Hasan Minhaj joins Shaan Puri the night after his Bay Area show for a wide-ranging conversation about comedy craft, the pre-show routine, and what it felt like to perform at the White House Correspondents Dinner. They go deep on the honor code of IRL accountability versus pseudonymous online dunking, and Hasan shares his framework for managing artist finances — lump sums, burn rate, runway, and why six million dollars was his target number. They close on creator leverage, why Hasan owns his touring show outright, and the mindset shift that came from a mentor at Twitch: stop waiting to feel the way you think success will make you feel.
Speakers: Hasan Minhaj (comedian, Patriot Act host), Shaan Puri (host, MFM)
Introduction and Davis, California [00:00:00]
Hasan: Netflix was like, “Where do you want to do the special? LA, Chicago, New York?” I was like, “Nah, son. Davis, California.”
Hasan’s Daily Structure [00:00:20]
Shaan: What’s a day for you like? Because you’re completely free now, right?
Hasan: I’m completely free. Well, you’re never really free — you build a prison of your own making. I’ve got two little kids. A day starts with morning-shift dad duty. I take the mornings. I’ve got a two-year-old and an eight-month-old.
Shaan: We’re the same. You were talking about it yesterday, I was like, “I feel ya.”
Hasan: So I do the morning shift — that’s just straight dad time. Then I basically pick between three major projects. I’ve got investing, so sometimes we’ll be looking at deals. Then it could be content, but content is really on a specific niche schedule. It’s like Monday, Wednesday, for an hour we sit down and do the show, and that’s kind of it. I don’t do too much more than that. I write sometimes — Twitter, emails, whatever. And then I have a business: me and my wife started an e-commerce business.
Shaan: Oh, cool.
Hasan: That scaled up. Basically in the last year it went from zero — just an idea — to now we do over a million dollars a month in revenue on that business.
Shaan: I was looking for something new that I could do as a side hustle. Something that wasn’t going to take up all my time, but could still be a valuable business that was basically part-time. Is that what happened for you?
Hasan: Yeah.
Shaan: Have you always been that way — multiple hustles? Have you always been that guy?
Hasan: I was always that guy, but they weren’t working before. So I was trying to do that and failing at it. Since high school.
Shaan: You were that dude?
Hasan: No, no — a lot of people have this story, a lot of entrepreneurs have this “oh, back when I was a kid, my lemonade stand, I was doing newspaper routes, I hired all these kids, baseball cards.” The lights were off in my head until I was like twenty-one. I was going to be pre-med. I wanted to be a team doctor for an NBA team.
Shaan: Okay. What do you do? I wanted to be on the NBA team — alright, genetics not working.
Hasan: Team doctor — seems like yeah, my genetics and my interest. Only when I met a team doctor I was like, “Wow, this is boring.” You’re just dealing with joints that are in pain and there’s only so much you can do. Not as exciting. I needed a plan B. I was twenty-one when I figured that out. I was still an undergrad, I had just taken the MCATs, I was ready to go to med school. I was like… what else?
Hasan: I had this random business idea with a couple of buddies. It sounded kind of silly — almost not dangerous, you know? Sometimes a very serious-sounding idea is too intimidating to do. But this seemed so goofy it was harmless. I’m just gonna go try it. And obviously I’ll eventually go to med school. Yeah, obviously. I was like, I’m not gonna — and you’re doing this for a couple months.
Shaan: College is so unique in the sense that you’re leaning on this thing where if people ask you, “Hey, what are you doing?” — “I’m a student.” You’ve got your cover story.
Hasan: I got my cover story. Yours is similar, right?
Shaan: Yeah, totally. Freshman in college exactly.
Finding His Thing: The Light Bulb Moment [00:04:00]
Shaan: So when did you decide — “All right, I’m gonna do this for real, this will be the job”? Was it right away or did you kind of play with it first and decide a year or two later?
Hasan: It’s interesting. You were at the show last night, and you could tell especially in the Bay there’s just this level of connection I have in this city, New York, certain cities, where I’m like, “I know you guys.” We’re all Kumon kids. And they’re like, “Yeah!” We’re like Type A. I know you. I know what your house smells like. I know the way your mom talks to you. I’ve seen you at family parties. I really know you.
Hasan: The point of the story is I was part of that camp where there was a clear track. Every community has their Stanford kid. I always go up to people in Dallas and I’m like, “Yeah, you grew up in Dallas, right? Who’s the Stanford one? Which one?” Yeah — assuming you’re not the Nikhil — what was your path? Somebody’s like, “Bruno went to MIT.” I’m like, “He’s the star. Who’s the star of your community?”
Shaan: You’re not gonna name him, but yeah.
Hasan: I go up there and there’s a kid who won the spelling bee, and you’re like, “Okay, this person is the shining star of the community. What’s my path?”
Hasan: I was a speech and debate kid. I go to college and a friend of mine — funny enough — was illegally downloading a ton of standup comedy. I went to college during the Kazaa, Limewire era.
Shaan: I think we’re the same age. I’m 36.
Hasan: Yeah, I’m 33, I think. I haven’t been thinking about my age in a while. I think I’m 33.
Shaan: Yeah, 33-34. I think I’m 33.
Hasan: Yeah. So we’re that same era. He downloads a Chris Rock special — Never Scared. I remember that special. He’s in the purple suit. And I remember being like, “Oh, this is funny speech and debate. This is connected. This is forensics, but funny.” I see the matrix.
Hasan: Then I come to find out a lot of the comics I really loved, there were certain comics that really thought critically. Greg Giraldo — rest in peace, one of the all-time greats — he was a former attorney who became a comic. Dimitri Martin, who was really big in the early 2000s, also was an attorney, worked at the White House for a while, then got into comedy. All these people I liked — Carlin — they were these critical thinkers doing speech and debate, presenting an argument or a take. It was a light bulb moment.
Hasan: I had this thing inside me — this was one of the first things in my life where I had an alacrity and speed at which I could do it that I never had at Kumon, at the SAT, at the MCATs, the LSATs. I can pick this up really fast.
Hasan: I think a lot of kids — your parents put you in soccer, basketball, swimming — and there’s always that kid from the first drill who picks it up fast. So much of adult life is figuring out, “What’s my thing that I pick up fast like that?” That was mine. Twenty-one years old.
Hasan: We had this business idea and we didn’t even know what the hell we were doing. Nobody does in the beginning. I remember thinking, “Man, my parents probably aren’t going to be cool with this.” Our idea was to create the Chipotle for sushi.
Shaan: Why does it sound like you were high when you said that?
Hasan: I wish. I just tried sushi for the first time, and before that I was eating Subway and Chipotle a lot. I was like, why isn’t sushi served like this? As simple as that.
Shaan: Have you always had this — the problem-solving thing? “Why don’t they do this like this?”
Hasan: That was the start of it. That’s what I’m saying — I didn’t always have it. I started to realize that. I’ve seen interviews with Naval and others. I wasn’t always like, “Why doesn’t that pizza place do this?” I say this because I used to watch those guys — Naval’s like a hero to me, a mentor in many ways — and when you hear people talk about how they just had it from day one, it makes you think if you don’t have that thing by then, “I guess I’m just not cut out that way.” So I’m always very frank about it — there were no signs of anything. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I didn’t know what I was good at, until I did. And that light bulb just comes on when it comes on.
