Ep. 9 – Breaking out of Poverty - A Funny Life Podcast with William Lee Martin - The Funny Life with William Lee Martin

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
In this week's episode, It's atwenty five hundred dollars mistake plus part one
of a new series called How toBe Broke in America, all on how
to succeed in comedy in life.Hi, and welcome into a brand new
edition of the how To kind ofSucceed. I said, how to succeed

(00:24):
in the other thing, but it'skind of succeed. So I'm your host,
comedian Willemley Martin and fresh off theroad from my tour and the Tennessee
Valley. So thanks to everybody thatcame out in Marion, Virginia and Columbia,
Tennessee. You know, we gottour dates coming up in Clean,

(00:46):
Texas on May the eleventh, andin Arlington, Texas a big show at
the Arlington Music Hall on the eighteenth. And then June is packed with dates
in San Angelo, Muskogee, VanBuren, Saint Joe, Texas, Edwardsville,
Illinois. Uh, and then wehead up all the people that say

(01:07):
why don't you ever come to theNorthwest. We're coming to the Northwest,
so we'll be in Moscow in theIdaho and uh, Spokane, Washington.
So anyway, a great time onthe tour. I want to welcome in
my co host and partner in thisbusiness, and Lisa Bruce yea and uh

(01:29):
all you can see his nope onthere n not in today, not today,
not today. And then behind thecontrols is my buddy Ron Phillips.
Hey, how are you who justthrew deuces? I didn't even know you
knew that through deuces? Is thata sign? It was kind of a
gang sign. It was a gangsign. Yeah. So I had a

(01:51):
very uh, you know, greattrip. So I go up to Nashville
and I go up a couple ofdays early and with my road manager,
Colin, who's now decided his lastname is going to be Matthews, which
is his middle name, but hislast name is Louder, Louder Louther.
Yeah, and that's why he said, but I think it's Lowther. Yeah.
So he wants to change it tohis middle name because he's actually been

(02:15):
going on stage in trying comedy.Has he did he do it again?
He did it again. He didn'tdo it in Columbia, but he did
do it in Marion, Okay,And it's so funny. He's a big
kid too. I mean he's thirtytwo, but he's like six five six

(02:36):
tall, and to see a guyshaking his boots before they walk out.
It's like Mike Tyson says, everybodyhas a plan until you get punched in
the mouth. And to walk outon that stage, man, suddenly people
are staring at you. I couldn'tdo it a lot of fun, but
I do want to. First ofall, I want to think a fan.

(02:57):
Her name is Peggy Lee, andshe came up to me and Mary
in Virginia. Now, now Iwon't get into her battle, but she's
been battling cancer. I won't saywhat kind or anything else. But she
came up to me, waited inthe long line of the meet and greet
afterwards, and uh waited for everybodyto pass through, and then she came
up and she had this gift forme. She this is uh from the

(03:23):
fudge store. That's a they're Maryin Virginia's like famous fudge. And I
can't eat it because of the diet, but I can share it with you
guys. Yeah, absolutely. Andthen Uh there her sister's church group,
they knit these prayer uh a littleThese are just things that you carry with

(03:45):
you and it's kind of like,you know, any kind of stress,
you know, or anything else.But these are our prayer blankets. She
can carry with you on the tourand on the road. And it's got
a sweet scripture on there and stuff. But how sweet. But she listens
and she watches the podcast. Sheknows both of you guys pretty She described

(04:05):
you both pretty well. But Ihope she was nice to me. She
was. I don't feel like Peggy'sprobably really nice. I don't know if
Peggy can be mean to anybody.Thank you, Peggy, thank you,
thank you very nice. I thinkI think if Peggy's mean, if somebody
says Peggy's mean, it's you.Yeah, it's somebody else for sure.

(04:28):
So I want to I want totell you about my twenty five hundred dollars
mistake. Okay, okay, Anduh so I'm in. We get to
to uh Nashville, and I gothere for a couple of days. Now,
my old mentor, Steve Cox,who used to manage Colin Ray but
they used to have a big agency, him and his partner up in Reno
uh ted Files, so it usedto be the Scott Dan agency. Uh.

