What if he got the chance to do it again?

I never laughed so much as when I saw Jo Koy in concert last year. He OWNED the Moda Center in Portland, a crowd of nearly 20,000 doubled over and crying with laughter. He worked the crowd and ad-libbed effortlessly, so much so that I wondered if he even had set material, or if he just going to riff the entire time.

So what didn't translate to the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel?
- An uninvested crowd
- Lack of preparation (he got hired 10 days prior)
- Incredibly ambitious (ahem, unrealistic) expectations

When I counsel creatives on how to promote their work, we start with establishing an understanding their work environment, their target audience, and their ideal creative process. But what most creatives get that Jo never got, is the freedom and time to experiment, which is where true creativity is born. The ability to try and fail privately at first, and then increase the circles of awareness over time.

The fact of the matter is that Jo Koy had months to perfect his seemingly relaxed crowd work before ever stepping on a tour bus. He tested jokes on his comedian friends, his team, then small clubs, then larger rooms, and so on. He never got that chance with the Globes. Hosting the Golden Globes, or any awards show really, is like being an archery champion who gets hired to play a game of lawn darts and is expected to get a perfect score the first round.

We owe Jo Koy, like all creatives, the chance to try and fail, experiment and play, and the TIME it takes to adjust, fine tune, and try again.

It’s pretty certain that Golden Globes will never ask him to host again, but what if they did? What if they asked him to start prepping for 2025? I bet he’d crush. And job number one? Make Taylor double over with laughter.