Show Notes

• A stage, a microphone, a stool, a spotlight, and you
• Valet parking at a bowling alley outside Detroit
• From 14 rejections to 4 million books sold
• The impact of societal hypersensitivity on comedy
• How Jeff has stayed relevant for so long
• The side audiences never see
• How an idea for a joke ends up on Netflix
• Picking the brains of people that are good at what it is that you want to do
• The blessing of being a grandpa
• 85%
• Advice from Truett Cathy

Connect With Jeff Foxworthy

Website: http://www.jefffoxworthy.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iamJeffFoxworthy
Twitter: https://twitter.com/foxoutdoors
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realjefffoxworthy/

Documentaries

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work: https://amzn.to/3AtQAW7
Jerry Seinfeld: Comedian: https://amzn.to/3c4WxPR
I Am Comic: https://amzn.to/3QHdMp4

Summary

Jeff Foxworthy is one of the most respected and successful comedians in the country. He is the largest selling comedy-recording artist in history, a multiple Grammy Award nominee and the best-selling author of more than 26 books. Jeff shares the story behind his hilarious redneck jokes, and the important distinction between “who he is” and “what he does.”

Full Transcript

Brian  

Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field, so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. Jeff Foxworthy is one of the most respected and successful comedians of all time. He is the largest selling comedy recording artist in history, a multiple Grammy Award nominee, and was part of one of the most successful comedy tours of all time, The Blue Collar Comedy Tour. Jeff might be a redneck, but I assure you, this guy is the real deal. Jeff has excelled not only as a comic, but also as an author, TV personality and businessman. He’s the best selling author of more than 26 books, including three volumes of the “Complete Redneck Dictionary” and three children’s books. He has hosted or starred in five television series, including “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader” and “The American Bible Challenge.” Jeff’s newest comedy special, “The Good Old Days” premiered earlier this year on Netflix. It’s his first solo comedy special in more than 20 years. On a personal note, Jeff has been married since 1985 to his wife, Pamela. They have two amazing daughters and Jeff also became a grandfather this year; congratulations, Jeff! Jeff is one of the funniest guys on the planet and at the core he’s also one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. Welcome, Jeff, and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Jeff  

Thank you so much for having me, Brian. I listen to that and it makes me tired. You know, when you’re in the middle of all of it, you don’t think about it very much.

Brian  

Well, you’re up to a lot of things and we’re definitely going to talk about many of them. Jeff, stand up comedy seems like one of the most intimidating things in the world to do. I mean, I want to just get that right out of the way. There’s a huge stage, and this is me looking at it from the other side – from the audience side – there’s a huge stage, microphone, maybe a stool with a bottle of water on it, and you. The audience is focusing their entire attention on you. I mean, it’s not like you’re the say, the French horn player in an orchestra and you’re sort of hanging out in the back and if people tilt a little they can see you; you’re front and center and the spotlight is on you. I’m curious, what was that like when you first started out in comedy?

Jeff  

The first night I ever did it, I was petrified. I couldn’t eat that day. I couldn’t look at people in the face. But a minute and a half into it I knew this is what I wanted to do. Then in retrospect, when I look back – and I’ve been doing it 38 years now – I believe it’s a gift. It’s like some people have the gift of taking care of old people, some people are hospice nurses, some people work with rocks or with wood or with numbers. And I look back…when I was a kid, I would save my allowance and I would buy comedy records, and I would memorize them. I’d go to school and do them and I’d get in trouble but it never dawned on me that this was a career possibility. I just knew that I loved to make people laugh. So the first time on stage, even though I was petrified, they laughed and I went, oh my gosh, this is what I was made to do. And from that moment – I was working at IBM, I’d been there for five years – I kind of decided about a minute and a half into it, eventually, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to quit my job and this is what I’m going to do.

Brian  

And how is it now? Are you ever nervous? Do you have anxiety? And when you get on stage and you hear that laughter, is it the same feeling as when you started 38 years ago, that everything sort of falls by the wayside and you feel at home and jump into your routine?

Jeff  

I think I have more of a respect and more of a passion for it now than I did then because you can never figure it out, and I think that’s part of the allure to me. And by that I mean…say you laid carpet for 30 years, after 30 years, you would know hey, this is how you do it in the corner, this is how you do it on the stairs. You would have it figured out. After 38 years…I usually write new jokes on notecards and I’ll go to the local clubs, the small clubs – I don’t want to go on a Friday or Saturday because they’re in a great mood – I want to go on a Monday or Tuesday, where there’s just a few people and try it out. If you and I were walking in together, and you said, hey, Jeff, pick the four jokes that are going to work the best, I would be dead wrong about two of them; after 38 years I still don’t know what they’re going to laugh at. Because sometimes you throw it out there thinking, oh, this is going to kill, and nothing. And you’re like, really? Sometimes I have something, I think, well, this is stupid, and I throw it out there and people are beating the tables laughing. And you’re like, really? But that’s what makes it interesting to me as a craft. It’s like, man, you never get it down. I say, you know, she’s like the woman you can’t figure out, which is part of what makes her so stinking interesting.

Brian  

It’s an awesome part of show business and it’s also this big unknown. As you were talking, I was thinking about movies; there are millions and millions of dollars spent on movies that people who get paid a lot of money think are going to be really great, and some of them are and some of them aren’t. I talked to a songwriter, a country music songwriter, and she said the same thing. They can sit in a room with really intelligent people who have been in the business a very long time and they all agree that this song is going to be great and this song isn’t. And they put it out into the marketplace and the exact opposite happens. It’s probably, maybe, frustrating, but depending on the approach, if you approach it from curiosity and fascination, it’s really interesting how it evolves from that notecard into maybe getting through the small nightclub, and then eventually getting to a bigger nightclub and then, who knows, maybe even ending up on Netflix.

Jeff  

Exactly. I think you just have to accept, or at least I do, that the audience is always right. They’re right; I’m giving it my best guess but I’m going to be wrong a lot of the time and not let that frustrate you. I enjoy the creative process. I’m in my office right now and you see the shelves in the back, they’re kind of organized. On this side there’s this big, long, wall-to-wall shelf and within it, I’ve got a painting I’m working on, an arrowhead case I’m working on, I’ve got stand-up material I’m working on, a drawing…and so this is the creative side because it’s cluttered; that’s the other side, but I love the creative process. So you don’t let it frustrate you. You’re just like, the audience is right. So be prepared to go in there and grind and when it’s good, it’ll be good, but it may take some work to get there.