(04:51):
But he's been my mentor and andlike, uh he calls me a
brother but he's older. He's he'smuch older. Ma. He's more like
a dad to me. And thereason why he doesn't say that I'm like
a son to him because he's respectableto my own father. But there have
been times in the last twenty sevenyears that Steve gave me better advice than
any human on the planet. Steve'sbeen there for me for everything from my

(05:15):
songwriting to my divorce, to howto recover from that, to how to
pick up the pieces. There aretimes that, especially in the early days,
when there just wasn't any money flowingin, you know that suddenly there
was a check in the mail thatI didn't ask for and I didn't ask
to borrow, and it wasn't toborrow. It was just age. Just

(05:38):
get through it. And I alwayspaid back the money. That's so sweet.
But so I go there, Ialways when I go to Nashville.
I stayed with him. Yeah,and so we had this great time.
But we we go to dinner andthen coming back home to his place,
we could smell fuel in my truck. Okay, you can smell it on

(05:58):
the inside of the truck. Soy'all didn't uber this one, No,
no, no, we didn't uber, but you can literally in my F
two fifty you could smell the smellof fuel pungent at a red light,
and we get all the way overto his house and you can literally see
the dripping of the fuel. Soit's late at night. I popped the

(06:19):
hood. You can see where there'sfuel leaking, but you know it's late,
there's no lighting. So the nextmorning everything looks better. In the
morning, I've what we said.You get up in the morning and you
can see where it's leaking from thefuel filter. Now I look online and
a fuel filter there's on the Ftwo to fifty is on the top,
and there's one underneath too, sothere's two to the change of the fuel

(06:43):
filter. And everybody on YouTube istelling me that it's it's a common problem
with the F two to fifty.On the parts about forty dollars. We're
talking about a diesel vehicle for adeel view, so it's about forty bucks
on Amazon. But I don't haveany tools, and Steve is seventy six,
and he didn't have any tools becausehe lived in Reno and he's only

(07:04):
staying at part time in Nashville.So I go over to the Firestone place,
and they said, yeah, wecan get to it and everything else.
And they came back and they said, yeah, that'll be five hundred
and twenty five dollars to fix.And now, first of all, y'all

(07:27):
got to remember, I've been ona eleven day diet. Now, right,
are you are you? Are youhangry? Did you get h I
think he's past hangary. I waspass hangery especially, And my anxiety is
already up because we better travel.We've got we've got six hours to go
to Marion, Virginia from this place, and then we've got sixteen hours to

(07:48):
get back home. So to bestranded anywhere is already anxiety up right.
And then the only reason why Itook it over to Firestone is I wanted
to make sure that was the onlythem. And now we've got five hundred
and twenty five dollars in a bill. And I told the lady, I
said, hey, listen, takeit off the rack. Just take it

(08:09):
off the rack. I literally toldher, I said, listen, here's
what I'm going to do. Iwill get the forty dollars part, and
then I'm going to go spend fourhundred and eighty dollars and buy a toolkit.
That way, I justify five hundredand twenty five dollars for this thing.
Right, And so they're they takeit off the rack and they're backing
up my truck out of the thing. As I'm watching them back it up,

(08:35):
they destroy my right mirror. MyF twoint fifty is a platinum,
Okay, so it's got all electronicsthat's heated in the mirror are probably heated.
And they move in and out,in and out, and they up
and down and the whole thing andthe and I mean, I am and

(09:01):
y'all know me. I'm not onlyangry, but now my baby, who
my baby? That that F twofifty has got a smashed up mirror?
And I let out some cuss wordsand that that I'm pretty proud of.
I put combinations I don't always puttogether. They make sense though at that

(09:26):
point. Sometimes they don't make sense. There was a unique combination of customers
going out and the general manager cameover and he's like, come down,
I'll take care of it. I'lltake care of it, and and I
was like, you know, firstof all, it's five hundred and twenty
He said, well, I don'tmake the prices, you know, they
make the prices. And I said, well that that part is on Amazon

(09:48):
for forty dollars, and he goes, we don't buy parts from Amazon.
I'm like, everybody buys parts fromAmazon. Everybody don't give us all the
same. So a fuel filter isa fuel filter, and so he said
he would take care of it,right, and then they sent me down
to another shop and an automotive placethat could do the fuel filter that day,