Hasan: I went to my dad. I said, “Hey, I’m thinking about doing this thing.” I was kind of expecting the Indian parent thing — “No, stay focused, med school, remember the whole thing you just worked on for four years.” And he was like… he actually said he thought I should run with it.
Shaan: Oh, you think it’s a good idea?
Hasan: He goes, “No, I think it’s a terrible idea. I think the food business is awful, restaurants are a terrible idea, I don’t understand what you mean, you don’t know anything about sushi. I think it’s a terrible idea in ten different ways.” He’s like, “But what time did you wake up this morning?”
I said, “I don’t know, like 8:30.”
He goes, “And what did you do right away?”
I said I started working on it.
He goes, “That’s why I know you should do this.” Because the light obviously — he was like, “We’ve been trying to get you to study and care, and you wake up with your own light bulb on.”
Hasan’s Dad and Family Background [00:11:30]
Shaan: What does your dad do?
Hasan: He had a career where he was an engineer, worked at a big oil company, and then he realized — he was like thirty-something — he looked around his office. He’s like, “My office is the same office I’ve been in for ten years. I got all these patents on the wall.” He said these are just certificates they give me to pat me on the head. “The guy I hand my idea to, he gets promoted. He gets to go to London, takes my idea, makes it sound like his idea.” So he switched into the business side.
Hasan: That’s why he kind of — most parents have this thing where the thing they regret, they push their kids toward. For my dad it was two things: social, because he didn’t know anything about socializing until it was almost too late. He would drop me off at a party and be like, “You need to go.” And I’d be like, “I’m scared.” I was a scared high schooler.
Shaan: Did they let you have girlfriends and stuff?
Hasan: Yeah, they were cool about it. They were pushing me to fill the gaps that they didn’t have.
Shaan: Was your mom cool?
Hasan: My mom — I’m the oldest sibling, so the oldest paves the way. My sister had already done it. My mom was like, “Your sister didn’t tell us anything and did everything anyway.” Everything they told her not to do, she did, and didn’t tell them, which made it worse. So my mom was like, “All right, look…”
Finding the Drive Shaft [00:14:30]
Shaan: I know the listeners sometimes get mad at this — “Get to talking about Bitcoin.” But the reason this is important to me is understanding someone’s drive shaft is so imperative to why they are where they are. You’re looking under the surface.
Hasan: I’ll speak on my field, which is not big — it’s relatively narrow. If you take a hundred comics and you’re all in the green room, you’ll quickly see the ones that are talking, the ones that don’t like to write, the ones that use the comedy club as a crutch to give them a place to go socialize. The ones that love it, the sociopathic sycophants — all of those things. But if you start to find out more about them, you quickly find out: oh, this person’s running from something. Do you know what I mean? And that informs the next fifteen dominoes of their career and their life.
Shaan: Comedy is this torturous field. Nobody makes it, and even if you do make it, you have to come up with new material and reinvent it every year or two. And even the better you are at it, you’re a truth teller — often these truths are kind of ugly or painful about yourself or society. There’s this darkness that lives with a lot of great comedians. But you seem like a well-adjusted, good-looking guy. You saw the show last night — did you come off as unhinged?
Hasan: No, no, no —
Shaan: You came off — and this might sound like a compliment — you seem to me like somebody who isn’t naturally the funniest guy. Like some comedians, you just see it, you think they’re probably slaying whatever room they’re in. They just happen to be in a big auditorium. Yours — I could tell, and my sister even said it — he works on his craft. The stories, the beats, the punchlines, everything felt put together and thought through. The lighting, the sound, the body language on stage. It seemed like you had worked this set, not like this guy’s just funny and had two drinks and gets up here spitballing.
So to me it was like — it’s ironic — it’s the Indian kid who does hard work and practice and is really good at the thing he set his mind to. Is that accurate?
Hasan: Yeah, no, I think that is definitely accurate. I really do care. I love it. I love this thing.
Shaan: Do you agree with my first thing — that among a hundred comedians at the same time, you’re average, above average, below average naturally?
Hasan: So what you’re talking about is just natural — there’s people that look funny, talk funny, say things in a funny way. Chris Farley. Felipe Esparza just looks funny. Hannibal Buress has an amazing voice. Chappelle has an amazing voice. Chris Rock has a great voice.
I look like a news anchor. I look like I should be doing the five-day forecast. But I also have a genuine love and something I want to say. There’s a message. There’s something inside of me that I want to say.
For me, mixing standup comedy, storytelling, and theater — that was my elixir.
The Tetherball Feeling — Owning the Room [00:20:00]
Shaan: We were sitting there before the show and I said, “By the end it was like tetherball — one person gets the momentum and it’s just swinging, and the other person is flailing. The ball is just out of reach.” From about halfway through the show to the end, the crowd was in the palm of your hands. What is that feeling like? Because most human beings are never going to experience that.
Hasan: You know what it feels like? Every artist — and I think every human being, whether it’s intimate relationships, personal relationships, collaborating in business, family dynamics, and hopefully your career — everybody wants to feel seen.
There’s this moment in act two of the show where I basically go, “I want to give you guys all of me. I want to close the gap between who I am on Instagram and who I am on iMessage.” And when I look in people’s eyes, I can tell everybody in that Bay Area work-from-home crowd is like, “I can’t be me.” And there’s part of me, when I lay down and I’m sharing all these secrets with you guys, there’s this moment of “Do you see me? I want to be seen.”
When my spouse and I are disagreeing on something, she’s like, “You don’t see me. You actually don’t see me for who I am.” And the most enriching thing about that last moment — when I say good night and I see people’s reactions — I feel seen. I’m like, “Y’all get me.”
Hasan: Laughter in that exchange in that live experience is an expression of love. I can’t make you laugh, can’t force you to laugh — much like love, making it’s an intimate act. That release of laughter is like, “Oh, you get me. You feel me.” That’s the climax. I feel loved and seen.
Pre-Show Routine [00:24:00]
Shaan: Before the show, what’s the feeling like for you now? What’s the system you’ve developed? Because when you came on, within two seconds it was like this guy’s in a state of mind, he’s here to perform, no tiptoeing into it.
Hasan: I don’t really — this is your personal curiosity?
Shaan: I want to know it.
Hasan: My trainer has this great phrase. He goes, “Who are my customers?” And people always answer with some demographic. He’s like, “The easiest way to know who your customers are is: the people who love what you do.” So just do what you want, you’ll naturally attract the people who love that, repel the people who aren’t interested, and you’ll never have to guess what people want because you just do what you want. That’s the approach I take to the pod.
Hasan: But for me, it’s the three hours before. I try to do some form of exercise. I don’t know if you feel this way — it’s funny, you said I seem like a guy who works really hard. I was doing Marc Maron’s podcast and Maron said the same thing: “Yeah, you seem really put together. Why aren’t you unraveling like the way other comics are?”
I’m just philosophically not from the tortured artist camp. I’m more from the place of creating from passion and love. Real talk — it’s about emptying the tank. I just want to put it all out on the court. This court happens to be the stage.
