems like they have products for just about everybody out there. Just a very, very impressive performing business. First quarter results for Gap were a horror show. Same-store sales falling at both Gap and Banana Republic.

And, Ron, Old Navy's comps were down as well. Old Navy is usually the silver lining of this business. What if I told you Gap was a tech company? Tell me more. No, you're right, but this was a mess. Net sales down 2% overall. Old Navy, which is usually the bright spot, down 1%. It actually dampens the optimism for the spinoff that I still think will occur.

But not a good result. Gap down 10% on comps. Banana Republic down 3%. Margins narrowed. Adjusted earnings down 43%. The stock is off 30% year-to-date. These folks are not getting it done. Well, and the CEO talked about how this was one of the coldest, wettest quarters in memory. That's the exact quote. And I get that, but doesn't that also inadvertently highlight the fact that they have no e-commerce strategy to speak of? I mean, if you're completely dependent on getting people out of their homes, you're dead. Yeah, for sure, it's an in-store experience. I have actually recently purchased something from The Gap, both in-store and online,

which was the first time in a long time. The store is always 50% off. They've got Gap dollars that they're constantly giving back for promotional reasons. It's a business that continues to struggle. So, the stock at a seven-year low does not interest a value guy like you? I'm going to say at 8.5 times their current year guidance, when the median comps are 14 times, still is not of interest to me. Coming up, the makers of FarmVille are selling the farm. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

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so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here in studio with Jason Moser and Ron Gross. Good wheat for Okta. First quarter revenue for the identity management company rose 50% compared to a year ago, and shares of Okta up more than 10% on Friday. Jason, hitting a new high. Jason Moser. Yep. Well, Okta is a tech company, and I defy you to tell me otherwise. The good news is that they are growing very quickly. I can certainly understand why. We use Okta here at The Fool. It is a very good product. You look at the total number of clients now at $6,500-plus, new additions for the quarter of $450, contributing to that top-line growth

of 50%. Subscription revenue up 52%. Those subscriptions are nice because they're typically multi-year contracts, which offer some visibility. This business reminds me a lot of Zoom, the video conferencing company that we talk a lot about, in that it's technology built on today's cloud infrastructure, and it really does just work. I think the big risk for a company like this really is security. They operate on this concept of the zero-trust security model, which essentially means, never trust anything and always verify. And I guess, in today's world, that makes sense. I think that philosophy really needs to continue. If they sacrifice that mindset for the sake of profitability, that's when I'd start really

being worried about a company like this. But generally speaking, I think they're doing everything they need to be doing. It's worth noting, the stock just trades at an absurd valuation, 27X sales. It's not profitable. You do have to take that into consideration. Again, good business. I don't think I'd be buying the stock today, but I would have it on the watch list for when that inevitable correction does come. Shares of Williams-Sonoma up 12% on Friday after first quarter profits came in higher than expected. Same-store sales of 3.5% run. That's not enormous. That is, however, double what was expected. Double. And maybe these guys have finally

turned the corner. This has not been a good story over the last five years. In fact, the stock is down 14% over the last five years, up 14% this year. But even taking that into account, still down over a five-year period. This time around, they did beat expectations. West Elm, 11.8% comp growth. That's a big number. Good to see that. Even positive, 1.5% at Pottery Barn. You did see a decline in their namesake Williams-Sonoma stores of about 1.6%. Those stores continue to struggle. But the other brands seem to be making up for it. You saw an expansion in operating margins, which is great to see. And as a result, adjusted earnings were up 21% for a company that has not typically put up those kind of

growth numbers. So, perhaps some of the changes they've been making to merchandising and and advertising is taking hold. They've definitely had some store closures in the namesake Williams-Sonoma brand. How are they doing in terms of correspondingly ramping up the e-commerce? E-commerce continues to be one of their focuses. It is supposedly a multi-channel company, but a lot of the things they sell don't necessarily translate that well to e-commerce. So, it is an area of focus for them. I don't see it being a big part of the story, at least not yet. One thing, interestingly, they did highlight is that they were just named for the first time to the Fortune 500 of largest

