Do you need an agent to be a stand-up?
No. You don't really need an agent to be a stand-up, but it depends what you want. If you want a career out of stand-up, I suggest you get an agent. That's what I would do. But what tends to happen is that if you show any form of proficiency in the stand-up game, the agent will find you. If you understand the comedy business, you will go and find an agent. Because some people are thinking to themselves "Oh, I'm so funny, and because I'm so funny, everything is going to happen." And their main focus is just to get up an stage and to be funny. That's all they want to do. But what they haven't realized is that they're actually in a business, and the way in which the comedy business talks to each other is that it talks to each other through agents, through management you know. So it would be hard for me to get up and go "listen I'm brilliant, I'm great, come on man you should book me. I'm brilliant, I'm great." and they go "who are you? Where did you come from?" Where is if there are agents or management companies who have been in the business, they would more tend to listen to each other than they would to any individual comic, unless that individual comic showed a great deal of talent while they were on stage. Therefore, what like I said if an agent can see that there's the potential in you they will approach you. But then at the same time if you're serious about the business I would say go look them out, go search them out. But only go search them out when you really do have 20 minutes of material to show them.
