[00:00:00 – 00:00:07] Nitin Bajaj

Welcome to the industry show. I’m your host Nitin Bajaj and joining me today is Dan Nainan. Dan, welcome on the show.

[00:00:08 – 00:00:13] Dan Nainan

Thank you. It’s a great honor and a pleasure to be here amongst this great company. I appreciate it. Thank you.

[00:00:14 – 00:00:17] Nitin Bajaj

Pleasure is all ours. Let’s start with who is Dan.

[00:00:19 – 00:00:58] Dan Nainan

Let’s see who is Dan. I guess I’ll speak in first person. I am a comedian first and then also an actor and do some voiceover. I’ve also recently become a casting agent at a nationwide casting agency and hint, we’re really short on South Asian actors at this time. I am also an author, just came out with this book called Accidentally funny. Also publisher have published a book by a friend of mine who lives with the great Edward Van Halen and also managing some musical acts. So a little bit of everything.

[00:00:59 – 00:01:01] Nitin Bajaj

A man of many talents indeed.

[00:01:02 – 00:01:03] Dan Nainan

Well, more like add.

[00:01:07 – 00:01:14] Nitin Bajaj

You could have done so many different things. Why comedy, why art, why music, why entertainment?

[00:01:15 – 00:02:11] Dan Nainan

This was a definite shift in my life because I was with Intel Corporation and I was in it for my whole career. And my job was to travel with the executives of intel and do technical demonstrations on stage including Andy Grove and Craig Barrett and Paul Adolini and Pat Gelsinger. And the technical part was really easy. I tell people when I applied for the job at intel, they said you’re Indian and Japanese, you don’t even have to interview. But the hard part was speaking on stage in front of thousands of people. So I took a comedy class thinking, hey, maybe this will make me less nervous about presenting on stage. And it really worked. I was never nervous again about speaking on stage. But also discovered accidentally funny, a career in comedy.

[00:02:13 – 00:02:23] Nitin Bajaj

That is so fascinating. And I remember one of your first opening lines. This was maybe 15, 16 years ago. You said you buy your sushi from 7 11.

[00:02:24 – 00:02:41] Dan Nainan

So because I’m half Indian, my dad was born in Kerala, India and my mom was born in Japan. So I always use that line, I get my sushi from 7 11. It always gets a laugh. Even President Obama was laughing. So it’s like my signature line.

[00:02:42 – 00:03:04] Nitin Bajaj

Fascinating indeed. Now, amongst the many things you’re doing and cutting across different industries, demographics, you’ve always been a people person. You come from a tech background. Now you’re across many different strata of the society. What’s the one big challenge you’re facing?

[00:03:05 – 00:03:52] Dan Nainan

I guess the challenge is it’s, I guess getting booked on more shows. I used to be when you search for Indian comedian, I was number one and I had like three. The Top links in the video. And now I’ve been pushed down a little bit. So the challenge is getting booked on more shows. If I had my way, I’d be booked every single day somewhere in the world. I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve done comedy in 28 countries and mostly for South Asians, and just gotten to travel the world, been to 68 countries total. And a lot of entertainers really despise the travel, but I really love it. It’s really the best part is going to different countries, languages, cultures, just meeting new people. It’s wonderful.

[00:03:53 – 00:03:55] Nitin Bajaj

How many shows have you performed?

[00:03:56 – 00:04:26] Dan Nainan

I’d say over. I’d say 1500 if you count everything in the very beginning, open mics and if you count comedy clubs. And I mean, I’ve done shows at like AA meetings and I don’t even drink. Right. And I mean, senior centers. When you’re, when you’re starting out, you want to perform as much as you can, anywhere you can. And the way you get better, of course, is by performing. The way you get better at anything, these instruments is the same thing hundreds and hundreds of times over and over.

[00:04:27 – 00:04:35] Nitin Bajaj

That’s fascinating. Do you remember what your first performance was? And I don’t know if that was your first professional performance or just the first.

[00:04:36 – 00:05:54] Dan Nainan

Okay, so, yeah, this was very interesting. The very first performance was the sort of the graduation for comedy class I took up in San Francisco when I was at Intel. I drove up to take a class and the final exam is at a comedy club where your friends and your relatives are invited. And it was packed. I had the best show. I got the video, I showed it to my co workers at intel and they said, hey, can you perform this at the team dinner? Because we were out at CES in Las Vegas and I performed the team dinner for about 250 employees. And then at that event, someone came up and said, could you perform this routine at the annual sales conference? And I said, how many people will be there? He said, 2500. And this is my third show ever. And we pretended something went wrong with one of my demos. I said, while we’re getting this fixed, I’m going to tell you some jokes. And this is Monday morning at 8 o’. Clock. No one had been drinking and people just went crazy. It was unbelievable. Third show ever. And a lot of people thought I’d been hired as a professional comedian to pretend I was an intel demo engineer when I was really an intel demo engineer pretending to be a comedian.