Brian  

Sure. Jeff, I don’t want to pigeonhole you because you’ve achieved widespread success in comedy, television and business as I said, but where did the “Redneck” schtick come from? And was that what caused your career to skyrocket?

Jeff  

What it did, it caused people to remember my name. When I became a full time comedian – and I didn’t realize it at the time, sometimes ignorance is bliss, I just knew my local community in Atlanta – there were probably 6,000 people at that time trying to be a comedian. So it was very hard to separate yourself from the pack, but the way the Redneck stuff started was, I’ve always been an outdoor guy. I’ve been a guy that loves to hunt and fish and drive a tractor. So as a comic, I start traveling around the country. Well, I’ve got this thick accent which, when I first started, I would go to New York or LA, I’d have guys in New York going, yo Jeff, look, I don’t want to hurt your freakin’ feelings, right, but you got to take some voice lessons and lose that stupid accent you got. And I’m like, where I come from you’re the one with a stupid accent. So I kind of dug my heels in; I’m like, no this is the way I talk. But I had a truck, I drove a pickup truck. I wore jeans, cowboy boots. I was always talking about, oh it’s deer season or I wish I could be fishing today or whatever. So it became kind of a good natured thing but they were always kidding me. They were going, Foxworthy, he’s nothing but an old redneck from Georgia, you know, I was always getting that. One night I was playing in a club outside of Detroit, Michigan and they were kidding me after the show about being a redneck. Well, the club was attached to a bowling alley that had valet parking. I said, if you all don’t think you have rednecks in Michigan, come look out the window – people are valet parking at the bowling alley. And we all laughed, and I went back to the hotel that night, and like I always do, I pull out my notebook, and I’m trying to write stand-up material and I thought, look, I know what I am. I know I’m a redneck from Georgia but apparently a lot of people don’t realize that they’re a redneck too. And I wrote ten ways to tell. Now I think of myself as a comic as more of a storyteller, but these were one liners; if you do so and so you might be a redneck. I wrote ten ways to tell, never thinking it was going to be a hook, or a book or a calendar. I was just trying to write stand-up material. I’m not that smart to actually…but I went back to the club the next night, and I tried it. Not only were people laughing, they were turning around and pointed other people at their table. And I said, oh, wow, I’m on to something here. And they were easy to write, they were one liners. So I had written ten and I thought, can I write 50? And I wrote 50. And I thought, can I write 100? And then I had 300. I thought, well, I wonder if this could be like a little humor book and I started sending it out to publishers. Brian, I was turned down by the first 14 publishers that I sent it to, they weren’t interested. And the 15th one called me in for a meeting and he said, I think this is pretty funny. He said, how does $1,500 sound? And I didn’t say anything, because I thought he was asking me for $1,500 – and I didn’t have it – and he’s like, no, no, no, we’ll give you…I’m like, oh, well, you got a deal then. I asked him at the time, I said, how many books do you think we’ll sell? And he said, I bet we sell 5,000 of them. I think that first book sold over 4 million copies. So he didn’t know, he didn’t see it coming and I didn’t see it coming. My joke to him always after that was, hey, I’m glad you don’t know anything more about the book business than I do. But it was…people could remember them [because] they were one liners; they could go to work the next day, stand there in the break room and tell it and get a laugh. And I became, oh, that’s the Redneck guy, which was great, because it separated me from the pack. But it was – at the height of it – it was five minutes out of a two hour show. So it was never…people were like oh, you’re the Redneck guy. I’m like, well, that’s what you remember but no, I’m actually much more of a storyteller and a family guy than I am the Redneck guy. But who cares? It worked.

Brian  

Did you find that that opened doors because you had the Redneck schtick? I mean, it’s great that it was only five minutes, but it is the thing that people remember you by. Is it also something that caused you to get gigs that maybe you otherwise wouldn’t get or get into some of the other things? Or do you think that it’s really just part of everything else that you’re doing?

Jeff  

What you’re clamoring for is to get noticed; you’re in a sea of 6,000. What it did was it allowed me to climb out of that sea, and people would go, oh, that’s that guy. They would laugh at that stuff but then they would hear the other stuff. And yes, I mean, Leno discovered me that way, and Rodney Dangerfield, and Rodney put me on a young comedian special, and Bob Hope put me on a Bob Hope special. Leno went back and told The Tonight Show about me, which is how I got on The Tonight Show. So yeah, I mean…and thank God for it. I mean, it worked. So it was very much to my advantage. The other thing is, it’s like in those early days I’d be hanging out with comics, and they’re like, oh, I gotta get on TV. I gotta get on TV. And I thought, well, people don’t have to watch TV but they do listen to the radio on their way to work and away from work. Well, because it was one liners that you could just rattle them off you could get a bunch of laughs. Literally, I lived in LA, my wife and I had a tiny little bungalow and I would get up at four in the morning to do East coast drive time at seven. She’d sit there in the bed with a pillow pulled over her head because this place was so tiny, and I would do 12 to 15 radio shows every single day. I’d get up before four, and I do East coast, then Central, and then Mountain and then Pacific; I would just work my way across the country doing radio because, to me, it was like every day just trying to make somebody more aware of who you are. The Redneck jokes were great for that, they weren’t big, long stories, they were just quick and people laughed at them. So it did help me kind of separate myself from the 6,000.

Brian  

Jeff, to say that we’re living in an interesting time in history would be an understatement. It seems like we’re in this…comedy is funny, and I love to laugh, and I love comedy, but this is on a serious note. It seems like we’re walking on eggshells today in terms of what we’re able to say out loud, and how we say it. I’ve always thought that at least part of comedy, historically, has been laughing at certain groups of people. So it’s – right or wrong – it’s often at the expense of somebody else. Sometimes it’s self-deprecating humor but other times it’s directed at certain types of people, whether it’s women, or certain ethnic groups, or fat people or thin people, or tall people or short people. Today, though, it seems like just about everything we say is offensive to someone. I’m curious, as a comedian – and I’m sure you’re noticing, whether it’s in your own comedy or with others – that people are more sensitive about humor, especially when it’s at the expense of others. Can you share your thoughts on that? Maybe more broadly, talk about – so you’ve been in the business almost 40 years – how are changing times influencing the jokes that you write or the direction that you go in as a comedian?