I want to know when I put my head down on the pillow, I did everything I could. Living a life without regret — only you can answer that. Is the best everybody’s talking about chasing happiness? To me, it’s about chasing satisfaction. Self-satisfaction. You know what it is. You know when you sold out but you kind of didn’t do it the right way. That sticks with you. Some people let that stick. Other people say, “All right, even if I won, I’m not going to win on those terms again.”
Hasan: So three hours before: some form of exercise. On tour it’s just body maintenance — running, pull-ups, core stuff, just to get my body going. What I love is around minute thirty to forty-five, I’ll get out of my head and into my body. And so much of life right now — getting out of your head.
I called you randomly — I appreciate you picking up the phone. So much of what you put out in the world, I call it “tech Twitter talk” — it’s all in your head. Ethereum’s up, Solana’s this — it’s all headshit. It’s not a body feeling. Grounding yourself, two feet on the ground, I’m here in this moment. The best performers — Chappelle, Steph Curry, Devin Booker, Luka — they’re in their body. They’re in flow. Kids do this well naturally. The older you get, the more you have to fight for it.
Hasan: Then I eat something, take a shower, and put on the outfit. For me it’s like a uniform. From the watch to the jacket to the pants — there’s a level of confidence when you move into a room and you’re like, “From my heels all the way up to my head, I’m wearing my armor. I’m coming correct.” You just carry yourself with a little bop.
Then I get to the show, finish eating, and meditate — ten to fifteen minutes. Something simple, like Headspace. A lot of it is just basic breathing, establishing a level of intention. Then I’ll pray, because for me prayer is really important. I’m like, “What am I doing this for?” And the intention is love — let me give joy to people. I want the seed of everything I do to come from that, not from petty energy, angry energy, “I’m going to prove you wrong” energy. I’m in the laughter business. I’m here to make you feel joy.
Hasan: I get to the venue about an hour before, have a double shot of espresso, let my bowels do what they do — you always get those jitters — and then about thirty to forty-five minutes before, I like to be loose with the staff. Door guy, security, openers. That’s another way to get out of your head — be with others. Then about a half hour before, I’ll go to my green room and write it down on hotel notepad paper. Just a couple of new tags I’m working on tonight.
Hasan: For example, last night I talk about fertility in act one, and a new joke I did was — you know what it’s like being infertile as a man? I felt like Woody in Toy Story when his arm got ripped off. Just one line. And I was like, “Make sure you do the Woody Toy Story line.” Every show I try to add a few of these extra moments. You add that up over a year, two years, three years, you start to see what works and what doesn’t — thousands of different variations.
Hasan: And then I get on stage, and by that point it’s just pure play. Whatever happens, happens.
Shaan: Do you ever watch film of yourself?
Hasan: I watch tape all the time. I see bad habits. It’s kind of brutal, yeah. But there’s a lot of growth in it. The only way to break through to the next level is that part.
Shaan: I’ve done that in the business world too. The things you’re talking about — how you get ready, what you do before your performance — athletes do this before they get on the field, performers before they get on stage. I do this before I get on my laptop. It sounds dorky, but I’m trying to be the best version of myself. I’m trying to set an intention, trying to get out of my head so I can do my best. I do all the same things, I just apply them to this world.
Hasan: Is your routine similar?
Shaan: Very similar. Compressed, because it’s a longer day. I’ve practiced getting to that state in ten minutes. Three components: breathwork — first three minutes, I use breath to change my physiological state right away, I’ll do fifteen to twenty push-ups with it. Next three minutes, it’s not about you: I rotate through people I love in my head, visualize them laughing. Their joyful state. I’ve seen them laugh a thousand times so I just see them all laugh in succession. Now I’m not thinking about me and my problems — I’m thinking about them. The last bit is I establish an intention and I remember why I’m here.
Shaan: I used to think about what I was going to say — for a meeting, a presentation, a podcast — and that used to paralyze me. Instead, I imagine the end. I already imagine us saying bye to each other at the end of this, and if that happened, this all went well. I remember what I’m trying to deliver. I’m not going to learn a new skill in the next five minutes. The performance is going to be based on all the hard work I’ve done over a decade. I don’t try to cram for the exam — I just try to put myself in the right state of mind to perform the way I already know how.
Accountability, Online Criticism, and the Social Media Trap [00:34:30]
Shaan: You’re part of this business internet world which is filled with people that are sincere, but also grifters, people doing get-rich-quick schemes. This world that you run in, people are talking about money and business in a really interesting way. People comment, quote-tweet, dunk on you. It’s now social currency. How do you deal with those negative critiques?
Hasan: Honest answer: yeah, every negative comment is ten times, ten times more impactful than a positive one. That’s the initial reaction. But there’s a difference between response and reaction. The initial reaction — if I’m not in the right state of mind — I’m going to clap back, or go look at their profile, like, “You only got eleven followers and you’re saying this?” And I realized pretty quickly that doesn’t get me anywhere. It would waste almost half a day just checking the mentions.
Hasan: You did an amazing bit about this that was the most relatable — the comments, the likes, social media cocaine, cloud crack cocaine.
Shaan: With that comes negativity, and that’s fun in its own way.
Hasan: So where did I land with all that? The people who think I’m a genius guru — I’m not, my wife reminds me of that real quick. The people who think I’m an idiot, a scammer, wrong, stumbled and said this the wrong way. Okay — where is my focus going to go? So I said, “I do need a sounding board.” I get a reaction, good or bad, and I’m like, “Let me get curious. Why are people reacting this way?” I’ll take a minute to observe that. Then I’ll go internal. My rule that I created for myself: I want my own opinion of myself to be higher than anybody else’s opinion of me. My opinion of myself is the trump card. That works for self-respect. I stopped seeking the respect of others because if I don’t have the main respect for myself first, what is all this other stuff worth?
Shaan: But how did you get that wisdom? We are social creatures.
Hasan: My trainer — he’s my bro, he said something at the very beginning. He goes, “Why do you want to work out?” I said, “I just want to get fit. I got real fat during my last company.”
He wanted to know the drive shaft. “Why do you think you’re fat? What’s making you think that? Why did you call me today? Why not six months ago? What changed?”
And eventually it got down to: I went on a Spartan race with two of my best friends who are a little older, business mentors. And I was way behind, huffing and puffing, dying on this thing. They were trying to help me, and every time they helped me I felt like an idiot. I’d rather they just ran and finished the race and left me to die on my own.
Shaan: The worst thing you could do is push from behind on that.
Hasan: Yeah. So I told my trainer: “I was embarrassed. I just want to have the respect of the people I respect.”
He goes, “Respect is one of those things — you want to give it, not seek it. Whenever you feel you lack something, it’s time to give that exact thing. And when you give it, you realize: I got it. I have it in abundance.”
Whatever you feel like you lack in the moment — that’s a signal. It’s time to give that exact thing. That became one of my philosophies.
The Metaverse Tweet and Honor in the Digital World [00:41:00]
Hasan: I know I called you about one of your tweets that went viral — it was about how the digital world will matter more than the physical world. The reason why it so deeply philosophically rubbed me the wrong way was because the pseudonymous digital world has commodified cowardice in such a way that the real world doesn’t. The game checks you.
