Jo Koy

The West Coast blew me up years ago. Ten years ago, I was already selling out five or six shows in a row in the West. Then all of a sudden, the Midwest, Chicago, Illinois, just embraced me so well.

It's been really stressful being on the road a lot, especially when you're a dad. You miss your son a lot. But you gotta make it work because you get to live a good life. I have to sacrifice.

Me and my son's mother, we've been divorced for a while,but we've been really great parents. We're good friends. We're very relaxed when it comes to our son's time with one another. We have an open door.

My real name is Joseph Herbert. My dad is white; my mom's Asian, Filipino. And when I started stand-up 22 years ago, I used to go up as Joseph Herbert, and I would just have to defend my name. Every time I went onstage, it was so annoying. People would heckle.

The appearance on 'The Tonight Show' was one thing, but the YouTube afterlife was incredible.

I used to put flyers on cars in parking lots, anything to get people to come to my shows. I was always having to think outside the box, and even to this day, I still try and come up with creative ways to market my shows.

With the blessing of social media and platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix, you get this broad audience that I don't think we knew about when we were kids.

If I find something funny or something that kind of cracks me up, I'll get up on stage. I don't care what situation I'm in or what media I'm in: I'm gonna say it.