Jeff  

You know, it is…like 30 years ago – and I’ll talk about this with other comics – we’ll go back and talk about a bit somebody did 10, 20, 30 years ago, and just laugh and go you couldn’t do that today. I even saw with me, like 30 years ago, I might be doing a bit and I would say, why do women do this and men do this? And then it got to the point that somebody would say, well, I’m a man, and I don’t do that or I’m a woman, and I don’t do that. And then I’d go, okay, my wife does this and I do that, to make it more specific. But it’s a huge problem in stand-up today because what you find yourself doing is you find yourself editing and re-editing and re-editing. I didn’t used to write that way, but now I will write and then I’ll go back and go, is there anything in here that might possibly offend somebody? When you’re sure that there’s not, you go on stage. Like in my new Netflix special, it’s called “The Good Old Days,” part of the premise in there is talking about the way things were when I was a kid, as opposed to the way that they are now. One of the things I said, when I was a kid, if you wanted a trophy you had to finish in first place. That’s not…you see, you’re laughing and it’s not even really a joke. It’s kind of a statement of fact, and, boy, I got blown up on the internet for that, people started cussing me out and go, it’s your fault, you Baby Boomers bought us the trophies, you gave us the…and I’m like, I’m not finger pointing, this is just…that was a fact of how it is now.

Brian  

It’s an observation, right? It’s not a criticism, although it might be, but it’s an observation.

Jeff  

But what we’ve done is we’ve become hypersensitive, but we’ve become hypersensitive not only about ourselves, we get offended for somebody else. Part of me as a comic goes, if they’re offended by it – like I just saw a thing where a bunch of Native Americans were talking about the Washington Redskins changing their name, and they were saying, it didn’t bother us. It was other people coming in and going, you can’t do that, you’ve got to change that. And they were like, we were okay with it, it didn’t bother us. We do that in the world of comedy to the point that nothing becomes funny. It’s very hard because part of being a comedian is you’ve got to be a truth teller. You hold something up and go, why, as a human being, why do we do this? Why do we do that? And when you can’t tell the truth anymore, it’s like working with your hands behind your back. It’s not fun. I think part of it is we’re hypersensitive. We’re hypersensitive on the behalf of other people, but even deeper is, I think, now we have such a need to be right. When you have to be right, that means that the other person is wrong. When people have to be wrong within a conversation, they quickly become disinterested and they leave the conversation. I don’t know about you, Brian, I’m 63 years old and I look back at how many things during the long course of my life that I’ve changed my mind about or I’ve evolved in the way I think about something. I don’t like to engage in conversation where I start off from the position that I’m wrong. Maybe some of it is perspective; maybe from my perspective this is true, but from your perspective it might not be true. Okay, well, we can engage in conversation about perspective but if you’re just going to tell me that I’m wrong, I want to leave. So, two of the big words now are tolerance and diversity. I’m all for that; being tolerant of somebody being different than you are and people being diverse. Lord knows, when I thank God for the things He gives me, one of the things that I’m thankful for is that He’s so unbelievably creative, He doesn’t run out of ideas and so He doesn’t want things all alike; He loves things diverse. But if the minute somebody doesn’t agree with you or if they vote differently or if they think differently, you want to shut them down, you want to put them out of business and ruin their life; that is neither tolerant to differences in thinking and is not diverse. You want everybody to think like you do. I just think we’ve got to figure our way out of this. We’re all…nobody’s got life figured out. We’re all weird in our own little way. That’s kind of what I’ve been playing with as a comic, is we’re all weird. I’m sure in the course of your life, you do some things that I would look at and go, Brian’s a little weird about this, you know. But you would look at me and say well, Jeff’s a little weird about this. So it doesn’t discredit you as a man or a human being or me. It’s just that that’s the way we are and that’s called diversity. You’re weird about this. I’m weird about that. We have to get to the point that we accept that about each other.

Brian  

I think one of the ironic things is that going to a comedy show is trying to get away from a lot of the things that you’ve been talking about. I mean, I think in some respects, the world has gotten too serious. It’s gotten out of hand in the way people, not necessarily think, but the way they judge; I mean, everything you so eloquently described. One of the things that comedy does for me is gives me relief from that. So when I’m winding down at the end of the evening, I’m not watching the news because I’ve had news hit me from multiple directions all day long. I want relief from that and so I turn to comedy. Let’s face it, you know comedy better than I do. Historically there’s been some pretty edgy comedy, we’ll say, and there still is some edgy comedy, but at the point that we are so serious in the world that we have to eliminate fun and eliminate comedy from our lives, that’s going to be a very sad day, I think.

Jeff  

Well, Brian, I’ve gotten to where I finally just said this to the audience, because for years now, I would remind myself right before I walk out, that everybody that I’m going to look at, is going through some kind of a struggle. Now it might be a financial struggle. It might be a physical struggle. It might be an emotional struggle, but everybody’s going through a struggle. So my whole life, it’s just the way I’m wired. I’m like, be nice to people, have grace with people, because you don’t know their story. You don’t know what they’re dealing with every day. I don’t think that laughter makes someone’s struggle go away, but I do think laughter, it’s like the release valve that keeps the boiler from exploding. Laughter and live music both do that. It allows you to escape from whatever your particular struggle is for an hour, hour and a half, two hours. Then when it’s over, you pick that thing back up, and you go deal with it again. But you’ve had a reprieve, you’ve had a break from it and I think that’s why it’s important. You know that if you go to a comedy show and when it’s over, and you’re like, oh, my gosh, I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that, that was good. It’s – [exhalation] – let down for just a minute. I think it’s essential. I think it’s beneficial for our well being.

Brian  

Absolutely, it’s healthy. It’s beyond good, it’s healthy. I think about comedy in my lifetime, Jeff, and you mentioned music. I think this happens with music, too. Performers are hot for a while, for a season or for a decade or maybe longer and then their popularity fades. You’ve seen it in others with comedy; we’ve all seen it with bands, with musicians, singers. How do you stay relevant and at the top of your game over such a prolonged period of time? You’ve been doing this 38 years and you’re still hot, you’re still doing specials, you’re still touring. Arguably, you’re at – maybe the, I mean, I don’t know if you’re at the pinnacle of your career, but it seems like the R word hasn’t come into your vocabulary yet, and you’re 62 so I know you know what the word R word is. [Laughter.]

