I stopped doing stand-up comedy when I realized how to reliably tell a joke that would make people laugh.

It was after this moment here, actually.

Today, I’m bored again. But that boredom comes with it a certain sweetness. After all, I’ve done what I’ve always wanted to do, which is write a theory of everything.

The Rosetta Stone

I remember going to church and not being satisfied with their theory of everything in sunday school. “What happened before everything happened?” That wasn’t in scope, apparently.

I stopped doing stand-up after I read and operationalized Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation and specifically the technique of Bisociation. I was already familiar with Janusian Thinking and Homospatial Thinking after chatting with Albert Rothenberg who’d interviewed Nobel Peace Prize winners.

My theory of everything unifies Leibniz’s Monadologie with The I-Ching from China and Indra’s Net from India, leveraging Janusian, Bisociative and Homospatial Thinking. So that is to say…it’s not MY theory of everything; it’s a remix. Like all good ideas.

So why am I telling you this? Well, I mean, you know me the best.

We’ve been here before. I didn’t know leaving finance for stand-up comedy would lead me back into finance using stand-up comedy but hey here we are. I still tell jokes for a living.

I still tell jokes for a living. Different crowd; this time they hav the mic. But that just makes it crowd work.

Material, Crowd Work, Improv. If luck is when opportunity meets preparedness, you can’t get lucky if you’re not prepared. And I’m prepared.

I like doing stand-up during work because it’s a better way to communicate because most people aren’t funny. I heard somewhere you had to be smart to be funny.

All I know is this: you can’t disagree if you’re laughing.

And I know how to tell a joke.

Listen to the entire stand-up comedy-driven social engineering pitch here.

Whutchu think I quit stand-up; never that.

We’re just getting started, you and I.

Say it ain’t so.

Stand-up comedian gets a job? Sounds like the last post from this blog. Well, let’s enjoy it, shall we? After all, there’s nothing people love more than a Fail video.

Or in this case, a fail blog post.

ooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmm

Diary of a stand-up comedian? Yeah right. I stopped writing in this blog when I quit comedy.

Why’d I quit stand-up? I couldn’t deal with the bombing. Let’s not dress it up.

My ego was so caught up in doing well on stage that I spent more time RUMINATING ABOUT stand-up comedy than ACTUALLY DOING stand-up comedy. Many such cases, huh?

Not everyone with dreads is for the cause. – Andre 3000, Aquemini

So yeah, think about this entire blog as a testament to what happens when someone has more vocabulary than courage. Think of this blog as a history of what happens to someone who thinks they can talk their way out of fear. Analyze their way into courage Prognosticate their way into leadership.

But you can’t talk your way out of fear. You can’t analyze yourself into courage. You cannot prognosticate y…well ok that last one, I’m not so sure of anymore. I can explain.

Since I’m only talking to the handful of you who know me, I’ll be brief with the preamble.

When COVID hit, stand up shut down. When stand up shut down, technology rose to fill the gap; namely, Zoom, Clubhouse, and TwitterSpaces. As Professor Richardson told me,

“Humans create technology to recreate the human experience.”

When my Linkedin posts started getting shadowbanned, I went to Twitter. But this time, I didn’t use my face. I used a picture of a unicorn.

Today, I’ve hosted over 2000 social audio calls – many of them recorded – on Twitter.

I treated Twitter like an open mic…and it’s starting to work. Like really work.

Like work as in WORK. Nawm sayin?

And none of this would’ve happened without Quinn C. Martin. Without stand-up. Without all of the bombing.

Eventually I found my voice. Turn out I had to find my balls first, but that’s for another day.

If you’ve been here from the beginning, then we have an understanding.

An understanding that bombing is fucked up. Embarrassing. Gut-wrenching. But the losses have a sweetness to them, in a way.

I’m grateful. Grateful for it all.

Thank God for comedy. I get to do it all day now. Live. Recorded.

Follow me at @attractfund1ng on Twitter.

Your favourite H1B,

Michael Jagdeo

How you been? Family good? Oh shit…sorry to hear.

Aw suh it go. So, whatcha been up to?

SHUT UP. That’s incredible. No way. Damn. Life is funny eh?

Me? It’s been crazy. Crazy good.

Stand up? Yeah…it’s been going well, actually. I get on stage everyday. Sometimes for hours at a time.

No, not comedy clubs…social audio.

So you know like how you can make a post to FB or IG or Twitter or Linkedin?

OK so this is a bit of.a long-winded story about how I never left stand-up…I took it with me.

Ram Dass once told a story about a guy who became enlightened and went back to selling insurance because the emotional turmoil of the workplace drama no longer bothered him.

That’s kind of how I feel right now…without the enlightened part.

When I started out this blog, I wanted to become a full-time stand-up comedian. I had plans on seeing my name in the marquee with bright lights, traveling the world, all that kind of stuff.

I learned how to write jokes, improvise, then talk to the crowd work over the course of seven years between 2011 and 2018. Quinn my mentor helped me learn more about people than he ever taught me about comedy.

Along the way, I discovered that when people were laughing they couldn’t disagree with me. I began testing comedy at work and started actually having a good time at work. Weird. I realized that I could turn every conversation I was in to a stand-up comedy show with just one audience member.

