Heroes in Business - Daniel Nainan, comedian, Obama calls him “f-ing hilarious”

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Laughter is good for your health. Daniel Nainan, comedian, Obama calls him “f-ing hilarious” is interviewed by David Cogan founder of Eliances and famous celebrity host of the Eliances Heroes Show broadcast on am and fm network channels, online syndication and on over 100 TV channels.  

welcome back to alliances heroes where heroes in business align to be part of our super community and find out more about alliances visit www.alliances.com I've got the best job ever why because I get the opportunity to share with you some of the most interesting people that exist and their backgrounds with you just it just is truly amazing and we can always learn from each

person and we unveil the secrets we learn what you know what what makes someone happy what makes someone want to do what they want to do and and happiness really is a key and how can you be happy well you know our next year we're going to learn from him about how he makes other people happy, how he makes people laugh. Why do people want to laugh, and what does laughing do to for you? So we're going to learn from him, and welcome back to the show, too. Dan Knighton is a comedian, and you can reach him at ComedianDan.com. ComedianDan.com.

Now, Dan, I want to go back in time and stuff first of all you had a great job you were working at intel you were traveling the world with the ceo of intel giving complex technical you know seminars and stuff what happened where all of a sudden you're like you wanted to change what you were doing not just change your position at the company not just change but I completely another industry which we're going to learn about the industry that you're in but what made you change what it was was I was speaking on stage with the executives of Intel and doing technical demonstrations, events all over the world, Taiwan. I mean, we would stop off in Honolulu on the way to Japan, Australia, Europe, all over the world.

And my problem was, so I'm doing these technical demonstrations, which I could do in my sleep, because I'm half Indian and half Japanese. Like I was bred for it, right? When I applied for the job at Intel, they said, you're Indian and Japanese. You don't have to interview. You're in. That's great. Right. But the tough part was speaking on stage at events in front of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people.

That was terrifying. And I didn't know what to do to get over it. First, I went to the Intel Toastmasters Club on campus. And that was good. And Toastmasters is a fantastic, you've probably heard of it, organization that helps you become a better speaker. Problem is I'm in a room with 15 other computer geeks

like myself, not the same as performing, or actually not the same as speaking in front of hundreds of people. So I got to do something really terrifying. So I decided I'm going to take a comedy class. And if I can do comedy, then doing corporate presentations, technical demos should be easy. It's like baseball players will practice with a golf ball or basketball players will practice with a rim that's half the width, that's barely bigger than the ball.

Ah, okay, okay. So you do something difficult, then the less difficult thing becomes easier. So you ended up taking comedy classes. Right. Were some of those improv classes, do they? No, this is standup. Standup comedy.

Standup comedy, wow. Okay, so you end up taking those classes. You start getting better at doing that. Then what? Well I took one class with Judy Carter in San Francisco which was right up the road from Silicon Valley. The final exam if you will is an actual show at a club and your friends and your relatives are invited and it's terrifying. The first time you go on stage, you realize I can only see the people in the front and then these bright lights and you know the room is packed, but you can't see anyone. And I had, I guess, beginner's luck. I had a great show and I got the tape and I showed that

to my co-workers at Intel and they said, hey, why don't you perform at the team dinner? Because we were all at Comdance in Vegas, right? They said, perform at the team dinner. Perform for about 250 Intel employees. Oh my god. First time performing comedy at 250? That's huge. Well, the very first time was at the club.

That's right. Right. 300 pack. Oh my god. This is the second time. But of course I'm terribly nervous. And I mostly did impressions of Andy Grove, the CEO and co-founder of Intel, who I did a lot of events with. And then someone comes up and says, hey, Dan, can you do this at the annual sales conference? And I said, how many people will be there? He said, 2,500. Third show ever, 2,500 Intel employees.

Eight in the morning on a Monday. No one's been drinking, right? We set it up so I pretended something went wrong with my demo. And I said, listen, we're having a problem with my demo. But while we fix it, I'm going to tell you some jokes. Okay. That's great. I love that opening. It was crazy. It was crazy. And people are banging on tables and just cheering. And it

was quite an experience. Gosh, wow. And a few people came up afterwards and said, now we know that you're not really an Intel employee. You were hired to do this as a comedian and pretend you were an Intel employee. Is that interesting. And that's when I had the first inkling, aha, maybe this is something I could one day do for a living.