Jeff  

My wife, I would drive her crazy. I have no idea how, because you’re right, usually careers are…I think I was, from the beginning, wired a little different in that most people get into stand-up because it’s such a great springboard to get into television or movies. And once they do – and you think back to like Eddie Murphy, he started out as a stand-up, then he got TV and then he got movies; he never did stand-up again. That’s what’s usually the story and then there are a few people that are just kind of weird – Seinfeld, Leno, Jim Gaffigan – all they ever wanted to be was a stand-up. Now they may have done TV, they may have done movies just like I have, but if you put a gun to my head – and I’ve hosted TV shows, I’ve done voice-overs, I’ve written books, I paint, I draw, I have a lot of things that always keep me interested creatively – but if you put a gun to my head and said you can’t do but one, I wouldn’t hesitate:  it would be stand-up and that’s kind of weird and unusual. Well, to be a good stand-up, the audience just thinks, oh, he just thought of this as he walked out here and he’s saying this, but there’s so much work that goes on behind the scenes. And there’s no shortcut to it, you’ve got to put in that effort, you’ve got to put in that work. I have a good work ethic; I’m always thinking, always writing, but without that I wouldn’t last very long.

Brian  

That actually is a good segue into my next question. I’m a learner and I love to study excellence and the things people at the top of their profession do to be successful. I am fascinated by comedy and one of the reasons is that it seems like such an incredibly difficult field to break into. You mentioned 6,000 and I don’t know if that’s the number of comics who are making a living or what that number is, but I know there are a lot of people and clubs here in Detroit, there are comedy clubs in Ann Arbor; all across the world there are small clubs where people are trying to break into comedy. Maybe some of them are doing it as a hobby but the dream, I think, for all of them is that they get some break and they’re able to do what you do. The other thing is that, even if they’re able to break into the field, it’s very tough to stay there. I’ve studied this a fair amount in comedy and there are two documentaries that, for me, really illustrate the difficulty of the business and the first one is Joan Rivers “A Piece of Work.” I don’t know if you saw that, but I remember one part of the show where she gets off this plane at two o’clock in the morning, in the middle of Wisconsin in the dead of winter. And she’s schlepping her own bags, and she’s got – can I say she’s a woman so she has more luggage than you do, probably. [Laughter.]

Jeff  

Well, that’s the case in your house and mine.

Brian  

Right. She’s schlepping all of her own stuff through the Potawatomi casino, or wherever she is in Wisconsin, so she can check into a room and get up the next day and do a show. Again, it was two in the morning; she had done two shows, jumped on a plane, went to Wisconsin, needs to get some sleep so she can get up and do it again and she was in her 70s at the time. The other documentary was “Jerry Seinfeld, Comedian” and that documentary was released in 2002, which was about 14 years after Jerry had finished “Seinfeld”. And so at the time, he’s arguably one of the most recognized people on the planet – maybe even more so than you, I dare say – and yet the documentary revealed the struggle that he had to get back into comedy, to be funny again, to create great comedy. I think in this documentary Jerry said that, because he’s Jerry Seinfeld, he gets two to three minutes of grace – I forget, if he said two minutes or three minutes – he gets a couple minutes of grace from the audience where he can just fall flat. But after that, he he needs to be funny or the audience is just going to destroy him. And I thought, oh, my goodness, like, that’s Joan Rivers and that’s Jerry Seinfeld and that’s what they’re doing at that stage in their career to continue to be relevant, to continue to be successful, to continue to be funny. That’s a tough business. Tell us, Jeff, about the work your audiences – and you started to mention it – the work your audiences don’t see that go into the creation of a 60 minute set.

Jeff  

Well, when you described Joan Rivers doing that, see I haven’t done that since Thursday when I was in Oklahoma, doing a show at a casino…

Brian  

Yeah, but you don’t carry your own bags…[crosstalk]

Jeff  

I do carry my own bags and I check-in at two in the morning and I mean, that’s the job. When you’re on the Tonight Show or Jimmy Kimmel or something, that’s the rare day, but to keep good at your craft, you’re out there working. I’ve got a picture on my phone my wife sent me from a year or two ago, it’s me sitting at the kitchen table and I’ve got a yellow notepad, I’ve got note cards, I’ve got printed-out sheets from the computer, I’ve got my laptop, and I’m looking at my phone – from the notes section on the phone – I’ve just got it all spread out, pens and all, and I’m just sitting there concentrating, looking at the phone. And my wife said, this is the side of it the audience never sees. She said, I wanted that forever so your grandchildren could look at this and say, this is how he worked at this, this is the side they never see. Some of my favorite nights of comedy – I remember one night being at the Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, California, sitting in the little green room or the dressing room in the back – and it’s Garry Shandling, [he] was writing…he was hosting some award show, so we’re sitting back there writing jokes, and it’s me Gary Shandling, Leno and Seinfeld, and we’re talking about putting these jokes together and at one point Jay’s like, no, I think the car should be blue, that’s just funny, it’s a blue…and Jerry’s like, no, Jay, green’s funnier, and I remember sitting at the table thinking if the audience could see this, we would all be committed into insane asylum, because here are four adult men arguing about whether green or blue is funnier. But that’s what…but we love it, I mean, that’s what we do and when you do it well, it’s like a magician. When a magician fools you, it’s because there were 10,000 hours you didn’t see where they were perfecting their craft. It’s like someone that’s a motivational speaker, they don’t see the behind the scenes thing. same thing with comics, when you do it well it looks effortless. It looks like hey, I just thought of this. Both of those are great documentaries, because they’re the truth. There’s another one a friend of mine did, Jordan Brady, called “I Am Comic” that kind of shows how hard it is to develop material and then the lifestyle that goes with it. I had…my whole goal when I started – and young people may not understand this – I wanted to be on Johnny Carson. I knew Johnny wasn’t going to work forever. It was kind of the known thing; it took you ten years to be good enough to be on Carson and I’m like, Johnny’s not staying ten years, I have to do it in half of that. I’ve got to do it in five years. Literally, Brian, I did – eight years in a row – over 500 shows a year. (Brian:  Wow.) What that means is like two on a Friday, three on a Saturday, and running from place to place. It was kind of the Malcolm Gladwell theory, if you want to be good at something, you’re going to do it for 10,000 hours, and so I wasn’t going to hang out in New York or LA, I was going to be in Des Moines, Iowa, where I could be on stage on a Tuesday night and twice on a Friday and three times on a Saturday and then the next week, I was going to go to Wisconsin, and then the next week down to Arizona. I was just going to be on stage every night and that’s how I would get good at my craft.