(10:11):
who had it in stock, who'sdone that stuff? And they called
and got me a brand new mirror. But it's not just a mirror,
I mean you have to put theentire thing on. So it ended up
costing him twenty five hundred dollars.They took care of everything. They took
care of the fuel filter, theytook care of the mirror, had it
all fixed by the end of themorning. Actually that's shocking, but it

(10:37):
was a twenty five hundred dollars mistake. And I got a hand it to
him. You know, a lotof people wouldn't have done that. And
as a matter of fact, hesaid that the service manager, who's the
one that actually backed up the truckand smashed my mirror he actually asking him
for the general manage came out.He goes, should I go offer him
a discount on the fuel filter?Right? And the general manager goes,

(11:03):
yeah, you go tell that bigs ob that's about to punch somebody in
the throat that you'd like to offerhim ten percent off on the thing that's
already overpriced. At least a generalat least a general manager understood what was
going on. Yeah, he did. And what I'm gonna do today.
What I'm gonna do today is afterwe get off of the air of this

(11:26):
thing, I'm going to go andorder some pizzas and send it to their
shop and tell them no hard feelings. And I really appreciate it, but
way to step up and yeah,take care of the states. Yeah that
was good of them, But Ieven, you know, I'm not that
trusting. I took my phone outand I go, okay, but you're
gonna say this on camera. You'regonna say that you're taking care of all

(11:48):
this on camera, And he waslike great, And then he even drove
down to the shop and made sureeverything was okay and shook my hand and
we talked about it. And thenthey had looked me up from them and
then they knew who you were atthis point, at this point, but
they didn't give me all that becauseyou know, like I could get out
on social media and talk about thisor anything else. They did it because

(12:09):
it was the right thing to do. So I applaud Firestone for sticking up
for what they do. Prices areprices, you know, and you always
have to remember that. Yeah,it is a forty dollars part to us,
but everything about that brick and mortarstore they still have to pay for,
right, all those employees. Igot it. So even though there

(12:30):
is a markup on that stuff andsome of it can get very pricey,
first of all, do your duediligence. Make sure you know what it
is, because so many people wouldn'teven know what the fuel was. And
that's where you really get ripped outby some people. Oh yeah, especially
women going in for sure. Yeahwhat dudes that you know, the days

(12:50):
of being able to fix your owncar are long gone? Yeah gone.
Well, it's getting all the newfangled stuff in there now. I mean
they they don't even make books.Remember the old chiltern manuals that used to
I didn't have to take your engineout to get to your fel filter.
So you knew more about the cars, and you said you did business.

(13:16):
I heard a little bit so,but the whole thing reminded me of a
subject that I wanted to start doingas a series on here, and that's
how to Stay poor in America?Because there's so many podcasts out there on
how to get rich, but there'sa different one how to get rich and
how to stay poor, because Iknow a lot of people who stay poor

(13:39):
and never know why they're poor,never know why they're poor, never never
realizing that the habits that they haveare the reason that they're staying poor.
So I told all of us wedidn't have any discussion. I said,
jot down some some things. Sowould anybody like to go first on how
to stay poor in America? Okay? Good? Procrastination. That's one of

(14:03):
my biggest issues is I procrastinate ona lot of stuff. And if I
didn't procrastinate on a lot of stuff, I might be better and farther down
the road, especially a lot ofplanning for the future. Comany you,
well, that's great. Yeah.No. A friend of mine, she's

(14:24):
a comedian, but she uh procrastinatedon dealing with the I R s.
Oh that ever, kept putting itoff, putting it off, putting it
off. And she travels a lot. The way I understand it, uh,
is she traveled a lot for thecruise ship and entertaining on the cruise
ships. She's a comedian, andthey finally locked up her passport to where

(14:48):
she can't travel. So she lostall that work, all that work because
you put off the irs. Ifyou want to stay more in America,
don't call him, don't connect withthem. If you connect with them,
if you talk to them straight outand you talk to the lady, if
they will work with you. Theydon't want people in prison over that,

(15:13):
you know. Uh, it's whenyou ignore the letters, You ignore everything
that's coming to the door. Uh, and then eventually the I R s
will come. Those aren't anybody I'mgoing to ignore, ever, So the
first way to stay poor. Ilove that we didn't even plan that album.