So then you ended up leaving Intel. Then I specifically asked for a promotion to a new job in New York. Because I knew I wanted to be in New York. It's close to my parents who were getting older at the time. I said, I'm going to head to New York, get this new job and do comedy at the same time. And that worked. So then when did you make the transition to actually leave and do comedy full-time? Well, it was after I'd been at Intel in the new job for a year. I'd had two jobs previously, one traveling the country with the Smithsonian exhibition for two years, 10 cities. I had no home, lived in hotels, just me and my cat.

And then the second job was the one where I went around the world doing the demos with executives. And the third job was strategic relations manager, which was nothing like the other jobs. No traveling, no geeking out on technology. It was so boring. I lasted a year. Wow. Wow.

All right, so you've left, and you have now traveled all over doing comedy. Yes, I've traveled. I've traveled to 63 countries total. That's between Intel and comedy. I've performed in 28 countries. As you know, I performed for President Obama, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bloomberg, Giuliani, de Blasio. Any of those make you nervous? I mean, performing in front of the President of the United States? You know, I think I was more nervous for some reason performing in front of the President of the United States? You know, I think I was more nervous, for some reason,

performing in front of Donald Trump. He wasn't president by then. This is about 12 years ago. And I didn't expect him to walk into the room and sit down. He and his wife sat down. The back story is I had seen him around. This is at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida. And I said, Mr. Trump, I'm performing at one of your members' anniversary parties.

Can you come watch? And he goes, well, I don't know if I can make it. I've got my Christmas party in the big room, but I'll try. And usually when someone says, I'll try, that means no, right? Right, politely saying it. Exactly, which is very polite. But I'm halfway through the set, and then Trump and Melania come in, sit down, sit in the back, respectfully stay the whole time, they're laughing.

I was really nervous, probably the most nervous I've ever been. And you do impressions too of others. In fact, what other impressions do you do? Done Bill Clinton, as you know. I've done Bill Clinton a lot on the radio. I do shorts and that. You know, the standard impressions. I've never really mastered the really tough ones like, say, John Madden, which Frank Caliendo can do incredibly. But what I used to do is I used to call up restaurants, whatever, as a kid and do all these fake voices, right? And I can't really talk about this too much, but I also do voices a lot on radio stations.

But it's sort of a secret thing. Got it. And what does that mean? What do you mean by doing voices? Well, there's these like prank calls and so on. Got it. Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. And I think there's a show on that

too, right? Where they do use the dolls or something or things where they have anyways, where they do a thing where they're doing like calls as if they're calling somebody but they're acting it out. Oh, I think. Yeah, might be on TV. Crank gangsters. Crank gangsters. Crank Yankers. Crank Yankers. Crank Yankers, okay. I think that's on TV and I'm not a TV person, unfortunately. So, you know, you made such a shift again of what you were doing from Intel to what you're doing now. How do you know when you had a successful show? Well, I'll tell you something. I can kind of tell what's going to happen from the first joke.

If they laugh at the first joke uproariously, like they did at the grand table, if they laugh at that first joke, then I know, this is going to be a great show. If it's kind of mediocre, oh boy, this is going to be a long night. And let me tell you, when you are on stage all the time, you're a fantastic night. And let me tell you, when you are, I mean, you are on stage all the time. You're a fantastic speaker. If you have a great audience and a great show, you're floating. It's like,

you're on top of the world. I mean, I've never done any drugs, but this is what heroin must feel like. And you're just, it's euphoria. But when I have a terrible show, I think, oh man, maybe it's time to get a job. But if fortunately, I mean, you never know if it's time to get a job. But if fortunately, I mean, you never know if it's going to be a good show or not. There's so many factors. The audience, the setting, the culture, etc. But by and large,

if you can have the large majority of good shows, then that's great. And again, if you're watching, listening to me, David Kogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show, make sure you go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. The only place where entrepreneurs align. We have with us Dan Knight, a comedian.