[00:05:55 – 00:06:01] Nitin Bajaj

That is so cool. So you went 10x at every performance, essentially, yeah.

[00:06:01 – 00:06:30] Dan Nainan

I’ve just been very fortunate. And they say that I guess successes were talent meets preparation or something like that. And I was there when Russell Peters had his first show in New York and they needed more. They, the producer came say, hey, this crowd doesn’t want to leave. We need more comedians. And so I performed and Russell saw me. I’ve been. I got to perform with Bob Saget and Robert Schimmel, and all of those comedians asked me to open for them. And it’s been crazy.

[00:06:31 – 00:06:43] Nitin Bajaj

That’s amazing. You put in the work. You obviously have the talent for it. You’re a natural, and you really passionately enjoy this. So I’m not surprised that it’s been a very successful career.

[00:06:43 – 00:07:12] Dan Nainan

I appreciate it. Thank you. A lot of people say they couldn’t do comedy, but I think you really can. It’s just getting up and not being afraid and doing it over. And you do 10 jokes and only four of them work. So you take out the six that don’t work, and then you do the same four the next night with six new jokes. And it’s an iterative process. And the more you do it, then eventually you’ll have a set of an hour where it’s all jokes that, you know, have worked in the past.

[00:07:14 – 00:07:25] Nitin Bajaj

Sounds great. Now, as we talked about a challenge, I want to also ask you, what’s that one most exciting opportunity that’s ahead of you?

[00:07:26 – 00:08:00] Dan Nainan

I’d like to maybe open my own comedy club, but I’d want it to be a clean comedy club where your parents can come, your kids can come, if they’re over the drinking age, of course, and where people aren’t going to be picked on if they’re in the front row and just more just a family friendly, clean environment. Also would like to maybe get a sitcom going and have written the sitcom and now shopping that to different media outlets. So that’s two things a comedian would love to do is a sitcom and having their own club.

[00:08:01 – 00:08:24] Nitin Bajaj

You know, I do want to acknowledge this, that you’re one of the very few, at least as far as I know, the only one that does clean comedy. Because I think somewhere in comedy, I guess that’s an excuse that has become very viable, that anything goes. And so I really applaud you for keeping it clean. I know it’s extremely difficult, but you’ve been doing it for several years now.

[00:08:25 – 00:09:12] Dan Nainan

Yeah, I appreciate that. Mediums like Jerry Seinfeld or Jim Gaffigan or Brian Regan are clean. And Seinfeld said something years ago he said, it’s funny when you can get the laughs with doing the dirty material, but it’s like you won the race, but you cheated by cutting through the infield. And the good thing about comedy is there’s room for all different types. There’s room for clean, there’s room for unbelievably filthy. Really, there’s something for everyone, no matter what your taste. Very dark stuff. People who do impressions, people who play instruments, people who use puppets. Some of this is frowned on by, quote, unquote, real comedians. But there’s room. There’s so many different tastes. And so there’s room for all kinds of comedy in this business.

[00:09:14 – 00:09:29] Nitin Bajaj

Yeah. And I appreciate, again, your business about just accepting that there are different kinds and different people adapt different genres and norms that work for them. But again, I applaud you for keeping it clean.

[00:09:29 – 00:09:31] Dan Nainan

Thank you very kindly. I appreciate that.

[00:09:32 – 00:09:51] Nitin Bajaj

Now, I would love for you to take us back in time and share two moments. One where things did not work out as you had expected. There was disappointment, failures, lessons. And another instance where things exceeded your own expectations and became a success beyond your imagination.

[00:09:53 – 00:10:16] Dan Nainan

Something that happened to me that I just really, just every day I regret, and that is that there was an event that my friend told me about. It was a fundraiser for a governor candidate and Democrat candidate in Maryland. And it was a fundraiser at a baseball player’s house for the Baltimore Orioles. And he said, dave Chappelle is going to be there.

[00:10:16 – 00:10:16] Nitin Bajaj

And.