(15:35):
The first way that is brilliant.Yeah, procrastination, Lisa, you
want to go next? Yeah,only because it happened with a friend recently
gambling her not her but her agambling addiction. Yes, and nobody knew
how bad it was Wow. Sodid he did he go to the casinos?

(15:56):
Did he call? Yes? Allthe all above? Yes. Yeah.
And now gambling has become such abig thing because you know, you
used to you had to go toVegas or you had to go to a
duel. You can do it onyour phone, my gosh. Yeah.
And once you get connected and andaddicted to it in the rush of it.

(16:17):
You know. My favorite story ofmy early days of working. I
used to work at a paint storeGliden here locally and mixing paint in the
back of the warehouse. And wehad a paint salesman there and he's passed
on, so I guess I canuse his name now, Joe Smith.
And Joe Smith is pretty generic generic. And Joe Joe had this great,

(16:40):
big old belly and uh he uh. Now you want to talk about a
guy who could cuss well, Thatguy can cuss well. And in the
paint store business in the seventies andI was there in the eighties, right,
But he was also a bookie.So he was the only paint store
salesman ever that I knew that ithad a gun in his pis in his

(17:00):
boot. He had a pistol onhis boot. He had a pistol on
his brickcase. He had one.And we could not talk to Joe between
eleven thirty and one o'clock every daybecause he was in his office taking bets.
So they were running a book.I don't even know if I'm supposed
to tell the story, but hewas running a book. He was a
bookmaker in the back of a warehouse, out of the local, out of

(17:26):
the local, gleating story, outof the local nobody would have ever known.
One day, he brought in athree point fifty seven magnum to show
us, and the kid that workedwith side by side who outworked me all
the time, little Davy Espinosa.He brings in this three fifty seven and

(17:47):
he's like, hey, look atit and everything else, and he said,
there's no bullets in it. AndDavy is pointing over at We're on
a himp pill in Fort Worth.That's that's over. I mean you're in
city limits. Obviously, you're inthe middle of the show. Yeah,
if you draw the dot on mapQuest, the middle of Fort Worth is
right there. And Davy is I'mliterally standing next to Davy right here,

(18:11):
and we're you know, nineteen twentyyear old kids, and Davy's got the
gun and he's pointing over at thetelephone pole and he goes click click,
click, click, boom. Andon the fourth one there was one still
in the chamber there and that thatrattle around and he hit and it was

(18:33):
I mean, it was like onehundred yard shot with three fifty seven and
he hit luckily the telephone pole aboutthat big God, but that could have
killed you know, anybody? Yeah, yeah, and then and then and
then Joe custis in all kinds ofways that it was our fault that we

(18:55):
didn't you know, that we didn'tknow how to handle a three fifty seven
magnum was in a warehouse of apaint store. That's a little bit of
everybody's fault. I feel like,I don't feel like it is you hand
a loaded gun to a kid,and uh that's where the grownups. And
Joe was so scared because he knewhe would have been fired if anybody would

(19:18):
have found you don't you don't bringa loaded three fifty seven to a paint
store. Well, I guess youdo. And then just punted it off
to it, not punted, buthand it off to a kid and go.
It isn't all loaded. Yeah,there's all sorts of stuff wrong there.
Yes, well mine, uh youknow, I think I want to
start out with first of all sayingI love my mom and dad, but

(19:44):
they were terrible with finances. Andthey were not only terrible with finances,
they also weren't willing to make sacrificesfor that. Those of you who don't
know the area, these guys willfrom thirty five north to eight twenty,
just south of that and mark FordParkway, there's a I mean now that

(20:07):
value of the land is so highover there. Yeah, I mean it's
the prime part of everything that flowsthrough there, warehouse districts, there's now
apartments over there, There's all kindsof stuff. My parents had the opportunity
in the seventies to buy that landfrom Odham Road, which is where the
Cores plant is now, all theway to eight twenty for less than two

(20:32):
hundred dollars a month. Oh couldyou imagine, But back then that was
a lot of money. Yeah.Our church, our church was there right
across the street, and mister Brunnerwho owned all that land on both sides
of thirty five, it was allfarm land there in the seventies, he