Brian  

Can you share some of the details about how you write? Where do you get your material? And maybe walk us through the process of how you take an idea for a joke; we were talking offline about how you use a legal pad, you use index cards. How do you take that idea that’s on an index card and develop it into a bit that eventually becomes part of a Netflix special or part of a comedy show?

Jeff  

It usually starts with a very small thought, like, I love my wife to death but no matter what I tell my wife is…I call her Curious George because no matter what I tell her she will come back and it doesn’t usually take but just a second or two and she will have questions that I can’t answer. Because I don’t know if it’s me personally, or if it’s more generally with men, I don’t need as many details to share information. So I started with that thought, say that oh my word, I can’t…I know no matter anything that I will tell her that I’ve learned today, she’s going to have questions that I can’t answer. So that was the premise and then I thought what is an example of things and I thought well, maybe if it’s – I pull out the notepad – maybe it’s something somebody told you at the grocery store, maybe it’s something somebody texted you. So I’m like okay, and so the joke was women always have more questions than men have answers to. And I said one day I get a text. The text says “please pray for Tom, he was in a bad wreck” which might be the kind of thing that you would get a text about. I said…[crosstalk, laughter].

Brian  

I’m not laughing about the Tom being in a wreck bit, but after you finish I’m going to tell you a story about that. That’s why I’m going to laugh all the way through you talking about this particular joke.

Jeff  

So I’m on the notepad and I’m like okay, I got a text that said “please pray for Tom, he’s been in a bad wreck” which might be the kind of thing people would text you just on the fly; hey, pray for Tom, I just found out he was in a wreck. I said, I’ll walk into the kitchen and find my wife, I say hey, I just got a text that said please pray for Tom, he was in a bad wreck; meaning I want to share this information with you. And I said, she looked at me and said, was he driving? There’s the question! And I said I don’t know, I got a text that said please pray for Tom, he was in a bad wreck. Were Carolyn and the kids in the car with him? I don’t know, I just got a text that said please pray for Tom, he was in a bad wreck. Were the people in the other car hurt? I’m like, I don’t know, I just got a text… Did they even have insurance? I don’t know, I just got a text… and so I just made it go on and on. Well, once I had the premise “she’s always got more questions,” here’s the example, I may play with different examples. Then I just start writing the questions. So the way I would write is if somebody was in a wreck, what would you want to know? You’d want to know were they driving, were other people in the car with him, what did they hit, what hospital are they in? And so it’s almost like writing a little pile here, little pile here and then you bring it all together. At the end, when I tell the joke, she says, you don’t know anything, what do you know? And I said, I know you need to pray for Tom, I just got a text that said he was in a bad wreck. Well, Brian, when I do that joke, people, they start off laughing a little bit and as you continue to add to it, they’re laughing more and more. And if it’s couples, I look out into the audience, and there are just people elbowing each other and pointing at each other. So you know you’ve attained your goal of, I’ve found that connection, I’ve found the truth, and the truth has made somebody laugh at themselves. Which was kind of my goal when I started to write that joke.

Brian  

Not to get too deep into that particular joke but you mentioned that the questions – so the four questions that your wife asked – when you’re rehearsing that, when you’re in a small club trying it out, are you varying the questions? I mean, does it get that scientific or how does that work?

Jeff  

Yeah, like I just did a new bit, I said, one of the things I learned during COVID was, I’m not qualified to be the only person my wife has conversation with because she not only can talk three dogs off a meat wagon, she’s what they call a verbal processor, meaning as she’s thinking, it’s coming out loud and so you’re just getting barraged. So I literally wrote this long thing of all these things she was asking me just as rapid fire as I could do it. And I found, in the little club when I started out, I’m like, it’s too long. I’ve carried it out too long so I’ve got to shorten it up. Then I started listening to what’s getting the response as I’m going through these questions. I’m very fortunate, like I did a joke 15, 20 years ago about the side effects…you see these medicines advertised on television and the side effects are always 50 times worse than whatever the drug’s supposed to cure. So I literally, Brian, took a yellow notepad and I wrote just bizarre side effects:  nausea, vomiting, water weight gain, lower back pain, receding hairline, eczema, seborrhea, psoriasis. And I mean, it was crazy stuff like, floors, cluttered drawers, low resale value on your home; they were all side effects of this drug. I got to where I could just roll them off and people say, how do you remember that? It was like 60 things in a row. I have this ability…I said, well, I can’t even take credit for a good memory, I can see the paper, I can see the piece of paper that I wrote it on so all I’m doing is reading the piece of paper, I can literally see it. So I’m just going down the paper just reading them one after the other. But that was kind of like the same joke as my wife talking or even the questions. It’s, you play with it and you find out what’s the right length for this, what are the things people are responding the best to? You have to be an observer – in that case, audibly – as you’re telling it. But one time I was interviewing Bob Newhart, and I said, you have the ability, you have a gift in your arsenal I wish I had. I said, you can get a laugh without saying anything. It’s just that pause and I said, man, I wish I could do that. And he said, well, I stole that from Jack Benny. Jack Benny was the guy that did that originally, he said, and that’s what comedians are. He said, we’re like magpies; we sit on the gutter on the edge of the building, and we just observe and when we see something we like, we fly down and we pick it up and we bring it back and we put it in our pile. So I’m an observer of life and and I’ve always got the notecards. Somebody will say something and [I think] that’s kind of a funny combination of words or that’s kind of a funny thing and I’ll write it down and I’ll stick it in my pocket. Then I come home and I spread them out and go, oh, I like this, I like that. If you’re a fan of comedy, there’s a new place that was just voted Best New Museum in America. It’s called the American Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York. It’s an hour and a half drive from Buffalo, middle of nowhere, kind of like Cooperstown is, but once you get in there, unbelievably – and it’s all about comedy, whether it’s TV shows, movies or stand-up – but it’s about the creation of it and the influence of it. I could have stayed in there for a week because they had George Carlin’s archives, and he’s putting jokes together the same way, or Rodney Dangerfield [who] was putting jokes together the same way. And so it’s a wonderful, kind of an insight into the whole process.