Hasan: I grew up playing ball at 24 Hour Fitness. First to twelve, straight up or win by two. There’d be these guys that were nice — it’d be eleven-eleven, this dude would step back, hit it, and as he’s about to hit it he’d go, “Get the hell off the court.” And you’d respect it. You’d sit there and you’d run it back.
For the first time in history, there are people that stand on stage — the stage of business, or life, or comedy, or art — under their actual name, and pseudonymous trolls who don’t use their name can launch digital drone strikes attacking your character, your family, and potentially impose economic sanctions on your future. And they do it pseudonymously.
Philosophically, I don’t rock with that. Say it with your chest. Get on the court with me at 24 Hour Fitness. That’s what fundamentally bothers me.
Shaan: That’s the right question — not “Why are they doing this?” but “Why does this bother me?”
Hasan: Right. Because you’re not going to stop it. So the curiosity is what will set you free.
I’m also thinking about my children. I’ve got a three-year-old and a one-year-old. How do I prepare them for this new world order?
In a weird way, there’s times where I’m like, “Yo, I wish you punched me in the face.” I’ve gotten into three fights. Lost all of them. One time some kid was trying to steal my shoes — I didn’t let him and he beat the hell out of me. But I kept my Jordan 13s. I remember being like — I like the IRL nature of this. There is some level of virtue even in the fight. It ends, and it ends today. We’ve resolved this here. Which is why when people fight, the beef is usually gone — as long as the fight was on fair terms. That doesn’t happen in the digital world.
Hasan: The reason I’m saying “say it with your government name” — if someone says Shaan is corny or Hassan is corny, anytime a comedian or contemporary says that, I go, “Cool. Put up your hour against my hour. Oh, I’m corny? I’ll do ten, you do ten. Let’s see what it is. Let’s play to twelve.” I love the dance of it. It’s merit-based. You can get up on stage, whatever your name is, and you can’t make them laugh. You can’t just force them to laugh. You must earn it.
That’s why my favorite thing in pop culture right now is the rap verses. The Dipset versus The LOX battle — you could see Jadakiss go up against Dipset, and I thought Dipset was going to win, but Jadakiss was so nice he just buried them. “Let’s play to twelve. You play your records, I’ll play my records.” There’s something so honorable in that. The new digital world order is so not honorable.
Shaan: It even gets worse because what you say online, the photo you take, is so easily faked. It’s not even like playing a live game — it’s like we each submitted a mixtape. How much editing is going into your lifestyle, your opinion, your persona? It’s all filtered, edited, curated, leaving out the bad stuff.
Hasan: I’m not knocking digital skills. If two people are competing in video games, I still like that — you’re still better at 2K than me. But when I’m using my government name and “BallDrape79” is risking nothing, this game is whack.
Shaan: The pendulum has swung. Before the internet, everybody was in real life, real name, merit-based. People still had opinions in their heads, they just couldn’t broadcast it. If somebody said you were corny, they had to ante up — we’re squaring off in the lunchroom. There was a barrier to entry.
Shaan: You know what we’re analyzing right now? This is Kevin Durant syndrome. KD is one of the greatest basketball players on earth and random people on the internet get his feelings riled up. If KD — seven foot two, built like a velociraptor, can move like a point guard — is getting in his feelings about these laymen at home, we’re in a big fundamental shift in society and culture.
Hasan: The reason you get the rewards you get are because of all these things too — by going out there under your real name, real face, with authenticity, telling your real life stories. Talking about fertility issues, stuff like that. The meter is just running up. Why? Because it’s in such scarcity today. We don’t get that from most people. So when somebody does it, you’re running up the score real quick.
You get the benefits of being the counter. You’re running counter to it. You’re putting it on the line. Before technology, you’d be doing local shows. Someone in North Carolina might have loved you, someone in Texas never heard of you. Now you do the Netflix show, you do Twitter, you’re reaching everybody everywhere all at once. You’re getting the benefits of that leverage and you’re running up the score because society lacks this real honor code of “I’m going to try to earn it under my real name and put myself out there.”
Shaan: And people who are not willing to play — they’re not going to get any of the benefit. They get this proportional, small bit of success when they dunk on you. They get a little immediate dopamine hit, but their score never really goes up.
Hasan: That’s the capital markets’ efficiency. They’ll get Durant, or you get rewarded for being authentic and accountable. With that power comes the trade-off: would you like this giant prize? Here’s the cost.
Shaan: You blew up in the last five years, basically. That was a massive media rise. It’s because you had the right answer when society was going one way — you were a counterpoint. Willing to say what was on your mind, willing to say what was right, and you used technology to go viral. But you’re going to have to pay this tax, this vig, along the way. The two sides of the same coin.
Hasan: So just so the listeners know — I called you on the phone when that thread went viral. I said, “Hey, Shaan — this actually irks me.” I’m an artist, I operate from a feeling thing, and then I start questioning why I feel this way. I’m an IRL guy. But when you’re telling me everything is going to be on the metaverse, I don’t want to be a pseudonymous drone. I don’t want to throw drone strikes at people I can’t see. I want to talk about what’s real. If you watch the show, I’m talking about what’s real about me and Beena, my kids, going at dictators and governments, lawsuits. This is real. I’m being sincere and authentic in that experience and I got the receipts.
Shaan: The comedian who gets up there and just tells dick jokes is not going to have the same emotional resonance as you going up there and talking about fertility issues and what that was like. The attention that’s loaded in that — anybody who’s been through anything with kids, that whole process, the uncertainty. You put the real you out there, you get the reward.
Hasan: Right. The comedian who just makes the dick joke — I laugh and I move on. I don’t feel like I’m going to back this guy. By the end of your show I was like, “I’m about what this dude’s about.” Because that’s you. You drew a line in the sand — “This is what I’m about.” You built your case. How could you not pick a side? That’s how you build an army.
Hasan: You’re also saying: be aware of what’s already working for you and why. You built your brand being the opposite of that. When you see low accountability, it disgusts you the way Steve Jobs was disgusted by poorly designed products — because he built himself as someone who cared about the inside of the case, what that looked like, and those other guys don’t even care what the outside looks like.
Accountability, Screen Names, and the Digital Identity Question [00:55:00]
Shaan: To go to the metaverse side of it — it’s not as different as you think. Let’s say the world does move to where digital identity matters a lot. You have a screen name. My first screen name was “Mr. Goobapple.” Whatever. Let’s say that stuck with me. Whatever your screen name is, you’re still building up a reputation. It doesn’t matter if that name matches your social security number. It’s wherever you’re going to make accountable. “If you like me, if you trust me, put my reputation on this name. And if I mess up, that name has lost its value.” It’s still going to work the same way. People are still going to have to put up or shut up under some handle.
Hasan: You know my first screen name was Hassan Minhaj. On AIM. And I remember you’d see the door open, hear the sound — and I messaged him and then immediately the door closed.
Shaan: Where do you get the points of doing things the way you do them? The fact that you take time to train, you’re preparing your mind as a physical, corporeal being with two feet on planet earth, rather than being just this guy with a headset in the matrix.