(20:52):
offered it to my dad. Hetook us shining to my dad early,
and he offered the land that sideof the land to my dad all the
way to eight twenty and mom anddad decided they couldn't make a listen,
two hundred dollars land payment that noway lived on and what were they going
to do with that anyway? Ohlord, you everybody be sitting pretty right

(21:14):
now. Yeah, I probably wouldn'tbe sitting in here. I probably well,
I'd probably be drugged out because Ialready spent my inheritance. But still
i'd have a different story. Butno, they weren't willing to change some
things about their lives. Now.My mother and father both smoked two and
a half three packs a day,and looking back on it as a kid,

(21:37):
even as a kid, I waslike thirteen and I started putting pen
to paper to it one day,Yeah, and I'm like, yeah,
three dollars a day. So ifyou go three dollars a day, six
dollars a day for the two ofthem, So three dollars a day any
times that by seven, that's twentyone dollars right for the month. And
then you times that by four wereyour already at eighty four dollars. Eighty

(22:03):
four dollars, okay, and anytimes that by two from two of them,
So you're spending one hundred and sixtyfour dollars just in smokes, justin
smokes, and that would have beenyour payment. And that that's something that
as a poor kid, and Igrew up poor, that you realize that

(22:26):
a lot of poor people the onething that they're not willing to do is
make the sacrifice that of those thingsthat are not doing you any good.
Anyway, the smoking ended up killingmy mother and putting my dad in oxygen.
And looking back on it, youknow, you can say, well,
back then, they didn't tell youno. Back then, they started
telling people in the seventies, inthe late sixties that smoking will kill you.

(22:51):
So it's not like people didn't youknow, but they didn't believe the
science, they didn't believe the government, they didn't believe anything else. And
not only did they do that,but it was nobody was going to tell
them what to do, so theywere willing to sacrifice smoking and putting all
the kids at risk in the house. Oh yeah, well that's not even

(23:12):
there's a road. Did both y'allparents, your parents, My dad did.
My mom did not know, butyour parents they did, they did,
both of them. Yeah, butnot only just the health wise.
You have an opportunity to buy landright and and this land would be life,
This would be generational changing money.Yes, if you would have held

(23:34):
onto it. H you're not willingto sacrifice a pack of smokes to change
your lifestyle. And it's that waynow. I see people doing it all
the time, that that they're willingto not willing to change something. You
know, if you're having trouble makingand again this segments called how to stay

(23:55):
poor in America. If you're havingtrouble making your house, note, here's
a good way to make that compound. Go out and rent you some furniture.
Go to one of those rentaiscenter pricesat rent furniture. To wear a
couch that would cost you five hundreddollars if you saved for it, would
n't have costing you twenty two hundreddollars because you paid it out, but

(24:17):
you only got it for one hundreddollars a month. Well, they get
you with it's only fifteen dollars aweek, right, you know? Or
something it's like, oh, thatsounds great. And that's again you have
to be willing to sacrifice to notbe poor in America, and so many
people are, you know, andthis is probably gonna get hate mail.

(24:37):
I don't have any tattoos, okay. And one of the reasons I don't
have a tattoo is that I grewup poor. And growing up poor,
those tattoos are expensive. Now,now my tattoo expert is here. Now
let's see the forum. Now,how much did both of those costs?
If I can ask? Okay,so we got three, got four.

(24:59):
I don't want to see the four. Okay, it's on the other side.
Okay, it's on the other side. How much did they cost?
Yeah, each one of these wasabout one hundred and eighty dollars apiece.
One hundred and eighty dollars apiece.Now, this one on my left arm
is a pretty good sized eagle starwas three hundred. Okay, so one
hundred and eight one hundred and eighty. That's three sixty three hundred. So

(25:19):
now you got uh so, let'ssay a thousand bucks thousand bucks worth,
and that's only those those are veryconservative, the ones that have the full
sleeve all the way up the neck, tattoos, all those things. Now,
some of those were made in prison, and good for you. But
and and and if you had yoursdone in prison, I love your tattoo,