You can reach him at comediendan.com. He's performed in front of Michael Bloomberg. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. Why do we, you know, I think that, you know, really getting someone to laugh from someone who's not a comedian, that's hard to do. I mean, it's hard because you don't know what the person's going through. You don't know what they're thinking about. And I definitely believe that, you know, laughing is the best medicine.

I mean, laughter is the best medicine. It really is. And here's the thing, though. I mean, there are times when you're in a conversation with somebody, like a friend or something, family member, and you say something, and they laugh, right? And it's a great feeling, right? And so what you can do is you can say, ah, that might be something I could make into a joke. And then you write it down on a piece of paper, or in my case, I type it into my phone. And then I think, okay, what's the best way to tell this so it'll get a laugh?

And then try it in common class or at a show. And then if people laugh a lot, then you keep that joke. And then if you can string together 20 or 30 of those and do 10, 15 minutes, you can be a comedian. That's great. Why is it that children, you know, laugh at the funny, like, things that they think, like, we think the most stupidest things. But children are always laughing. They're just laughing at, you know, everything.

And we start to grow up and we become too serious and we don't laugh. And I think that causes other conditions and other health conditions i agree there's a fantastic author actually who lives in the area his name is stephen chandler and he wrote a book called 100 ways to motivate yourself and i remember one chapter where he said when we're young when we're kids we're laughing and we're not self-conscious at all then we get to high school, and it's all about being cool and fitting in and being like everyone else. So he says just leave high school and don't be afraid to laugh and to maybe act immature.

It's a fantastic book. Highly recommend it. When you're practicing your jokes, how do you know, though, that they're going to be funny? I mean, you're probably practicing in front of a mirror or you get close friends, but they're going to laugh to be nice to you anyways? How do you know? Oh, no, no.

That's the worst thing you can do. Really, the only way to do that is to do it in front of an audience. I mean, even, say, Jerry Seinfeld or Dave Chappelle will go to comedy clubs and practice. When Chappelle was getting ready for Saturday Night Live, he went to the cutting room, which is not too far from me, was there every night for hours, for weeks, right? And then it's highly iterative. It's like, I don't know, it's like releasing a new

product and seeing which ones work and which don't. So he basically, you know, has a tape and he's listening back, okay, well they laughed at that one a lot. But then they only gave me a B laugh on this joke. So when he's on Saturday Night Live, he took, what, 15 of his best jokes and did all of those. But every one of those, he'd done them before and heard the laughs. Interesting. Interesting. So you really got to kind of almost, in a way, script it, know what you're going to say before you say it. Right, Seinfeld said, there's no way to practice this.

I mean, you can't, it's like having a doctor go and start working on a patient and cutting them up and never having done it before. The only way you can really tell something is funny is to perform it in front of an audience. And he's so right about that. So, Dan, you know, to make people laugh as adults, do I need to do swearing? Do I need to, you know, embarrass people?

Do I need to, you know, say off-color jokes that's going to make them laugh? You don't have to, but there's certainly a huge market for that. I mean, I've toured with some of the filthiest comedians you could imagine. And I mean, I toured with Robert Schimmel, Russell Peters. I was asked to open by Bob Saget and also Brad Garrett. I mean, these are some of the dirtiest and they are hilarious, but there's different kinds of comedy. I choose to do what's called clean comedy, which is the kind of thing I can do at a business function or at a wedding or someone's 80th birthday party or a charity gala or alliances.

I don't think some, I may be wrong, but I think that a filthy, dirty comedian would not be appropriate for a business type of event. But I think there's certainly all types of comedy and i think if something makes you laugh whether it's dirty or clean uh that's great but i mean i tend myself to stick with clean comedy and how do you read your how do you read your audience because i think that's a key to it too as a comedian to know right also too is is you know if you're almost embarrassing someone, right,

