In April of 2011, a little over a year after doing my first stand up set, I did my first show in a major comedy festival.  It was at the Filipino Cultural Centre and I was opening for one of the top Filipino comedians in North America, despite being Chinese and Jewish myself.  

Weeks before the booker had emailed me assuming I was part Filipino because of my ambiguously brown skin, and I chose not to correct them.  I was 22 and still not sure how committed I was to comedy as a career, but I knew I wasn’t going to turn down a show.It was a free event set up by the festival to try and reach out to the sizable Filipino population of the city, but the room was hardly a quarter full.  I struggled to have a passable set in front of 40 adults and 2 children.  I did a joke off the top addressing the fact I had more or less lied my way onto the show.  

Credit to the Filipinos, they are a festive people and saw the humour in it.  But at that time, I was no where near having the tools needed to get rolling laughter out of that few people in a room that large.  Nor did I have the experience to know how to have fun while they were being quiet.  

I was just good enough that when the headliner asked me to go for drinks with him and his friends after, I wasn’t too embarrassed to say yes.  After a few drinks he said to me “You’ve only been doing standup for a year?  You’re good, and you sound smart up there.  If you want to stick with this, in three or four years, you could be making a living at this.  But I’m not going to lie, it will be three or four tough years.”

I don’t remember if I believed him at the time, but I know now that I should have.  He was almost right on the money in terms of time frame. You will more likely have to toil in mediocrity for 4-5 years, and then in obscurity for 8-10 more.  There’s a good chance you’ll develop some degree of substance problem, and a terrible chance of maintaining a long-term romantic relationship.  

I’m downplaying the fun side of standup because, if you are inclined to follow ANY other vocation, you should probably go with it instead.  I can’t think of anything more challenging than pursuing standup, aside from pursuing it when you really don’t have the constitution for the battle or the skill for the craft.  I’m not here to talk anyone out of their law degree, their plumbing career, or even their satisfying home-life in exchange for an unpaid internship in bars and clubs.

But if you re-watched old standup specials as a kid until you could recite the routines you saw verbatim, and if you constantly think in bits, then this will be helpful reading.  And I’ll let you in on a poorly kept secret, standup is the most fun job in the world.  And once you develop some mental toughness, even the gruelling path to getting good can be very satisfying for the meager rewards it offers along the way.  

If telling jokes for a living still sounds appealing, I’ll let you know what worked for me.  To start your life as a standup, you’ll need  a positive mental attitude, unflinching honesty with yourself, and a big grid calendar.

In 2016 I bought my first  big grid calendar.  You probably already have a digital calendar on your phone and computer.  And maybe that one works fine for this system.  I wouldn’t know because I’ve always gone with the physical big grid calendar, and that’s what I’m vouching for.  For one thing, going out to buy one constitutes a deliberate effort towards our goal, as well as a sunk cost.  I don’t care if its only $10, it’s an investment you are making that will hopefully make you more likely to stay motivated and on task.  If you don’t have $10, Step One is having $10.  

So you have the calendar, now you have to fill it. Every time I do a show, I’d mark down an S.  Every time I do a paid show, I’d mark down a $.  Every time I go to the gym or play soccer, I’d mark down a G.  Smoking weed, reading, and a few other events all have their own symbols.  At the end of every day I record what I did. At the end of every month I total each activity and compare numbers to the previous month so I can see how I’m doing.  

You’ll know you are working towards your goal when you can give yourself your “S” on the day.  You will definitely know when you did what you wanted to do when you  give yourself that “$”.  

Whatever you’re trying to do, if you’re trying to be the best at it, it will be hard and being in shape makes anything hard easier, so it’s worth tracking your “G” gym days.  Maybe you don’t like soccer, but you should have an activity that is fun and challenging and social and completely removed from what you’re trying to excel. For comedians this is especially important unless you want all your bits to be about having done standup or stuff you saw on TV.  An extracurricular activity or sport will keep you doing new things, having new feelings, and talking to new people.  Not to mention the gym and other physical activities will stave off depression.  

Maybe smoking weed isn’t your vice, but you have one and you should identify it.  Start tracking it with a “V”, and then work on bringing the number of times per month that you indulge in it down, as opposed to the other numbers you’re trying to bring up.  

Finally, reading, which I track because its not necessarily difficult, but its something most people don’t make time for, and t is more enriching than watching tv, masturbation, or the myriad of other ways we waste our time.  The main goal of the “R” for reading symbol is that if at the end of my day I’m looking at the big grid and the day is completely empty, if I sit down and read for 20 minutes I can at least mark that down and say ok, I did something good today, I am not a complete piece of shit.

And that’s why the final symbol, the “R”, the one that’s easy but not too easy, and stimulating and fun is the most important number to track of all.  Because a lot of days you will feel like a piece of shit, because that, as near as I can tell, is our natural state of being.  Even on days where you were paid to do what you want to be doing, and especially on the days where you did a free show and it didn’t even go the way you wanted, you will feel like shit and question why you are doing this.  So, come up with that easy task and see if you can get that number up over 25 times in a month, and feel good about it.  

Remember when I said pursuing standup  would be hard?  I wasn’t kidding and finding easy ways to feel good about yourself like going to the gym or reading a book could be the difference between sticking it out or giving up.

I can’t help anyone who wants to hit it quick and big, or wants to look at lower numbers and make excuses as to why it’s not their fault.  If you want to take standup seriously and make a living at it, it goes way beyond just being funny.  

In the last ten years I feel like I’ve lived more than many people will in their entire lives.  I’ve had many nights that I’ll remember forever, good and bad, and most of them have been shared with the most interesting friends a person could ask for, which is other comedians.  And if I had to stop tomorrow for whatever reason, I’d be disappointed I didn’t reach the highest highs, but I know I could stand in court of law and defend the fact that I was a comic.

“Yes, your honour, I got on a plane and flew to a new city to do a show in a theatre.  No, your honour, I didn’t book the ticket or hotel myself, I was a professional comedian.”

“Please the jury to note I performed in a town of 2,000 people and went home with a server from the bar where the show was held.”

“I ran the longest running show in my city and one of the longest standing independent shows in the country.  I saw every bit of comedic talent that developed in the city and brought in some of the best in the country and put on big shows.  The defence rests.”

In 2018 I did 126 paid shows, I read 238 days out of the year, and I sat down for focused writing 39 times.  All those numbers are up from the year before and year before that, when I started doing this.  More importantly, taking comedy seriously has had the effect of people in comedy taking me more seriously.  I can say for sure that more of my paid gigs in 2018 were booked runs or lucrative corporates, as opposed to bar gigs that paid $20 and/or a drink ticket. I can also tell I’m more driven because when I see those numbers dip I go out of my way to make sure next month has more gigs, and because my friends and peers have told me directly “You’re a noticeably more driven Mike Green”.  If you’re serious about stand-up, start counting and we’ll talk numbers when I see you at the next show.

Mike Green - @mikegreenwho