(25:42):
just say, but for the record, done in prison. In prison.
So but but you know, ifyou're poor, if you want to
stay poor in America, decide thata thousand dollars worth of tattoos is the
way you want to go. Becausethere's ways of getting out of being poor.
I've seen it both sides. Andwhen people I tell people that I

(26:04):
grew up poor, they sometimes don'tbelieve me because where I live now,
right, and the vehicle that Idrive, the one that I was just
talking about earlier in the show.But the fact is is that I grew
up that way. I have familythat still live that way, who live
paycheck to paycheck and never realizing that, hey, maybe what I do need

(26:26):
is a little money in the bankjust in case this job that I hate,
this job that I hate ends,or they come in and lay everybody
off, or another COVID or anotherCOVID or any of those other kind of
settings. You have to decide isthe short term getting me the tattoo more
important than me having the what dowe say, a thousand bucks on those

(26:49):
thousand dollars. And the bottom lineis is if you are struggling to put
food on the table, or feedyour kids or clothe your kids, don't
go get attacked. Don't get tattoosor lashes or nails. That was that
was next. Yeah, that happenedin my family. Yeah, the sun
is out there, you know whatI mean. They make polish, Uh,

(27:15):
that's pretty readily available for what eightbucks that you can do yourself,
and you nails yourself too, presson, I guess, and I get
it. I get it. Youcan't go through life not having some of
those things in your life. ButI know people that you said your friends
addicted to gambling. I know peoplethat are addicted to going and getting manning
petties that it's and yet they don'tthey don't have the money, uh for

(27:41):
their kids to to then go beinga sporting activity, but their nails are
just perfectly click click click clicking.No, we're not. We're not making
fun of everybody that's going and havingthis stuff done. It's the ones who
are having trouble surviving months month gettingall that stuff done right. And this
is this is called how to StayPoor in America. You know that's what

(28:03):
this whole thing is. Because Iwant to make that into a book because
I've seen it. I've seen it. But anyway that you know, we're
already out almost of thirty minutes oftime fast, and that did go fast.
So we are going to continue thisunless y'all got one quick one.
You got a quick one at all? No. Well, a friend,

(28:25):
her mother in law, passed away, and when we were cleaning up stuff,
we realized what a chopaholic she wasGVC. Oh yeah, oh,
I've VC. I've got a familymember like that myself. And it was
like, why does she need threeboom boxes? Does she really have to?
Yeah, And this was back inI don't know, early nineties,
maybe when she had passed away,but it was kind of like threaking out

(28:45):
her radical spending. Yeah, herhusband was freaking out, thinking I'm not
going to be able to survive withouther. But then after she passed away,
he kind of had more money becausehe didn't realize she was shopping so
much. Well, yeah, we'regoing to get into that too with my
dad. After my mom passed awaybecause he wasn't nearly as broke as and
we weren't nearly as broke as wethought we were exactly and God Lover.
But we'll get into that on thenext maybe the next episode, but we're

(29:08):
going to talk about that. Hey, listen, I got a tour schedule
coming up, thanks for tuning in. I got Colleen Texas coming up on
mayl eleventh. On May the eighteenth, we're in Arlington, Texas. And
if you're in the DFW area,this is my appearance of this show in
the DFW area. So don't saywe'll wait for you to come to Fort

(29:30):
Worth because I'm not coming to FortWorth this year because there are no venues
that are open in the size kindof places that we're playing right this,
seven hundred seaters, So grab thosetickets. And it's his pre birthday show
and it is my pre birthday show. So my birthday's on May eight twenty
first, and the show's May eighteenth, And you can get all of them
tickets at Willimleemartin dot com and youcan go find me on social media there.

(29:53):
I am on Instagram, It's atWilliam Lee Martin on TikTok, it's
at William Lee Martin. See there'sa there's a pattern here, Lisa.
They're all at William Lee Martin exceptfor YouTube. It's William Lee Martin Comedy.
So on, behalf of me,Lisa Boom and Ron Phillips, Hey

(30:15):
go out there and, you know, try to be kind of successful in
comedy and life.

All Episodes

Ep. 9 – Breaking out of Poverty - A Funny Life Podcast with William Lee Martin

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

The Joe Rogan Experience

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 9 – Breaking out of Poverty - A Funny Life Podcast with William Lee Martin