Hasan: I’m not going to say I’m above that. Maybe when it’s fully here, maybe I will — my kids are going to tackle me and put it on my head and be like, “Just join us, Dad.”
But it’s like — I remember before the phone, I remember thinking it was crazy that people watched movies on a tiny screen. Why would you do that? I love going to the theater. I love the feel of a newspaper. If you had told me, “Hey, you’re going to check your phone a hundred and seventy times a day,” I would have been like, “Why would I do that? I’m not a hamster.” The things I do normally today would have seemed really abnormal. So who knows.
Consuming vs. Creating / Building Community [01:00:30]
Shaan: How do you eliminate noise from your life? I’m genuinely curious about — take your friend Trung, who’s hilarious online. How much internet garbage is going into that guy’s head every day? He has to sift through it. That’s his job — filtering through the noise to find the one good thing. And how does it affect your body and mind?
Hasan: I heard this great quote from an entrepreneur — I was asking what he does outside of building his startup. He said they make music together. I was like, “So you’re trying to make a band?” He’s like, “No, we just make music because it’s more fun than listening to music.” He said, “We make videos.” I was like, “You trying to be a YouTuber?” He’s like, “No, it’s just better than sitting there watching YouTube.”
He goes, “I have this rule: good friends consume together, great friends create together.” You can look at all your relationships and say: what percentage of the time are we just consuming versus building or making something together? The great relationships in my life, I recognize they’re great because we create. So whether it’s even with work, I try to create. Most people are consuming ninety-nine percent of the time — mouth open, ingesting whatever everybody else is putting out.
Hasan: I know scrolling feeds is addictive. I do it sometimes. But I try to say, “I need to be creating eighty percent, consuming twenty percent.” And I can only consume to the extent it helps me create.
Shaan: How do you build community in this startup-ish world?
Hasan: Entrepreneurs — like comics — we’re all trying to do something really hard, build something from scratch. There’s this camaraderie. My community became other startup founders when I was doing that, and now that I’m creating content and building an audience, it’s people who are trying to do that too. We have one friend — Pomp — he’s amazing at content, building his brand. When I look at it, I say, “Wow, there’s a lot I admire about what he did.” But I also learned I would never want to do exactly what he does. He does a daily business show, wakes up at five in the morning, creates a three-hour live show every single day.
Shaan: Every day.
Hasan: I get it, that would work. I would never want to go that path. So I’m triangulating and learning from the three other things he did that I thought were great. Just like any athlete trying to get good at anything — you surround yourself with people who are in the game trying to do the same thing. That’s your peer group. And then you have some people who have already done it, your mentors, and you go to them from time to time.
The Daily Show, Developing a Take, and the Comedy Craft [01:06:00]
Shaan: When did you go from suck to non-suck?
Hasan: I took the Pixar approach — all movies start at suck, our job is to remove the suck until there’s non-suck left.
The Daily Show changed my life. Seeing the way Jon Stewart worked, that institution — both the Daily Show and SNL. Love them or hate them, they’re comedy institutions. SNL for fifty years, Daily Show for twenty-five. These are pedigree boot camps for understanding the process of how to think about comedy.
What Jon taught me and Trevor showed me — John really unlocked the code — it’s all about your take. What is your take? What am I trying to say? What am I philosophically, artistically trying to say?
Hasan: Let me give an example. In the show last night, you’re like, you met this private equity guy. “What the hell is that?” As you get to the bottom of it: so you use other people’s money to buy other people’s companies, you fire people to make them profitable, and then you flip it to somebody else. I’m not cool with that. That’s kind of a messed-up way to win. Legal stealing.
Shaan: Yeah, yeah. It wasn’t even your money.
Hasan: Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s ethical. Right? Bill Cosby got off legally. The glove didn’t fit, O.J. All right. So that’s my take on leverage buyouts and vulture funds. Then you start tagging it. You can do the Bill Cosby tag — you know, it’s not right. Then the funny just starts flowing from there. You’re sitting in a room with a few people, spitballing, riffing, and eventually you put pen to paper.
Hasan: When I watch Weekend Update, when I see a segment on the Daily Show or Last Week Tonight, I now see the matrix. I know how to construct a seven-and-a-half-minute piece, a twenty-seven-minute piece. I know the beats and flow. What it gave me was a central philosophy. The first ten, eleven, twelve years of my career I was just trying to be funny. What Jon helped me unlock in 2014 was: there needs to be an actual process and purpose to what you do. You need to understand the game and how to heighten it comedically. Even stupid silly jokes are like that.
Hasan: My next thing I’m working on most is the jazz part. Just have fun. That’s always been one of my weaknesses because I’m a Kumon kid — we’re so built around fear. There are moments I try to have on stage where I’m just kind of unhinged. Like the first three or four minutes when I’m just riffing — making fun of the shorts, the kid in the front row, people coming in late. That’s pure jazz. Jazz has structure but there’s also play. That organized chaos is what I’m trying to tap into.
The White House Correspondents Dinner Breakthrough [01:13:00]
Shaan: When did things start getting really good?
Hasan: About the last four or five years. The White House Correspondents Dinner — that was my big breakthrough. National recognition moment. I penetrated front-page-of-the-news-feed type fame and clout and credibility.
Shaan: You start doing well, start making money doing this thing — which is amazing, so hard to do. Now the business side of things. How are you running the show?
Hasan: Dude, I’m just touring twenty-four seven. The money just goes in an account. But I’m starting to think more about the business side of things now.
Hasan: Show business per specifically is extremely predatory. It’s built on this idea that we provide the labor, and they bank on you being desperate, dumb, and not owning your IP. The studios, the streamers, the agencies — they’re banking on you not knowing what it is. For the first time in history, we’re starting to see close groups of collaborators building things themselves. They can still run them through the big pipes of the studio system, but they’re also like, “No, we independently operate. We cook everything, we write everything.”
Me and Prashanth started a company. We write, we produce, we executive produce people’s projects. We do the whole thing kit and caboodle. Hypothetically Shaan comes to me and goes, “Hey, I’m hosting this fifteen-minute event at this thing, I want it to rip.” I go, “Cool, what’s your take, what do you want to say? Come sit down with me in PV, let’s break down your act one.” And that’s a cool opportunity for us to collaborate. This brown paper bag relationship we have as artisans together — that’s paramount. The more artists learn about the business side of things, the better.
Artist Finance: Lump Sums, Burn Rate, and Managing Money [01:18:30]
Hasan: The other part of it — so much of my life was just trying to make it. Now I don’t even know what to do with money. I’m trying to understand: what is money, what do you do with it?
Shaan: Where have you arrived on that?
Hasan: To me, capital represents two things. Money will not solve all your problems, but money can take care of certain problems. If there are ten problems — childcare, my daughter’s braces, being able to Uber back and forth to the airport — I can take those off the table. It will not solve my marriage, will not make me a loving father, won’t make me in shape. But taking those pain points off the table means a lot.
As an artist, money can do two things: it gives me the opportunity to say no to things. “Hey, you should host this game show.” Nah. And it gives me the opportunity to imprint my worldview upon the world on my own terms.