companies in the U.S. It's only a $4.6 billion company, which was puzzling to me. I had just assumed, incorrectly, that the Fortune 500 companies were larger. They have jackets for that? Zynga is the social video game maker behind such hits as Farmville and Words with Friends. Zynga is not profitable, but the company just found away to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in one fell swoop. They are selling their headquarters in San Francisco. I was struck by this because for all the times I've flown into the airport in San Francisco, you drive downtown, you go by this huge, iconic building that they've had with the Farmville logo on the side and all that sort of thing. I don't

know, do they now need to start a real estate business? Probably not. But I will say, I'm impressed with the management team that will make a move like this. I'm sure it was very prestigious to have that building. You mentioned you see it when you fly in. It's hard to let something like that go, but it is a great capital allocation decision if it doesn't make sense and you can capture that much money from it. The first thing that comes to my mind is Zynga frozen yogurt. You ever go to Zynga around here? No.

Spelled, I think, with an I, not a Y, but Zynga frozen yogurt. Maybe they should be looking past gaming and thinking about merging with a frozen yogurt company. It seems to me like the future might be a little bit brighter there. One thing I will say in regard to Zynga is that they are pretty acquisitive. And I think the problem there is that half of the total assets on the balance sheet, well more than half of the total assets are attributed to Goodwill. I mean, you take that for what it's worth, but that's a write-down waiting to happen. Right. Goodwill is the amount of money you pay in excess of what a company's book value is when you acquire it. If you pay too

much for a company, then a write-down typically ensues, which nobody likes to see. I think the reason they're acquisitive is because they've got to grow somewhere, right? That's their growth story, which again, I think investors should be wary about. You need to see organic growth in a business. If a company is a serial acquirer just for the sake of growth, that often doesn't work well. Yeah, I think with bigger companies, we talk a lot about Microsoft and the bungles they made on that side. They've written down billions and billions of dollars on the Goodwill side. For a bigger company like that, it's really not as big of a deal. I mean, we do live in kind of a non-GAAP world now, where

they adjust for everything. But with a smaller company like Zynga, with less of a track record, I mean, those things will be taken under a little bit more scrutiny. Let's get to the stocks on our radar, and our man behind the glass, Steve Broido, hit you with a question. Ron Gross, what are you looking at? Texas Roadhouse, baby. TXRH, 590 locations across the United States. Great culture, Sound Financials, 37 consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth, 17.9% average dividend increase. The yield is currently 2.2%. Increased labor costs have hit the stock. It's off 30% from its high. I think now's a good entry point.

Steve, question about Texas Roadhouse? So, I got to hear him speak at Fool Fest. I think we had him last year or two years ago. And very compelling guy. If we've got a compelling CEO, is that a reason to buy the stock? Well, that's certainly one factor I would put in place. And often, a stock price doesn't properly reflect a great management team, and it's a great reason to, partially, one reason to own a stock. Jason Moser, what are you looking at? Yeah, DocuSign earnings hit next Thursday, ticker DOCU. The company that offers e-signature solutions that enable businesses to digitally prepare, execute, and act on

agreements. Serves everyone from the small sole proprietorship to the large enterprise and everywhere in between. And it's evolving beyond just being the digital signature and really trying to become that entire workflow in regard to documents, agreements, and management there. So, I've used it oftentimes in real estate transactions and whatnot. Very compelling business. I'll be interested to see what they say. Steve, question about DocuSign? Where are they going next? Well, I think they're going into more management storage and helping companies manage that

full workflow of document management. What do you want to add to your watch list, Steve? I think I'm going with Texas Roadhouse. Woo-hoo! Yeehaw! All right. Jason Moser, Ron Gross. Guys, thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Up next, a conversation with comedian Greg Fitzsimmons.