everybody takes it a different way. Some people be good sports about it. Some may not. Some may think that they're acting to be a good sport, but you know, afterwards they're upset. Well, I'll tell you, that's one thing that I have not done. A lot of comedians do pick on members of the audience. That is definitely not my thing. I don't think it's a skill I have really. And there are comedians who are brilliant at that, but, but I have actually never really, I don't talk to the audience. It's just, it's just not the style that I have. Right. So I haven't really embarrassed anyone. Now, once in a while, somebody will say something and shout something out. And then I

sort of have a license to talk back to them and embarrass them. But that again is very rare in my style of comedy. That tends to more happen when you are the type of comedian who talks to the audience a lot. They become a little preconditioned that, oh I can just shout things out that's fine, but I'm not that kind of comedy. Right, and so businesses can hire you to come speak at their conventions and their different aspects. Oh, sure. I've done all kinds of conventions. I mean, 7-Eleven owners convention, hotel owners, doctors, lawyers, accountants. One of the best audience I ever had was an accounting convention in San Francisco.

I mean, I'm thinking, oh, what's this going to be like? They were fantastic. Oh, yes. Yeah. What that must do for people though too, for those employees. I mean, it just, don't you get endorphins from when you laugh and other triggers?

Oh yes. They've done a lot of research that laughter, laughter really does help your health. And I mean, I'm the kind of person, people think like I smoke pot cause I laugh at everything, right? But I've never tried it. But people just sometimes think I'm high or something because I do laugh. But Canadians generally don't tend to laugh a lot.

It's very interesting. But I do laugh, and it's been shown that it helps you. And one thing I've noticed is that no matter where you go in the world, no matter what the culture, what the language, laughter sounds the same in every language, every culture. It's very interesting. So what's the secret to laughing?

I think, well, I think it's maybe just having a sort of a humorous outlook on things, I think. Well, I mean, this is sort of self-interest, isn't it? But maybe going to more comedy shows, right? Maybe watching more comedy on YouTube or whatever. I think, I think, and just being with a lot of friends, because when you're at a restaurant and there's, say, a table of 10 people and people are laughing and it's just,

it's such a great joy and it's, I guess, it's part of being together. It is. It is. it's something that we've been missing for a while but hopefully we can start up again soon it cures a lot of things and we should definitely all like I agree 100 and you can laugh more by reaching Dan I didn't by going to comedian dan.com comedian dan.com because this has been David Kogan with the alliances hero show Dan we've got one more question for you to your part of the Alliance's community Remember part of it you've been part of the lines now for a number of years come to our events recently at the Alliance's

Grandtable which is our signature event people coming from all over For some of those that may not know about alliances itself. Be sure with our audience What it's done, what you feel it is to you. Being part of alliances has been fantastic. I think when you go to an event, people tend to be sort of of the same, say, a doctor's convention or CES.

People tend to be of the same, I guess, milieu, right? They're kind of similar in what they're seeking. But what really struck me about the Grand Table, and I've done two, thank you, is the variety of people that are there. I mean, I'm sitting next to Anson Williams, who was on Happy Days, one of the greatest shows of all time, and super, super nice guy. And then you have someone who invented Oculus and the guitar hero. Right. I'm like, I'm sitting next to this guy. This is unreal.

And then the other gentleman on my left is the, I guess, founded Priceline. And then we have another actor who's been on, I don't know, 500 episodes of General Hospital. I mean, just a variety of people that you meet. And honestly, I felt a little like, you know, what am I doing here? These people, I'm the least successful person here. But I mean, there's just some amazing people. You belong there, folks.

You belong there. Or the guy who started Coyote Ugly, right? I mean, it's just astounding the level of people that you're with. And then you can talk to them. You can get their contact info. And that applies whether you're one of the presenters or in the audience, right? Anyone in the audience can come up and talk to us. So for me, it's just been life-changing.

And the people I met, like the gentleman who can read a page in what? Eight seconds. Yeah, I mean, listen to him speak. I was blown away that something like that is possible, right? So overall, it's just been just really a life-changing, as you said, one of the times of your life. It's the thing you'll always remember. And so I would say, if not, you have to come to this. It's amazing.

And you have the opportunity to make sure to go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. And most importantly, laugh more. Just go to comediendan.com. Laugh more. It is by far the best medicine you could take. This has been David Kogan with the Alliance Hero Show. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.