Hasan: The show you saw — I own it outright. I’m not just in the comedy business, I’m in the trucking business. I own and operate that eighteen-wheel truck. Those lights, the holodeck I’m standing on that glows — I own it. There’s a sense of empowerment of “I want to say this in the world, and I have the capital to imprint my worldview upon the world.” That’s deeply empowering.
Hasan: The next thing I’m trying to learn — and the reason why I want to be on podcasts and meet people like you — is artists need to learn more about how money works. Because there are a lot of artists where you’ll get hit up and they’ll be like, “So-and-so has cancer, we need to do a comedy benefit to pay for their medical bills.” This guy was on SNL. This has to stop.
My question to you: if you were an artist and you all of a sudden were given two million dollars, a million dollars, five hundred thousand — you make these lump sums — what would you do with that money?
Shaan: First thing: there are going to be a bunch of people telling you what to do with your money, and you’ve got to protect yourself from them at all costs. The people swooping in with the next great opportunity, trying to get you to buy Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises and stuff like that. You have to find a trusted person who is an expert and align your incentives so they’re not able to just pillage you, like happens to a lot of athletes.
Hasan: I fortunately grew up a nerdy kid, I don’t roll with an entourage. I pulled up today solo with my backpack. I don’t have those pitfalls — a couple jewelry purchases, a couple car purchases, and a divorce away from losing it all.
That said, I’ll read books like JL Collins’s book — he’s an advocate of VTSAX, Vanguard funds. But when I go on the internet and I see the noise in your mentions and on Sam’s page, nobody’s trying to mess with BTC like you guys — how do you discern ontological truth from just this never-ending noise?
Shaan: Here’s how I’d break it down. There’s some people who are trying to become Diddy, become Kevin Hart, have a mega empire. Then there are people who say: I came from nothing, I got this thing, I need a certain level of security and safety. What’s that number? So you start playing with these numbers. What does life cost? What do I want? What are my goals with this? What’s my burn right now?
Shaan: What most people do wrong is they’re picking strategies without really curating the objectives. Any strategy is meant to get you to some objective. So first — set the goal.
Hasan: My goal is two things. Being a father and a husband means providing financial safety and security for my kids. Money was always a thing people in my family argued about and I never wanted that to be a thing here.
But as an artist, money also lets me do deep work. It took me two and a half, three years to write this show. In order to do that, I have to have runway room. I need two years to be able to hole up and write. My daughter has glasses now, my mom’s knees are going, she needs knee replacement surgery — I’m the eldest, these are real things. I need that burn covered for ten years.
But we also live in a world where you can’t really retire. I want to be Rocky. I want to be Mel Brooks, doing this until I die. Dick Gregory died with dates on the books — he was going to do Rooster T. Feathers in Sunnyvale, California. In his eighties. What an inspired life.
Hasan: So — what’s that number? Ten years. And then the second thing: what financial capital do I need to continue to imprint my vision upon the world? The burn to run my show is almost forty grand a week just in labor and trucking costs. Tour at scale — six, eight, nine months a year, taking it to Europe, Asia, Australia — I want to be able to count on myself creatively, not ask a network. I’ve got to make moves that can potentially ten-x what I have because it can then cover that burn. Those are my two missions.
Shaan: That will give you a number or a range. Then you ask: what strategies get me there? You’re not going to know them yourself because you spent ten years getting amazing at comedy, not the money game. The money game is its own game. I’m going to respect that — the same way I know what it was like to be an absolute beginner in comedy. I got my ass kicked for eight years straight in business. So you’ve got to find somebody who needs you less than you need them. Because the people who need you — they need you for the clout, the money. Find somebody who doesn’t really need you, who’s happy to help because it’s a mutual exchange.
Shaan: Here’s my approach: there’s a safety playbook — some amount of money in Vanguard low-cost ETFs, expected to grow seven percent. You can chart that out. That’s safety. Then there’s the high-risk, high-reward part of the portfolio.
Hasan: That Jason Calacanis book — take a hundred thousand and turn it into one hundred — is that real?
Shaan: That part I do not believe is real.
Hasan: I made fun of Bitcoin on Patriot Act. I said, “I believe in Bitcoin, I just don’t believe in the people that tell me to get Bitcoin.” Because it’s all my homies that told me to take out a subprime mortgage in 2008. “Travis, it’s a property.” Now he’s like, “Diamond hands.” The comic in me wants to say: keep it a hundred with me. Look me in the eye. You have ten grand in the bank, the cost of living in Milpitas is too high, and you need this to two-hundred-x. That’s why my jokes are getting to you. Am I lying?
Shaan: You’re not wrong. And the thing that works for me is like a cheat code. When I was doing the sushi restaurant thing, they said location is everything, so we were scouting. Then we realized: Chipotle puts billions of dollars into picking the right location. Why don’t we just go right next to wherever Chipotle is? That’s actually the strategy Quiznos and a bunch of other brands used. Noodles and Company — go look next to a Chipotle, there’ll be a Noodles and Company or Subway right there.
Shaan: So I have a couple of buddies who’ve been successful in this game. What are you putting your money into now? What ratios? How do you think about them? I triangulate between four people. They’re not telling me to do it because they get something out of it. They’re themselves investing in it. And there’s an intelligent way to copy and an unintelligent way to follow. The unintelligent way is: I heard this from some guy who’s got an incentive to sell me this thing, I don’t understand why he’s telling me to do this, I can’t really ask him, I don’t know what percentage of his portfolio is in it. So somebody says, “I have half a percent of my net worth in this because I understood it in this way and I thought it had this risk-reward.” You put thirty percent of your net worth in it. I never told you to do that. You interpreted X as Y.
Hasan: The other thing you mentioned that’s important — artists have to get leverage. My dad was at the show. He couldn’t believe how much the beer cost. He goes, “That beer is a dollar at Costco.” I said, “I know, but I wanted to have a beer and enjoy the show, it was worth thirteen dollars to me.” He goes, “This guy must be doing amazing — he did eight shows in the Bay Area, he’s got a Netflix special.”
I’ll say, yeah. But also think about — I don’t know what your Netflix deal is, but if I was offered a Netflix deal I’d have to do it for zero essentially. Netflix knows that I have to say yes to have a Netflix show. My bargaining power is probably very low. Even though it’s a big deal and might do well, my negotiating leverage is low. Versus this show that I own, where my leverage is higher. So just because you have certain distribution and fame, that doesn’t mean monetization. The Comedy Central deal — you’re on the Daily Show, you’re on SNL, you’re on a cultural institution, you’re building your name. They know they can pay you whatever.
Creator-Owned Streaming and the Coordination Problem [01:38:00]
Hasan: Somebody said this — why wouldn’t comedians create their own streaming platform? Everybody’s getting big checks from Netflix to do a special. But the streaming technology is now standardized. You can have a white-label version of Netflix in six months.
Shaan: The thing is, you need draws. And that’s always the coordination problem. If you could somehow coordinate the key artists to say, “We can own this, we can create our own platform that’s a comedy streaming service” — people pay for it, and we share the dividends meritocratically. Meaning if I come to watch your show, you get the bounty of my subscription. If I also watch three other artists, they get some cut. What crypto and other things are enabling is a creator-owned platform. Somebody’s going to do this.