[00:10:16 – 00:11:14] Dan Nainan

And I went to this, and I was thinking, I want to meet Dave Chappelle, and I want to ask him if I can open and do some jokes and then introduce him. Now I was thinking, this is going to be great. And I met him and he was very, very nice. And I said, hey, I’m a comedian. I’d love to open for you. And he said, I don’t know. And see, the problem is, when you’re a comedian, people ask you all the time, can I open for. And there, the comedian doesn’t know anything about this comedian, the opening or the prospective opening comedian. And so I thought, okay, well, all I have to do is show him my clip with President Obama saying, I’m funny. Michael Bloomberg, Steve Wozniak, Kunal Nair from, you know, Big Bang Theory. I have all these famous people saying I’m funny. And all I have to do is show this to Dave and he’ll ask me to open for him. I’ll open for him. I’ll do great. He’ll ask me to tour with him like Robert Schimmel did like Russell Peters did. Guess what?

[00:11:14 – 00:11:15] Nitin Bajaj

We’re.

[00:11:15 – 00:11:59] Dan Nainan

This house is between Washington and Baltimore in the middle of nowhere. There was no signal. I went outside. I could not get signal on my phone and I could not get the video of. With all those testimonials from Obama and. And Vinod Khosla and Sanjay Gupta. I couldn’t get it on my phone because I had no signal. And that is one of my greatest regrets. And of course, I should have had the video locally on my phone so I could just pull up and say, dave, look, here’s Obama saying I’m funny. But I did not have it a local video on my phone. I only had it online. The dumbest thing you could imagine. Who would have imagined there would be no signal? So that’s one. That’s my greatest regret. I think about that every day.

[00:12:01 – 00:12:06] Nitin Bajaj

Wow. On the flip side, what’s been your biggest success?

[00:12:09 – 00:13:07] Dan Nainan

Well, in 2013, I heard about something called bitcoin. And of course, they’ve been around since I think 2010 or 2009. And I heard there was a conference happening in San Jose called the Bitcoin Foundation Conference. And I said, let me email these people because I always do that when I hear about an event. I’m always pitch myself. And that’s how I got in front of Steve Wozniak and that’s how I got in front of Arianna Huffington and all these people. So I pitched the Bitcoin foundation and said, hey, what do you think of having a clean comedian MC to perform and introduce other speakers? And they said, this is a great idea. And we worked out a deal. And then they said, you can be paid in cash or in bitcoin. And being the risk taker I am, I said, I’ll take bitcoin. So they opened a coinbase account for me and they put the bitcoin in there. And on that day, bitcoin was worth $131.

[00:13:07 – 00:13:08] Nitin Bajaj

Wow.

[00:13:08 – 00:13:44] Dan Nainan

And I would have had no idea how to buy bitcoin on my own. So the next day, I bought a bunch more. It was up to $161. The conference was amazing. You can, I can send you the video link. I introduced Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who has invented Facebook and then went on to become bit coin billionaires. It was amazing. And I’ve never touched any of it. And as you know, it’s now worth $107,000 today. And so that was the greatest day of my life. And that may have been the most. That may have been the Highest paid comedy gig in history. I have to double check that.

[00:13:46 – 00:14:19] Nitin Bajaj

That is fascinating. But then, first off, thank you for being so vulnerable. You’ve always been open and honest. Sharing some of our worst moments cannot be comfortable, let alone having to live through a moment in time when we weren’t at our best. So I really appreciate you sharing that incident with the video at least. By saying that and sharing this, you’re going to hopefully prevent a few others from being in that place. And be more cautious, be more prepared.

[00:14:19 – 00:14:33] Dan Nainan

Be prepared, have the video on your phone, whatever you carry something with you, whatever you know, when you, when you meet that famous person, you know, you just never know. And yeah, so that’s one thing I wish I, I could do over again.

[00:14:34 – 00:14:37] Nitin Bajaj

But man, hey, bitcoins, you know.

[00:14:39 – 00:14:40] Dan Nainan

Yeah, it’s been life changing.

[00:14:42 – 00:14:57] Nitin Bajaj

That is amazing. Now, stepping away from your work is never really work. You really, truly, passionately enjoy it. But, oh, yeah, in the proverbial sense, if you have to step away from work, what do you do for fun?

[00:14:59 – 00:16:21] Dan Nainan

Oh, a lot, A lot of stuff. A lot of different things. A lot of athletic stuff. Work out, get up at 4am and work out at 5am at the gym. That’s because of Robin Sharma. You should interview him. He’s amazing. He has a book called the 5am Club. Yeah. And then I play six musical instruments. I’ve toured in bands playing keyboards and guitar and bass guitar. Also play the drums. And I’m learning the cello and the violin. And I love to travel, As I mentioned, 68 countries on every continent except Antarctica. I’m into the whole points miles, you know, frequent flying. I’ve written for the points guy as well. Nice. And I love investing as well. That’s a huge part of my life. And writing, of course, and pretty much any sport. I’ve done some extreme stuff like bungee jumping, skydiving. I bungee jumped off a construction crane in Las Vegas years ago by my feet. I scuba dived on shipwrecks, scuba dive with whale sharks in the Maldives. I have skied off of these cliffs and rollerbladed downstairs backwards. I can show you a video of that. And just the one thing I do not do is I don’t watch television. So people like, how do you have time to do all this stuff as well? I don’t have television. It’s not part of my life.

