NORQUAY — Quick Dick McDick, known for his humorous YouTube videos and live comedy shows, shared insights into his life and career in a recent interview before a fundraising show in Norquay on Feb. 17.
From farming in Grenfell to entertaining audiences across the country, McDick's journey reflects a unique blend of agriculture and entertainment.
In the interview, McDick, whose real name is Dickson Delorme, discussed his transition into standup comedy, which he described as somewhat accidental.
“I didn't mean to do it. But I guess it's kind of what it's always been like. The Sheho rec board approached me to do a fundraiser and I asked, ‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ And they said, ‘Well just be Quick Dick McDick’. And I asked, ‘Like push play on YouTube videos or whatever?’ They said, ‘No, no, do your Coffee Row bit or something like that.’ I said ‘OK,’ so I kind of wrote some stuff down and started working on it a little bit and Sheho had to cancel it for a couple of years.”
“So I just had this 45 minutes of material nobody had ever heard before. Somehow I tried it down in Lethbridge in the first show I ever did, and I just bombed. It was so bad! It was just a dead trade show. There was nobody there. Any guys that were there were predominantly from Hutterite colonies and stuff. My first bit in my old show was on Tinder. Well, most of them didn’t understand the joke about Tinder. So I just kind of started working with it a little bit after that and I actually started enjoying doing it. And seeing this is how the first time I ever did a show, it kind of came about (the comedy shows) by fundraising for a small community. So I've tried to keep that mantra with it, try and go to smaller towns and do shows where it's hard to get people to come in and do shows, so that's why I keep trying to do stuff like this.”
Reflecting on his YouTube channel, McDick explained its origins as a platform to share Snapchat stories with friends. Over time, his videos gained traction, offering a humorous yet informative look at farm life. While YouTube has provided opportunities for partnerships and engagements, McDick emphasized the misconception of easy monetary gains, stressing the importance of passion and authenticity over financial incentives.
“The money off YouTube is really not as good as everybody thinks. I do a presentation where sometimes I go into schools and I talk about social media, agriculture and a few other things and I actually get the metrics off of my channel. So I started this in the winter of 2019 and here we are, we're at the start at 2024 right now and I mean, since date of inception, I think I've generated around $50,000 off of YouTube, which isn't chump change, but I mean when you work it out to how many hours I put into it and everything. I think it worked out to around $12 or $13 an hour when you're doing production work. Which, I mean, it's not terrible, but I think there's a misconception that people think that you can just get rich and retire off of YouTube.”
“When you go to schools and talk to kids and ask, ‘Well, what do you want to be when you grow up?’ half will be like, ‘Well, I want to be a YouTuber.’ Well, that's not really a thing. You gotta have something that you're gonna do and then something you can fall back on from YouTube and if you mess around with that hobby as a side hustle, that's fine. But I mean, you can't make it a full-time gig. I've done OK with offshoots of YouTube. Partnering with a few Canadian manufacturers, that can be lucrative, and coming on the road to do ag shows, that can be lucrative. But just relying on YouTube revenue itself is not really worth it, it’s not going to make your bill payments.”
For young people possibly looking into the field in agriculture or those who want to be a YouTuber, McDick said, “Well, they're both tough gigs to get going. If you wanted to be something, just be you. Make sure that you're happy doing what you're doing. A big thing on the YouTube side of things is I'm the kind of guy that I don't try and force productions because as soon as you start forcing productions, people see through the lie and say ‘That's not you, that's not your thing, that's not your mantra.’ I usually have my best luck when I'm in a good frame of mind and, having some fun. I need to take time to do research.”
“When it comes to agriculture, surround yourself with people that have been in the business and know what they're doing and take some advice from them. Don't be afraid to walk your own path to a certain extent, but don't snub your nose at a person that's got 30-40 years of experience in farming. They might not be up on all the technologies that exist in farming, but that doesn't mean that they don't know what the weather patterns are going to do or how soon you should harvest, when you should cut, what you should do. They are always full of good advice, right? So try and learn from people that have been in the business for a while, even if it means you have to take a little bit of salt with the medication that they're trying to give you. It's experience that makes up for a lot of a lot of different things.”
McDick's involvement in education and outreach was also highlighted, including virtual farm tours for schoolchildren and presentations on agriculture and social media. He emphasized the importance of connecting with communities and sharing knowledge, both online and offline.
“I've had schools reach out to me and be like, ‘Hey, would you come talk to a Grade 3, 4 or 5 class?’ So during the pandemic, I would do Zoom presentations in the classrooms, and I'd set up a bunch of tractors and combines, stuff on the farm and we’d just do a farm safety talk. I'd have my phone with me and we’d do a little virtual tour of the farm and I’d show some dangerous things around the tractors, such as overhead loads, what you do when you're working around big trucks and stuff like that. And they were great, a very engaged little group of kids sitting around. They're watching you run around on your farm like a goofball and showing them some dangerous things. And with how technology works, now it's an easy way to be able to give people a tour of your farm, they don't even have to be there. You don't have to worry about them getting hurt or run over by a cow or anything like that. You can take them right into the cattle pen and get them right up close to the cow without them ever stepping outside of the classroom.”
As a finishing comment, McDick said, “Just, everybody just keep being awesome. There are lots of people’s comments that I can never get back to, private messages I can never get back to, and anybody that's messaged me that I've never gotten back to, I’m sorry. It's hard to keep up with all this stuff, but to everybody that comes out and supports these shows and supports their community and all the different things that we do to try and raise some money for these places, thank you and hopefully we can just keep having some belly laughs for an hour-and-a-half at a time every night. I just want to keep going to every town and if anyone's having a bad day, I just want to give them an hour-and-a-half where they don't have to worry about it and they can just sit and watch. So to anybody out there, thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that.”
The Norquay community management board is putting the profits from the show towards various aspects of the local rink.
Maggy Lukey said, “We have to fix our fans and our ceiling. The ceiling problem, I think, might be a little leak. That's the basics right now and then maybe look into upgrading our seating surfaces.”