Don't touch that dial. This is Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. Greg Fitzsimmons is one of the most popular stand-up comics in America. He has multiple stand-up specials on Netflix and Comedy Central, a popular podcast, and over the past 25 years, he's played in just about every city that has a comedy club. On top of that, he's won multiple Daytime Emmy Awards writing for The Ellen DeGeneres Show. He was in Washington, D.C. last week on his latest tour, and I caught up with him to talk

about the business of comedy, the impact of Netflix, the role of social media, and how he got interested in comedy in the first place. I really wanted to be a stand-up comic ever since I was a little kid I would walk past a microphone and I had to pick it up and tell jokes I watched every comedian on TV I watched Carson every night from as a little kid I watched Carson every night stay up late and and I was fascinated by everything that had to do with comedy so when I got to be you there was a comedy club called stitches which was literally i could look out my dorm window and see the back alley that connected

us to stitches and so i would go there and i would hang out and i'd watch the local con don gavin and kevin meanie and steve sweeney all these local legends that are still doing it to this day that are among the best comedians i've ever seen in my life they just never left boston and so they had an open mic night on sundays and it was called comedy hell and because it was so bad like hardly anybody would show up and the host george mcdonald would get up and go welcome to comedy hell where the uh where the pipe dreams of a bunch of comedy bozos can soar as high as the lights on broadway or crash and burn in that fiery pit known only as comedy hell so that was my first and the first time i performed in boston was uh 1986 the night of the super bowl when the

bears beat the patriots by like 56 to 7 it was like a such a big time and so the crowd was even worse than usual but i had a bunch of friends that came so i had some shills and they were laughing and I did it and I was like that was it a switch just turned and I was like this is what I'm gonna do and so I spent the rest of college going to comedy shows and performing also going to class too or just a class during the day and then at night I would be out of the clubs when you take the stage in Boston there is not there is not an acceptance that you are the funniest guy in the room. You have to prove it. And so they will heckle you if you're not doing well. And I remember one time, this is my favorite heckle, I'm on stage, I'd only been doing it for

a couple years, and I'm up there, and I mean, I'm getting nothing. And when they decide that you're not funny, they collectively just shut down. And so I do a joke, there's no laughter, and then I overhear a woman in the front row say to her husband whisper to her husband the poor bastard and that was crueler than somebody yelling you suck from the back row it's pity it's just you know what hurl all the insults you want please don't level me with your pity um so you talked about how hot boston was in the late 80s and 90s and then of course it's other cities around the country see what's happening in boston and started opening up and you know at the mildly full we focus on investing and business and that sort of thing and from a

business standpoint it was a little bit like the dot com bubble yeah in 2000 2001 where you had like these businesses that didn't really have anything supporting them and all of a sudden you've got you know cleveland ohio dayton all just cities across the country opening up all these clubs and there's not really the talent to support it that's right that's what happened is they they too many clubs open too fast and what would happen is they wouldn't get good comedians and so they started doing what they call papering the room where they would give out free passes and so on a on a saturday night what should be a paying crowd where you've made an investment to go see a show you're going to pay the 20 bucks and it's going to mean something and instead

you're just getting free passes you get you're getting telemarketed people would get called at their house and go hey this is the date and funny bone do you want to come to a comedy show this week for free and people go okay and then they kind of show up all right we could have seen a movie yeah we and so you get these lethargic crowds and mediocre talent and so all of a sudden these clubs just start hemorrhaging money and folding and and it really it and another thing that killed it was there was so much comedy on tv at the time you had you know a and e alone must had three stand-up comedy shows where it was a host who would bring up you know three comedians in a half hour each doing seven minutes and that was a show and so you had it on vh1 had a show

mtv had stand-up shows comedy central had shows hbo had shows and so all of a sudden people were going why would i pay to go out and watch it when i can sit at home and watch the same comedians for free and so that was another element that really hurt that also has to make it harder for you because as someone whose job is coming up with material you know there's there's obviously a benefit both professionally and certainly economically to getting like a half hour special on comedy central or something like that but once people have seen that that's essentially material that you almost can't go back to when you're trying when you're touring around the country when the original borscht belt comedians and vaudeville comedians came up and there's a

great book i believe it's called the comedians it tracks the history of stand-up comedy going back to burlesque and vaudeville and those guys had one act and they did comedy for 30 or 40 years and they went from town to town to town and it was never the same crowds never the same people there was no tv exposure and so that act actually got really good because they were honing it for so many years. And then with the advent of TV, yeah, you had to start churning out new jokes all the time. And now with the internet, that's become exponential because now you have to tweet out jokes all the time. You have to Instagram short videos of you doing jokes. People are recording you in clubs on their phone and uploading it to YouTube. And then you're doing