Hasan: Chappelle, Kevin Hart — if you could coordinate those forces to say, “Let’s create a platform, let’s only put our art on this platform.” Comedy is one of those things where fans will pay to jump the fence. A comedy streaming platform could easily be valued at single-digit billions, creator-owned.
Hasan: My man Az, he’s always been a futurist — twenty years ahead. I tell Az, “You got the Al Gore problem.” He asked Chappelle: “Dave, you’re the goat, you could just put it up on DaveChappelle.com and everybody would pay fifteen, twenty bucks. Radiohead-style, proud-to-pay.” Dave goes like this… he goes, “New fans. What about new fans?”
Shaan: What that Netflix billboard gives you is — it pumps that tile out in front of you whether you like it or not. I don’t know Sam Parr, I slid into his DMs, he’s with his wife, they open Netflix and they see your tile. Now Sam has to reckon with that. He sees Shaan retweet your thing — “Man, this Indian dude, what’s up? Let me see this.” I’ve now picked up Sam Parr. But for new fans — the distribution is what gets them on board.
Hasan: That’s what the Proud to Pay movement doesn’t have. Louis put out Sincerely Louis CK on a closed network. People couldn’t get outraged about it, couldn’t write articles about it that would get you to watch it and pick you up as a new fan. It had to be paired with a pretty aggressive clip strategy. You take the best stuff, put it on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram — that’s where you get exposure. Otherwise you can’t simulate the new fan. And that’s the coordination problem — the biggest artists you want are getting overpaid by the networks because the strategy is to lock them in, and then every other artist has to follow at below market rate.
Hasan: So I’m trying to have a barbell approach. On Instagram I put out content, Tyler my videographer and I put out stuff. Trying to barbell it and figure out how we start to monetize those things now.
Hasan: The clearest sign of that I’ve seen, with a low cost of entry, has been podcasting. Tom Segura, Joe Rogan, Andrew Schultz, Call Her Daddy — those guys in the podcast sphere have been able to build their own independent platforms and have more leverage.
Here’s my issue: I find it very risky to put up every single thought and idea I have in real time on the internet. I’m being candid. The reason I love what you do is that it’s honest and sincere. And I think artists need to start talking to people in your space to say — you understand business, we understand art, how can we work together? How do these two worlds now merge, without being part of a multinational conglomerate with business affairs and lawyers mucking it all up? That’s the interesting new world I’m really excited about.
What Hasan Wants to Discuss on MFM [01:49:00]
Shaan: When you’re listening to the pod and there’s a moment where you’re screaming either “You don’t get it, talk about this instead!” or “I disagree!” — what are those things?
Hasan: You can only tear something down if you also pitch an alt. Don’t just criticize the idea — pitch an alt. So I’ll tell you what I love.
You guys had this run: “If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it today?” I loved that. Then there’s another thing you did that was really cool — it was vulnerable. You and Sam were candid about your asset portfolio distributions. Sam was a little more conservative, you were more risky. Those were two moments I loved.
But I want to tag that with a question: where did you get that attitude? That BDE — where did that come from?
Shaan: When we got acquired, we went to Twitch. They brought in this guy who became the chief product officer. He came in gray-haired, didn’t play video games, was at Google in 2003 or some such. Obviously smart and accomplished in tech, but seemed out of touch with the product. Internally there were rumblings: “This guy doesn’t get it.” And he would ask questions in meetings like, “Do you know what Fortnite is?” And people were internally like, “Wait, how do you have this job if you don’t know what Minecraft is?”
But he was just — he didn’t care. “I’m asking questions to learn. Obviously if I’m asking, I don’t know. I think it’s important to know, so I’m going to learn it right here.” He didn’t care what it looked like.
Shaan: He sat down with me for a one-on-one. He goes, “All right, career planning — what do you want to do?” I was in the vesting structure, getting some cash up front and then more at year one, year two, year three. I only got to year two.
Hasan: Self-imposed?
Shaan: Yeah, I was just like, “This is enough, I want to go do other things.” I’m surprised I even got to two. Year one locked in family security, so I was like, “I don’t care how bad this sucks, I’m going to get that year. I’m going to lock in — family is good, I’ll get the bag.”
So he asked: “What is the number?” In the Bay Area, I had always said six million. Six million is where your money works for you. Until then, you’re working for money.
Hasan: Why six?
Shaan: I worked backwards. My burn rate, at the time, was about twenty thousand a month in expenses. I said, “Okay, that’s two hundred forty thousand a year. How do I make it so that just the interest on the money I own — the gains on it being invested in the market — covers that?” Target of four or five percent. You do the math, divide two hundred forty thousand by five percent — the number came out to about six million. Six million dollars invested would yield an amount that pays for our lifestyle rather than me going and working a job. And some people said that was too low, some said why are your expenses so high. But that became a target number.
Hasan: So you got to six?
Shaan: I got to six. Post-tax. Then I told that Twitch guy honestly — I knew the right answer was “I love it here at Twitch and I could see myself being you someday.” The reality was I couldn’t. This was fun because I made it my way, but this is not where I want to be forever. So I told him.
He goes, “Then we don’t need to talk about this Twitch stuff — tell me what you want to do.”
I said, “Well, first I’m doing this so that then I can go do the thing I want to do.”
He goes, “I don’t believe that strategy of life. I don’t believe in this life plan of doing all the stuff you don’t want to do so that then you can do all the things you do want to. People who have that plan — very rarely do you ever do the thing you want to do. It’s much better to just do the thing you want to do. Start that now.”
Hasan: But then — what you’re talking about is if you had approached it that way, you might never have gotten to six.
Shaan: Exactly. He had a different mindset. He said, “Why don’t you just figure out what you want to do, figure out what it required, what skills, what money, and start accumulating those?”
That’s actually where the six came in. I said, “I want to wake up every day and work on whatever I’m most interested in.” I want to do comedy sometimes. I want to produce a record — I don’t know anything about music but wouldn’t that be fun? Write a book. Why not? That’d be a fun way to spend a career. So I said, “If I want to be able to do that, I gotta have this.” I need time.
The Mindset: Don’t Wait, Carry Yourself Like You Already Have It [01:58:00]
Shaan: My trainer told me: if you want to have a certain thing, carry yourself like the guy who has that thing.
It’s not even “fake it till you make it.” You believe you’re going to feel a certain way when you have it — that’s why you want it. So let’s skip all the middle steps and just believe that we’re going to have that. Let’s carry ourselves like that. Let’s have that feeling now. Don’t punt the feeling until the end when you’re sixty and maybe you’ve achieved your goal.
The comedy take I had on this: the extremely wealthy and the homeless actually operate the same way — which is, “What are you going to do to me? What can you take from me?” They both operate with that same kind of freedom. It’s the people in that vast middle who fear either direction who are like, “I cannot mess this up.”
Hasan: That’s the mindset — waiting is the enemy. Anytime you hear the word “wait,” run. Anytime you’re waiting to do the thing you want to do — don’t wait.