[00:16:22 – 00:16:24] Nitin Bajaj

Love that I share that with you.

[00:16:25 – 00:16:31] Dan Nainan

Great. Well, you’re on. You and me are the only two, probably. Wow.

[00:16:32 – 00:16:41] Nitin Bajaj

I usually ask people to share a book or a podcast. They would like to recommend, but in this case, I would love for you to share a little about your book.

[00:16:42 – 00:17:45] Dan Nainan

My book is my crazy story and it’s called Accidentally Funny. People can find it at Comedybook.net which is a great URL. I tried to get comedybook.com but that was taken. But so I have. You can find it at Comedybook.net and this was entirely written with voice dictation. And I used to be the voice dictation expert at Intel Corporation. And so I’ve been using voice dictation a long time. I had a brain injury which is in this book. Also had a couple of detached retina surgery, so I couldn’t use my computer. So what I did was I took out my phone and started dictating chapters into it and use transcription in voice dictation to transcribe everything I said. I literally wrote this entire book Accidentally funny by voice dictation. And very little typing I used. I had to edit on the screen, but pretty much 100% was written using voice dictation. And again, it’s available at ComedyBook.net there, you are.

[00:17:45 – 00:18:00] Nitin Bajaj

I mean, I’ve known a lot about you over the past several years, but you’re fascinating. You are a role model in resilience. And I don’t think you know the term barriers at all. You just keep going.

[00:18:02 – 00:18:08] Dan Nainan

Yeah, that’s. That’s a good way to be, really. And just, I guess just try to achieve the impossible.

[00:18:08 – 00:18:15] Nitin Bajaj

Okay, great time to do that. Let’s go on to my favorite part of the show, which we call the one line, life lessons than all yours.

[00:18:17 – 00:19:51] Dan Nainan

I would say, don’t be afraid to ask. There’s a great book called the Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer. And I think it’s just really important to not be afraid to ask. Years ago, I went for an audition at VMware, which, you know, the great virtualization software. And I realized that Pat Gelsinger, who was. Was an executive at intel, who I worked with on Stage, was the CEO of VMware. So I wrote. I said to a friend of mine, hey, I think I should write Pat an email and ask him to put in a good word for me for the commercials. And I no, no, don’t do that. That’s really tacky and he’ll lose all respect for you. And so I wrote to Pat and I said, hey, I tried out for this commercial for VMware. Could you put in a good word? Next thing, my agent calls, says, you’re booked. I’m like, wow. He says, you don’t even have to do a callback. This is the second audition. I was like, really? And he said, I’ve never seen that happen before. And I didn’t tell him that. Well, I just happen to know the CEO of VMware. So because of that, I did eight commercials. They flew me to VM World in San Francisco. I was on stage with Pat. It was incredible. And it was because I was not afraid to ask. And I think it’s really important to ask. And then that friend of mine who said, oh, no, that’s a bad idea. I could have said to Pat, hey, can you get this guy? But I didn’t. I would say, just don’t be afraid to ask people you meet, someone famous, a celebrity, whatever, just ask. And the worst they can do is say no.

[00:19:51 – 00:19:56] Nitin Bajaj

True. And what other nuggets and wisdom do you have for us to share?

[00:19:57 – 00:21:26] Dan Nainan

I get approached by a lot of younger folks who are like, I want to be a director. I want to be an actor or comedian, but my parents want me to have a job, especially in the Indian community, right? They want us to be doctor, lawyer, IT engineer, finance, right? And so I tell them, listen, you can never. You can’t leave a job with a steady income and health insurance and to do show business until you’ve really done something that can earn you money. So I tell them, listen, do your job in the daytime and then write the scripts or do the dance moves or the acting or the comedy at night. And comedy and music. Most of these things take place at night anyway because working people are attending our shows. But I also tell them, listen, there’s a lot. You don’t think there’s time, but there is. The average American watches 35 to 40 hours of television a week, right? You and I don’t. So we have 35 to 40 hours that other people don’t. The average person thinks, it’s Friday night, it’s Saturday night, I have to go out and I have to get drunk because that’s what everyone else is doing till three in the morning, and then the next day they’re hungover. There’s no brain power left to do anything creative if you’re able to avoid television and if you’re able to go avoid going out Friday and Saturday night like everyone else, you have found another 80 hours that you didn’t think were there. So that’s when you can work on your craft.