Brian  

A study of the craft. As you were talking, you mentioned Dangerfield, he was another good one for not having to say anything, right? Just the way…[crosstalk]. 

Jeff  

Oh, my gosh, just the titan and the tie would get a laugh.

Brian  

That’s right. That started in the beginning before he even said anything. I have to tell you, and my wife will kill me for doing this. We didn’t rehearse this, right, Jeff, you and I, we didn’t rehearse this, I wouldn’t have brought it up had you not brought up the [joke] about Tom having been in a wreck, but I have to tell you. You and I met last year, I think it was late in the year, I think it was in November and you told that joke. That was the one joke that I came back – and we had access to the video for a little bit – I couldn’t wait to show my wife that. I laughed harder than she did but she appreciated it. Well, as time went on, things would come up like the text. I would share something and my wife, Heidi would ask a question that I didn’t know the answer to and I would say, I don’t know. And then she’d ask another question related to the same thing and I’d say, you know, I’m not sure, all I know is…and then I’d repeat sort of just like you did the joke. Well, this happened about three or four different times and finally, I started saying, I’m going to call Jeff, or I’m going to give you Jeff’s number and have you call Jeff, maybe he’ll know the answer. And then that puts an end to the conversation. So that was funny.

Jeff  

You know what I say, Brian, which now, when it happens with us, and let’s say I say, hey, I talked to Larry today and he said their grandson was going to go to this school. And she will say, well did he look at other schools? And I look at her and I go, please pray for Tom. [Laughter] That’s my answer to her, please pray…I don’t know, I told you all I know, he told me their grandson was going to Georgia Tech. That’s all I know.

Brian  

I like it. We all have our own way of bringing that conversation to an end. Mine, at least for a while, is going to be:  I’m not sure, call Jeff, he might know. Jeff, one of the things that I try to do on the show is identify the qualities that cause our guests to be successful in their chosen profession so the show is called LifeExcellence. Then what I try to do is take that and then translate it into tips and strategies that all of our listeners and viewers can apply in their own lives universally. What are the traits that it takes to be successful at the level that you’ve been able to achieve as a comic? What is it that sets you apart?

Jeff  

I love the – I’m a comic, so it’s a premise – the premise behind your podcast and I’ll tell you why. I was doing an interview with somebody five or six years ago and at one point, the woman asked me, she said, okay, you do stand-up, you host TV shows, you do voiceover, you write books; which one are you? And I went, oh, that’s kind of a different question, I’ve never [been asked that]. I said, well, those are all things that I do and I love what I do but there’s a difference between what I do and who I am. Who I am is I’m a husband, and I’m a father and I’m a brother and I’m a son and I’m a friend and I’m a person of this community. So through the course of my life what I do, it’s probably going to change a lot of times; who I am, hopefully, stays consistent. But – and this is what I love about your podcast here – as a child, my dad left when I was nine years old; my dad was married six times. I grew up without a dad and so I didn’t know how to be a good dad; well, I didn’t witness it firsthand. But as I was preparing to become a father – and maybe it’s the comic in me, just the observing – as I looked around, I would find people that were really good dads and I would just go pick their brain. I would go, okay, I didn’t have this as an example but help me here, what does it take to be a good dad? He was married six times, he wasn’t a good husband. I would look at people that had good marriages and I would say, what do I need to do? I have an aunt and uncle that have just lived a beautiful life and almost at every decade I’ve written my aunt, and I said, tell me what I need to know for my 40s, tell me what I need to know for my 50s, tell me what I need to know for my 60s. When excellence is the goal, you need to pick the brains of people that are good at what it is that you want to do and what you want to know. I had a friend – I have a farm in Georgia – and a couple of years ago, he was bow hunting and he hit this beautiful buck and he couldn’t find it. Well, we found it out walking in the woods, found it two years later, and it had been gnawed on by squirrels, it had faded and it was in pretty rough shape. But I knew a guy that restored antlers in Iowa. So I called him and said, hey, I want to do a surprise for my buddy, teach me how to restore antlers. He said, well, it’s a complicated process and takes a long time. I said, I don’t care what it is, I’m willing to take the time. I want to know how to do it. But I went to somebody that was really good at it. And I have restored these things – I just took it to the garage or I would show [it to] you, but I’m really proud of it. It turned out beautiful. It took forever to do it. But I think that’s the point of what you’re trying to get across here. I’m a learner; my wife says that. About a decade ago, I got interested in looking for arrowheads and Native American artifacts. Well, I want to know everything about them. So I sit there at night and I read books about it, or I go online. When did these people live? Where did they come from? What did they use this for? I have that hunger to know stuff. But so much of it applies to my life. I am a good dad. I mean, if it was on my headstone, I’d rather it say he was a great dad than he was a great comic, because I worked at it. I spent 15 years of my life – I would fly back home every night after a show. I might not get home until two or three in the morning but I’d get up at six and I’d take my kids to drive them to school. I’d sit there and talk to them the whole way. Then I’d go pick them up, then I’d get back on the plane and I’d fly to Milwaukee or I’d fly to St. Louis. I told my wife not long ago, I said, I don’t think I slept for 15 years but it was to be a good dad. It’s that time…kids don’t want quality time, they want quantity time, they want all your time. So it was like I’m going to spend every moment that I can spend with my kids. Well, now they’re grown and they call or text me every day or they come over every day. I’m reaping what I sowed 20 years ago. But I pick the brain of guys that were good dads that said, hey, you need to be there. You need to be there when they’re going to school; that’s when they talk. You need to be there when you pick them up from school, you need to hang out with their friends and see who their influences are. Same thing with being a husband, I picked the brains of guys that…and they may be grocery store flowers [but] I buy my wife flowers every week, just to say, hey, after 38 years, you’re still my girlfriend, I’m still wooing you and dating you. I didn’t have an example of what it takes to have a long and happy marriage, but I picked the brains of people that did have one. So I think for the people that are checking you out – and I’m kind of like that – if somebody comes up to me, somebody young, and they want to talk about comedy, if they’ve got a passion about it, and if somebody goes, hey, I don’t want to quit my job, but how do I be a comedian? I’m not very interested in talking to you. But if somebody says, I just feel this in my soul, and I think about this when I’m lying in bed, what does it take to be a comic? I’ll give you all the time in the world to I’ll tell you what I know [even though] it may be a different environment than when I started. I like people that want to know how to be good at something.