Shaan: So if I want this feeling of security, of relaxation, of confidence — why am I waiting? Let me tap into that now. Two benefits: you feel better today, already a win. And there’s also a strategy to it. When you carry yourself like that, you’d be surprised what kinds of doors open for you, how people treat you differently. They treat you with the assumption of where you treat yourself.
Hasan: Why do you dress the way you dress, why do you carry yourself that way? Because people will treat you differently. Life gives to you what you’re putting out. There’s this Harvard researcher who called it the “happiness effect” — most people wait until they achieve a thing, then they’re going to feel happy. Then what happens? You achieve it and you move the goalpost. “When I really have it, then I can do it.” This keeps moving, deferring the thing you want.
He said: not only are you deferring the thing you want, but studies show the person who goes into a situation already feeling happy performs better on the test, is better in the professional setting, has a higher likelihood of success, has more lucky breaks. They tested it — they gave a test where the third line of the instructions said “skip to the end, write the letter five, and you’re done.” The people who went in stressed were trying to solve every problem. The people who went in relaxed and confident were more likely to notice that line: “Oh, another break that goes my way.”
Shaan: That’s when I started to learn about this “happiness effect” — bring the future feeling you’re chasing into the now. Not only do you feel good now, you actually get better results.
Hasan: And there’s a mindset shift — you’re operating differently. Sam may look at your financial situation and be like, “You can’t afford to start this million-dollar fund.” That served him well. There are many ways to win.
Shaan: There’s that great Conor McGregor quote: “You’re going to feel some kind of way anyway. So why not feel unstoppable?” There are many ways to win, but you do get to choose. Sam’s way to win — chip on my shoulder, my dad never loved me, people doubted me, and that drives me. I hear it and I’m like, “Man, you sound like you’ve been suffering for a long time. You didn’t have to do all that.” I’m glad it worked for you, but the toll was high on that highway.
Hasan: Let me do a quick delineation though — when you said you’re moving like you’re worth one hundred million, you’re not making size bets at that level. Because there are people listening who are like, “Let me get that Rolex Daytona.” Are you doing that stuff?
Shaan: Yes and no. The things that matter — like I hired a personal chef. That’s something the truly wealthy typically do. I was like, “This matters to me. It’ll improve the quality of my life. My daughter’s picky, we’re remaking dinner every night. I’m going to get it, and then I’m going to afford it.” I believe in my ability to go get that money, so I will not limit myself in the things I really care about.
Hasan: True belief.
Shaan: I’m not going outside of what I truly want. Because every time you buy something, it now owns you as much as you own it. That bill owns a piece of your time. I’m selective — do I want this enough? Am I willing to let it own me a little bit?
And the last thing: I want to be able to have as much fun whether I’m in a mansion having a feast with celebrities or if I’m stuck in an elevator by myself. I don’t want to have to have some nice circumstances going my way in order to feel good. Self-satisfaction — training my brain. You meditate, you box, whatever. Self-sense of self that’s zero dollars. The ultimate goal, the ultimate way to carry myself, isn’t that I have a hundred million — it’s that I remind myself of that feeling when I ever start to slip.
Advice to Hasan: Stay the Course [02:10:00]
Hasan: For me as an outsider — you know we don’t know each other well, this is our first time actually meeting — when you watch the show and you see me, what would be your advice for somebody like me at this point in my career? I’m at an inflection point. I represent a certain period. Me, my contemporaries, John Mulaney, Ali Wong — we’re entering that new era. The Bill Burrs and the Chappelles are the elder statesmen of the art form.
Shaan: I think what’s worked for you is going to keep working. You have zagged when everybody zigged. Everybody was going in one direction — low accountability, low risk, worried about cancel culture. You built a niche where you’re not afraid to call out the Saudi prince, not afraid to call out the president. But you’re calling out not from a place of getting a reaction — you’re calling out when you see a truth, you put your finger on it and say, “I don’t care if this hurts, I don’t care if this is a nerve. I’m going to have my take on this and I’m going to stand by it.”
Shaan: You talked about that in the show. So I think it’s not that you have to keep doing the exact same thing — you have to keep the mindset that got you there. Self-assess: what got me to observe those things? What made me curious enough to ask the question that got me to that truth? What gave me the guts to do this? I felt like I had nothing to lose trying to make a name for myself. Now I’ve got a name for myself. Every tweet, I’m kind of worried how are people going to react. When you do that — you’re not playing the game the way you did then.
Shaan: Second: the stuff you talked about — betting on yourself, owning your IP, owning as much of that pipeline as you can. It’s what gets you leverage. You create a bunch of value and you’ve got to capture it. Look at the supply chain and say: who’s capturing all this value? Why is Ticketmaster taking this much of my fees? When I go put this special online, what do I really make versus what do they make?
Shaan: And your mom saw you on the morning show, I watched it too. You’re getting into mainstream areas, building the name and face. And then you build the funnel. Top of funnel: new fans, new eyeballs — how are you going to go get them? Middle of funnel: get them to their first taste of you, their first real experience, first show, first twenty minutes of your best work. Bottom of funnel: create maximum value. A bunch of artists doing NFTs — what does that look like for comedy? You’re going to have brainstorming sessions with guys like Shaan and think through it.
Shaan: I would think about that funnel. I’m a product, I’m going to build my brand around that product. Your experience end-to-end isn’t just when you step on the stage — it’s the line outside, the ticketing experience, the playlist when you sit down. I would look at that whole funnel and say, “I’m trying to grease this funnel, get them to these magic moments with me.” First magic moment: I first made you laugh on a clip on Instagram. Second: your friend takes you to a show, you have a great time. Third: the follow-up. Fourth: when you buy the merch and the merch actually stands for something. That’s cool.
Hasan: I appreciate that. We’re so in our — especially as artists, it requires removing yourself from the product. But your mother saw you on the morning show, there’s a line four blocks down the street from the theater, there’s the parking, the show experience — all of that matters.
Shaan: I think you’re doing great, man.
Hasan: Thanks, man. Hey, this is my two cents for the space you all are working in — just continuing to try to be a source of light amongst all this heat that’s out there is really important. There’s a lot of garbage out there. Try to represent ontological truth in reality for what it is. Because you’re playing with people’s money. People listen to My First Million for that thing. But what I loved — what I really loved — was the stuff you say at the end. The stories about your daughter, the stories about that jerk parent at the library — that was where I was like, “Oh man.” Attached.
Shaan: Same thing with My First Million. The hook is ideas, I’ll help you make money and get to your first million. But the people who are really going to love this — because that hit is going to fade — the people who are going to stay are like, “Damn, these are just great conversations. I want to hang with these guys.” My goal is that somebody listening to this was like, “I feel like I was in that third seat.” Real conversation between two people where you were curious and I answered questions and I asked you a bunch of things I was curious about. And they feel like they got to be a part of something a little more entertaining than whatever’s going on in their world that day.
Hasan: I hope people enjoyed this.
Shaan: I appreciate you coming out.
Hasan: Thanks for having me, man. Thanks for doing it in person — I remember you reached out and I said, “Let’s do it via Zoom,” and I was like, “Nah, we’re doing this in person.”
Shaan: Sorry to Sam.
Hasan: Yeah. Sam, check your DMs, bro. I’m in your DMs. Doc, okay, cool. Thank you.