one hour specials and so it's like the the public expects to be fed new material all the time and when they're not they lose interest so you know it's become like i'll finish this interview and go back to my room and write jokes for the rest of the day i'm taking you away from your job not at all no i'd much rather be doing this um so let's go back to the early 90s when the bubble starts to burst what is that like for you and other comics who are coming up at that time because on the one hand you've got this incredible training that you've undergone for years in Boston you're essentially set up to you know what if if you can get laughs at Knicks or Stitches by the way how how great is that for a name for a comedy club Stitches how about the fact that I

was beat up on stage at stitches right literally yeah i had a guy from the israeli army a cab driver sitting in the front row heckling me and i i and he came up on stage and he came up on stage and he came at me and i hit him in the head with the microphone and then he got me in a headlock and he spun me around and we knocked down all the tables and and then i got off stage and then the owner harry conforte says to me all right fitzsimmons you got five minutes left and he back on stage again did he at least give you a band-aid or something i i wrenched my neck i sent them the bills from the chiropractor they never paid them thanks stitches there's there's still time when do you start getting into writing on television shows because i was looking at your

imdb page it's very impressive the list of shows that you've written on i well i was hired to do audience warm-up on Bill Maher's show on Politically Incorrect back when it was in New York and so I was doing warm-up and Bill liked my stand-up that I was doing during the warm so he hired me as a writer so that was my first writing job and then um and then since then I and I didn't do much writing after that but I I got a taste of it and I was like all right this is really fun I mean being around the funniest smartest writers around and sitting in a room with them and riffing was just a blast and so then when I had my son I wanted to get off the road more I was on the road 40 weekends a year and so I had a kid and I was like all right I gotta rein it in a little

bit and so I talked to Louis CK who was a writer on Cedric the Entertainer Presents and I said Louis I gotta get off the road I'm missing my son so he got me a meeting the next week with Cedric and I pitched him some jokes and Cedric hired me. And ever since then, for like the last 18 years, I've pretty much split my time between writing and stand-up. Coming up, more with Greg Fitzsimmons. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. I love to laugh.

Loud and long and clear. I love to laugh. Laugh it all. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. Here's more of my recent conversation with comedian Greg Fitzsimmons. I have to believe that given what Netflix has done in terms of the investment that Netflix has made in comedy, that has to be helpful to the comics industry, if only because they're investing money in comedy, so it's one more opportunity to pitch someone.

yeah it is um to i think to to an excess though there's been too many specials on netflix and so it doesn't mean as much anymore you know they literally i think they recorded a hundred last year oh yeah i mean back you go back 25 years the the idea that someone insert name of any comic that they're going to have an hbo special yeah it's like oh my gosh that's you know yeah now that really meant something when Kinison did it or Bobcat Goldthwait or somebody. It really it made you a headliner that could command real money on the road. And with Netflix, there have been some people that really popped. I mean, you have guys like Tom Segura, Bill Burr, Ali Wong guys, people. And and these are people that are going out and they're playing, you know,

five to ten thousand seat theaters because of a netflix special but there's also the 99 other people that maybe got a blip uh maybe it helps but you know the algorithm of netflix is that if some if more people watch it the more it gets put in front of you and the more it gets watched so it becomes very viral and uh so you know it's it's a good thing i'm i did one and uh i noticed some difference but not huge but this you just reminded me of something i i think on your podcast uh when neil brennan was on i think the two of you were talking about this because if you think back to definitely the 1970s and probably for most of the 1980s the the crown jewel for any comic is five minutes on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Meaningless now. Yeah, but back then, if you got that, that was almost all you needed. And now, yeah, I mean, it's basically, it's nowhere near as impactful as sitting down with someone like you or Mark Maron or Joe Rogan. Without a doubt. I mean, you look at Rogan's numbers,

he's getting millions of downloads per episode and it's an hour long interview with no commercials in the middle and then you talk about doing five minutes on the tonight show where i bet they get a million viewers maybe and you're the last five minutes of the show where most people have gone to sleep or turned it off and if they do watch it you know that doesn't mean they're going to come out whereas the podcasts are generally done by stand-up comedians so the audience are people that are inclined to go see comedy shows so it's it's your audience that you're trying to reach you do stand-up you podcast you write you've done acting you've done voice work what is the most satisfying to you personally and what is the most profitable for