Brian  

I think most people are like that. They want to help other people. People who are successful are happy to help others to be successful. I think one of the things that happens is we’re afraid to ask sometimes. We’re afraid to approach people. It doesn’t have to be a celebrity or big time comedian, it can be people around us. We’re sensitive to their time, we’re sensitive to their demands there; if they’re successful, they’re usually busy people. Oftentimes, even when we have access to those people who could help us, who could mentor us either informally or formally, we don’t do that, because we don’t ask.

Jeff  

I think you’re exactly right. If somebody is good at something, part of the reason they are good at it is – I would imagine in most cases – because they had a passion for it. When they see someone else that has that passion but not that experience, that’s…I have an attraction there. It was like, yeah, 38 years ago, I was you, I didn’t know…and God bless Jay Leno, sitting in a Waffle House with a kid that was an amateur night comic, and Jay was probably the top road comic; he would sit there and go, if you work clean, you’ll always work, you can work anywhere and your goal should be to write one new minute a week, and I’m just writing down what he says, I’m picking his brain. I look back on it now and go, man, what a cool guy that he took the time to sit there with somebody that didn’t know what they were doing. Some of those things he taught me are still with me today.

Brian  

Jeff, I mentioned in your intro that you recently added grandpa to your list of accomplishments and I know family is important to you. I have to ask you about your grandson for two reasons:  one, because I know this is a new blessing and a wonderful new season in life, not only for you, but also for your family and second, because my youngest daughter is expecting our first grandchild. So I want to learn it…this is a mentoring opportunity; I want to learn from a new grandpa what to expect.

Jeff  

I’m gonna tell you…remember before you had your first child and people would say to you things like – I will tell somebody expecting their first child – sleep now, you’re never going to sleep the rest of your life, sleep now. You thought you knew what it was going to be like, and then you look back and went, I had no idea. I thought I knew but I didn’t. I’m gonna tell you right now, Brian, you have no idea how this is going to touch your soul. I had no idea I had this much untapped love inside of me. When I held him the first time I sat there and wept. I mean, I’ve got tears dripping onto him because you see all that innocence and all that potential and all that promise and you can hold it right there in your hands. The joke is – he’s a year and a half now – I will hold him and I will tell my kids, I love y’all, but I don’t love you near as much as I love him. I love him more than anybody in the world. I didn’t know I was gonna love him this much. I don’t love anybody this much. You see, it’s like when you mentor – I’m a visual person – I always see it as like a relay race and I’ve got the baton and I’m handing it to you. I’ve got a picture on the wall here signed by Buddy Hackett – when we met him, he signed it – he wrote, “to Jeff, grab the baton” – grab the baton, meaning my time’s about over at this and you need to carry stand-up comedy for a while. So I’m always eager to help somebody carry the baton. I think with a grandchild, that’s what you’re seeing is, hey, after I’m gone, there’s part of me – this new little creature – there’s part of me that’s still going to be here and you’re going to love it so much. It’s the best.

Brian  

I can’t wait. It’s definitely part of our legacy, isn’t it? So it’s cool from that standpoint, and God willing we’ll both be around for a long time to share that love with not only that this grandchild – we have four children – my wife is certainly hoping that this is the start of many more, but we’re super excited about it. And I’m super excited for you and your family. 

Jeff  

You used an interesting word, because that’s what I call it, is seasons. That’s the way I’ve viewed my life, is this season was great and then it evolved into this season, which was great in its own right. I think I’m very much kind of in a mentorship season right now. I like sharing what I’ve learned and what I know and what I was wrong about. It’s almost like – going back to what we were talking about at the beginning of this as a society and it kind of losing our way as far as laughing at ourselves – I think you could take two people that were polar opposites politically, one’s peggin’ right, one’s peggin’ left, but if you separated them and you sat down and you ask them, hey, what do you want out of life? What is it that you want? What’s a priority to you? What makes you happy? I think they would agree on 85% of the same things even though they pegged 180 politically. So as a comic that’s what you’re always looking for; what are these things that we share. It’s like the women having more questions than men – and you and I’ve never met, we live in different parts of the country, but we share that. We both live in a situation with…that’s a connection for us. So as a society, I think we really ought to celebrate that 85% that we share together – and celebrate the 15% that we’re different. Where we’re at now is we kind of just fight over the 15% that we’re different about, never acknowledging the 85% that we’re alike, that we share.

Brian  

I think that’s true, not just in our country but globally. I’ve spent a lot of time in places like Haiti and Zambia, and traveled on vacation to lots of places, you have too, and one of the things you learn very quickly is that people are – and I’ll use that 85% – people are about 85% the same at the core. They live in different places, socio-economically they’re in different places. There’s a wide range, obviously, between first world and third world, but even when you’re comparing first world to third world, when you talk to people about what’s important to them they’re the same things that are important to you and me and everybody listening and watching. 

Jeff  

We don’t want to be scared, we want to make enough money to feed our family and for them to be safe. So the comic in me is like, yeah, that’s what we have in common; our accents may be different, the landscape we grew up in may be different, but I mean, we’re both just…we’re people. So that’s what I try to connect with.

Brian  

You and I have a common friend, John Maxwell, who obviously is a man of tremendous faith. He talks about success versus significance, by the way, in terms of…so you were talking about seasons and how you’re in a season where you’re happy to help people. I would suggest that that’s a season of significance for you. So you’ve achieved success, however you measure success, I think you’ve achieved it. You’ve been married for 38, almost 40 years, you have two wonderful daughters, you have a grandson now, your career is still flourishing and has for a long time; that’s success. What John says is when you start adding value to others and when you give back, only in that way can you achieve significance. When you start doing that and when you start to – I don’t even want to say achieve significance – when you start to help others in that way, what you find – what I found, I’m sure what you found too, Jeff – is that that far outweighs the world’s definition of success. There’s just such tremendous value that we get through adding value to other people. Whether, again, it’s pouring into your wife, pouring into your daughters, pouring into your grandson like I know you’re going to do, mentoring others about comedy or about life; for me that far outweighs the car that I drive.