[00:21:28 – 00:21:29] Nitin Bajaj

True, I agree.

[00:21:31 – 00:22:25] Dan Nainan

Well, health is wealth. I mean, that’s. That’s a cliche, but it’s true. And the most Important thing is your health. And I don’t drink alcohol. I drank a couple of times in college. I realize it wasn’t for me. And recently the great Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said alcohol is like smoking, you can get cancer. And so I think health is really important. As I mentioned, because of Robin Sharma. I’m up at 4, no alarm, no coffee, get to the gym at 5, get it out of the way. It’s really important to be healthy, eat right, avoid alcohol, avoid drugs, avoid cigarettes, avoid. Course because we only have one body. There may be life after death, etc, but want to stay here as long as possible. So you know, just it health. It’s really important to stay healthy. The most important thing, really true.

[00:22:25 – 00:22:32] Nitin Bajaj

And it also allows you to do the things you’ve been enjoying. Jumping off of planes and rollerblading backwards.

[00:22:33 – 00:22:42] Dan Nainan

Right. There’s a great saying by George Allen, the former coach of the Washington Redskins. He said after a workout, you not only feel better, you are better.

[00:22:42 – 00:22:43] Nitin Bajaj

True.

[00:22:43 – 00:22:45] Dan Nainan

And I agree with that. That’s a great saying.

[00:22:45 – 00:22:50] Nitin Bajaj

It is. Then. Any other points you want to share with us?

[00:22:50 – 00:26:06] Dan Nainan

I would say just I think it’s really important to believe in yourself. And if someone discourages you from doing something creative, it might be because they at some point wanted to do something creative and they were afraid and so they’re trying to discourage you, which validates their decision not to pursue their dream. I know we’re talking to a lot of business types, executive types, working types, etc, there is possible possibility of maybe leaving your job and doing your own thing in the South Asian community. I love meeting people who have their own businesses and there’s so many, right? So many. And I always love hearing how they, how they left their job. One guy was talking about how he had, he was like the number one performer at his job. And then he decided he wanted to start his own business and. But he needed some time. So for the next year he did only the absolute minimum to keep the job. And then after a year he left and said, I’m sorry but I’m leaving on my own. And his boss said, you were a number one performer. Then all of a sudden it was like you were only doing the minimum to keep your job. So there’s a lot of room for that. And another thing I want to say another, the last one here, one liner is when you’re with a company, treat the expenses or spend the money like it’s your own. Because when I was at Intel, I would be on a plane and be sitting next to a co worker and said, hey, how much was your ticket? He’s, oh, 1600. I said, I only paid 300. And my co worker would say, what do you care the company’s paying? And I saw this throughout the companies I’ve worked for. Intel Capital records, any corporation, IBM. And the problem with that is that, you see, you have to think of it as your own money, because if the company makes more money, then the stock will go up and then you’ll make more money off the stock. And as you may know, intel has been through some real problems. They’ve had to lay off tens of thousands of people. And my boss’s boss at intel, the head of the demo group, when I told him about how we could save money, he would say, nobody ever got rewarded for saving money at intel, so it’s really important, especially in a startup. They interviewed the guy who started GoDaddy, and he said, listen, I’m talking to you from a 500. It works just as well as a $20,000 conference table. So in the beginning, it’s especially. It’s really, really important, I think, to save money for your company. As Indians are frugal, we’ve had this beaten into our heads. You have no idea how frugal I still am. And this was beaten in my heads by my parents. But I think there’s a lot to be said for that and it could help save your job in the end. One last thing. When I was at Intel, I’d get in a taxi to go to the airport and the cab driver would say, oh, it’s a special intel rate. And one day, and that was 15. That’s a while ago. And this is before Uber, Lyft and so on 15. So I get in the cab, I said, you know what, let me try. Let’s do this with meter. Okay? Just to test it. $11. So the quote unquote intel special rate had been charged thousands of people for years for 15, when we could have just used a meter for 11. And you multiply that times thousands of rides. How much money we wasted.

[00:26:07 – 00:26:27] Nitin Bajaj

The cab driver was smart. So, Dan, thank you so much for making the time to share your journey, your story and your life lessons with us. Really applaud you for who you are and bringing smiles to millions of people and doing it the clean and the right way.

[00:26:28 – 00:26:45] Dan Nainan

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Again, the book is comedybook.net my website is comediandan.com everything is pretty much comedian Dan, all the socials. It’s great to be here and I know that you’ve had some amazing interviews, and it’s. I’m so honored to be in such great company, and thank you so much.