the bottom line of greg fitzsimmons incorporated um well development deals can be very lucrative you know you get six figures on these development deals so you try to land one of those every year or two and then the it corporate dates i just did a corporate date this past week and that's a lot of money but you got to be super clean you got to go in you know i did i did it for uh one of the biggest health care providers in the country i won't say which one but it's not enjoyable you You go up there, and you've got to be squeaky clean. No politics, no cursing, no sex. And so you go up, and this was at 6 o'clock outside in a tent,

so it's light out. Everybody's like senior executives, so it's very stuffy. And then they served dinner to everybody as I was getting on stage. So good luck with that. but um i guess other ways you know the podcast adds up podcasting is turning into real money you know it's like the last four years or so it's been something like i could live off just the podcast if i wanted to and then um but like a good network sitcom job because i've worked my way up title wise is now probably the most lucrative of everything is it harder today

for comedians from a business standpoint because there are all these different options, because there are so many avenues, it strikes me as it's got to be harder at least for comedians starting out to get noticed. Or does the fact that they can post videos on YouTube for free make it even easier?

There are a lot of headliners around the country that have social media following and the clubs will book them when they have a million followers because they know they can get a crowd. And this is kind of what happened when the last comedy bubble burst is they were booking headliners

that they thought could draw because there was a soap opera star named Walt Willey who was like, exactly, and they would put him into clubs and crowds would leave and they would go, I'm never coming to the Dayton Funny Bone again

because that was such a terrible experience. And clubs have to book great comedians and there are enough great comedians right now and and they don't do that and it's going to ultimately burn them um but no i think it's a meritocracy i think if you're a really good comic and you're in a and you're in a big market whether it's new york or uh la chicago boston san francisco you will get seen and you'll eventually get asked to go to the montreal comedy festival where you'll get an agent and then the agent will push you out and you'll get seen if you haven't if you have a unique voice and you kill and you

make crowds laugh you will move ahead you'll get a writing job or you'll you know get on a sitcom or you'll get your your shot it may take years but takes took me seven years until i got any notoriety before i got really seen and the best thing that a comedian can do is i believe stay in a secondary market and get really good you know go to a place like austin texas and you know minneapolis where you can actually work three, four, five nights a week and not be seen by the industry and get so good that when you come to New York or L.A., you're blowing everybody else off the stage

and all of a sudden you make some noise and then you get a development deal or you get an agent or whatever and then things will happen from there. I read in an interview you gave where you were asked the difference between a good comedian and a bad comedian and you said a good comedian works from the inside out.

a bad comedian basically takes the temperature and says well what what do you want to what do you want to hear i'll say whatever to make you laugh and a good comedian says no this is this is what this is my viewpoint this is what i think and hopefully you're going to enjoy it yeah and i now what you're seeing more is um because of the internet you can you can draw your audience and There's a really good article about business and being an entertainer, which is 1,000 True Fans, I think is the name of the article. And if you can get 1,000 people to follow you on Twitter and Facebook, and when you put out a book, they're going to buy it. When you do a show in their town, they're going to come see it. If you sell a T-shirt online, they're going to buy it.

And if you can get those 1,000 people to really commit, you can make a living. And so now you can attract your audience through social media and through TV shows, but there's enough where it can start with doing small clubs on the road to doing small theaters. I mean, I could name 50 people that can go out on the road and play rock clubs or alternative venues. and the only advertisement they do is their podcast or their social media account. And those people, and they've fed those people. They've given them a couple tweets a day and they've put out new material.

And so you're rewarded by being able to fill up a room in markets all around the country and be able to peddle your wares. To hear the entire conversation I had with Greg Fitzsimmons, check out our MarketFoolery podcast. We just published a bonus episode with the entire interview unedited. And be sure to check out Greg's weekly show, FitzDog Radio, wherever you get your podcasts. That's going to do it for this week's show. Our engineer is Steve Broido, our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.