Jeff  

I think John has touched on this in the past, but I tell my kids, I said, when you look at other people, and you look at their lives, and you go, man, that’s a good life, that person has an attitude that I admire, they live their life in a way that I admire; I have always told my girls, I said, I’ll be willing to bet you everything I have, that the person is not a self-centered person or not a self focused person. The people that you look at – maybe not the most financially successful – but the people that have the richest and fullest lives are not self-focused people, they are other focused. I think that the secret to life is learning to give your life away; to your spouse, to your kids, to your grandkids, to other people that are around you. It’s kind of like, the more you give away, the more you have to give away. Significance…like for me – and I know there’s a lot of people listening that came from broken homes – when you come from a broken home, when you have a parent that just leaves, no matter what your parents say, as a child, what you feel is, I wasn’t worth staying for, I wasn’t worth sticking around for, I wasn’t enough. It does things to your confidence and your significance; you’re like, I wasn’t worth it. If I’d have been worth it, you wouldn’t have left. There are people listening that don’t have faith – and that’s cool and be cool with me having it – but what I kind of learned to do was – I wanted a daddy, I didn’t have a daddy, I wanted one – and Jesus said, God said, hey, when you talk to me, say this, “Our Father,” he’s like, refer to me as Father and I’m like, okay, well, you want to be a father, and you are there all the time, and you know everything about me and you still love me, and I can’t do anything to make you love me more and I can’t do anything to make you love me less. You just love me and that’s what I want. That’s what I want in a dad. So I think, somewhere as a kid, I just decided, you know what, I’m just gonna let God be my dad. I still love this human, my biological dad, but he’s not able to provide all the things that I, as a little kid, need. So I’m just gonna let God be my dad. What God said is, you are significant; not only am I significant, but everybody is significant. (Brian:  Yes.) Brian, heck for 12 years – was stopped during COVID – but for 12 years, I’d get up at five in the morning on Tuesdays and I’d go downtown and lead a small group with homeless guys. It started with me and 12 guys, and over the course of a decade, it grew to 20 something leaders and 300 homeless guys. I met a guy that was living in a homeless shelter – he was a young kid, he was 21 – and I said, I want to know people’s stories. I said, why are you here; you’re healthy, you’re 21, why are you in a homeless shelter? And he said, well, it was me, my brother, my mom and dad and when I was 11 years old, my mom killed herself. He said, and two years after that, my brother killed himself and then it was just me and my dad. And my second year of college, my dad killed himself. He said, I just couldn’t hurt anymore so I started smoking crack. I flunked out of school and got fired and got kicked out of my apartment and now I’m on the streets. And I sat there and I looked at him and went, hell dude, I would have started smoking crack too [if] I lost everybody in my family. He wasn’t just a homeless person, he was a guy, he was Jason, that had bad things happen to him. And you realize Jason is significant; he’s just numbing an overwhelming hurt. That kind of totally changed the way I looked at homeless people. The more of them that I got to know, the more of them that I kind of walked through life with, almost all of them, something bad had happened to them when they were young. The hurt was so great that they started numbing and they were unemployable. The drugs or the alcohol was just the symptom, the problem was that hurt. If you could ever address that, and learn their name, treat them like they’re significant, it was amazing how many guys were able to overcome that, to get their jobs back, to reconnect with their families and all, if you could deal with that pain. I think that’s for all of us. One of the most successful people I’ve ever known in my life was Truett Cathy, who started Chick-fil-A – and that started in my hometown, little town of Hapeville, GA – so I knew Truett from the time I was a little kid. I remember being a little kid and he would say to me, you know how to tell when somebody needs encouragement? I’m like, no, Mr. Cathy. He’d say, if they’re breathing – if they’re breathing – they need encouragement. And, man, it just stuck. So my whole life, whether I’m dealing with the cashier, or the waitress, or the salesperson, I try to encourage them, say something nice, say something positive, and create that significance for them. And I think that’s what John is talking about.

Brian  

Now, the way I explain that [is] simply as adding value; we have opportunities to add value in the world, I mean, we all have some ego, so maybe selfishly, I would love for that to happen in some big way but that might not ever happen. What does happen for all of us, every single day, is we encounter people. Every single encounter is an opportunity to add value to a person. So whether it’s encouragement with words, or it’s a smile, or it’s calling…you’re in hotels and hospitality venues a lot and people wear name tags, so I’m guessing that a lot of the time you glance down as you’re talking to them and look at their name tag and you use their name when you’re talking to them. It’s something that, for you, is so simple and so easy to do – it’s easy not to do too – but it’s easy to just glance down and then when you look into Mary’s eyes, you say, you know, Mary, it was really nice to meet you. Hope you have a great day today.

Jeff  

I did that earlier today. I’m in the grocery store and I’m checking out and she looked like she wasn’t having a good day. I looked at her nametag and as I’m leaving, I said, thank you very much, Giovanni, you’re always so nice to me here. Well, but I think that’s what we’re created for, Brian. They are small steps, but most things in life, even financially or business wise, the small steps add up to a staircase. Gosh, I can remember 35 years ago, being on the phone with my wife at one o’clock in the morning and going, I got better tonight. I can’t put my finger on it, but I got better tonight. It’s just a small step, but you take enough of them and somebody sees you and went, “Wow, I saw you as a comic five years ago, you’ve really grown.” Yeah, well, bunch of small steps together; that’s how it happens.

Brian  

Jeff, this has been great. Thank you so much for being on the show today and even more thank you for giving us the gift of laughter. Laughter is – like we were talking about earlier – truly good for the soul. I really truly appreciate the role you and other comedians play in reminding us of that, in giving us that occasional relief, because we all have stuff going on in the world. We don’t know what other people are facing but we all have stuff and so to get a little bit of reprieve from that is a wonderful thing, and you have devoted your career and your life to giving people that relief, to making them laugh, and I really appreciate you for that. I’m so grateful that you came on the show today.

Jeff  

Thanks. I’ve enjoyed it and it has been a joy and an honor to be a comic. I still am very humbled that this is what I got to do for a living and I don’t take it for granted, so I appreciate your words.  

Brian  

God bless you, my friend.

Jeff  

He does, every day. Thank you, Brian.

Brian  

And to our audience, thanks for tuning into LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with comedian Jeff Foxworthy on social media and leaving a rating and review. You can find out where Jeff will be making people laugh next by checking out his tour dates at JeffFoxworthy.com. You can learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.