When the pandemic hit, comedy clubs were closed. I had stopped doing stand-up for awhile by that point because while I enjoyed stand-up I didn’t enjoy the lifestyle of stand-up comedy. Being out late on a daily basis just isn’t my thing.

But then something happened. The pandemic ushered in working from home…and what’s working from home but performing on a small camera on zoom?

That’s when the comedy began REALLY helping, because I realized I could use comedy at work to disagree with powerful people using sarcasm. It’s nuts. Powerful people have no idea what to do with sarcasm. They’re so used to people agreeing with them that when you disagree in the FORM OF AN AGREEMENT it short circuits their brain. Anyhoo. Read Koestler’s The Act Of Creation – just the first 100 pages – and you’ll know everything you need to know about comedy…and creativity. Carlin references it in his last interview. Memba dat; ah dat mi seh.

During the pandemic, apps like Zoom and Clubhouse and Instagram Live blew up. Twitter, not to be outdone, added a clone of Clubhouse that allowed everyone on Twitter to create little rooms people could talk in using their phone. Think of an open mic but software nerds doing argumentative Ted Talks on langchain streamlit and python for voice-powered chatbots instead of telling jokes. Imagine an open mic where 8 comedians had a mic and you’ll get a sense of the madness that occurs on these Twitter chatrooms called TwitterSpaces.

Long story short, I began as a Listener, getting my feel for the conversation. Then, I grew the courage to get on stage on TwitterSpaces as a Speaker. Eventually, I began hosting my own TwitterSpaces voice chatrooms, adding co-hosts, Speakers, and growing the room.

Two years later, we have a group of regulars that meet on a daily basis called The Syndicate. It’s a lot of tech talk, but I’ve been able to grow the community through stand up. Think Howard Stern but Tech.

And without comedy – and specifically Quinn’s help – we wouldn’t have anything.

Check us out on Twitter. And join us in a TwitterSpace sometime.

People call me a social engineer on there now.

The number one thing that people misunderstand about accounting is that it is a science. I’m a practicing CPA [I’M NOT THE AI SAID IT WAS!!!], and I know how easy it is to get it wrong. Here’s why.

Here’s the secret: accounting is a science that is used in conjunction with other sciences.

Accounting is a science because it is about numbers. The numbers are all we have. And we use those numbers to determine who will get paid, and who will get fired. That’s accounting.

Here’s how accounting science works. We know a lot about a business’s financial numbers, which is why accountants are hired. We then use those numbers to make the business more profitable.

If you don’t know what makes a business more profitable, you’ll never be more profitable. You’ll never know how to keep making more money.

What I am telling you is a proven scientific process.

It’s as scientific as it is practical, and it’s what accountants do every day.

And for all of you in accounting classes: please, stop trying to find an accountant who will tell you the “right way” to do things.

It doesn’t exist.

There are too many people in accounting, and they have to be flexible and creative.

The truth is: You have to ask yourself “what are the right questions to ask to figure out the answers to what needs to be done”?

And the answer is that you have to learn how to think like a scientist.

You have to be curious about numbers, but not so curious that you’re confused.

You have to ask questions and follow up until you find the right answers.

And when you do that, you will get the answers that will let you be more successful in business.

So now we come to our point of the day.

The key to becoming a better accountant is simple:

You have to understand what the right questions are to ask.

It’s like a computer.

Every computer has its own program. When you ask the right questions, you’re going to find the answers.

You’re going to make money.

You’re going to keep your clients.

You’re going to keep your job.

You’re going to go out and earn more money.

So we’ve been learning about accounting.

But what do all of these things have in common?

They all have to do with the ability to figure out the answers to the right questions.

When you learn to think like a scientist, you’re going to make more money.

Because then you’ll be asking the right questions. And when you ask the right questions, you’ll be more successful.

So what are the right questions?

The answer is simple.

Every time you have to make a decision, every time you ask a question, you’re going to get the answers that will help you make the right decisions.

And if you don’t know what the right questions are to ask, the right answers won’t help you make the right decisions.

And when you don’t make the right decisions, you lose money.

That’s all I’m trying to tell you.

The key is to ask the right questions.

There are a lot of ways that you can ask questions.

You can ask:

What will this cost?

How will this affect my budget?

Will this make me money?

What if it doesn’t?

You can also ask:

Why did I do this?

How did this affect me?

What was I thinking?

What were they thinking?

What was the thinking of the person who did this?

Why are we doing this?

Why didn’t we do this?

Why did we do this?

How did this affect the people who have to do this now?

Who were the people who had to do this before we did it?

How did we think that they would react to what we did?

What were we thinking when we did it?

Are we satisfied with the decision?

If we do it this way, are we going to have the results that we want?

You can also ask:

What is the bottom line?

What do I want to happen?

What do I need?

What are we going to do to make it happen?

What is my goal?

What will I do about this?

Why didn’t I do it this way before?

How will I know that I did the right thing?

What is the right thing to do?

When you ask these kinds of questions, you are going to find the right answers.

If you don’t ask the right questions, you won’t know the right answers.

If you ask the wrong questions, you won’t make the right decisions.

And that will make you lose money.

So we’ve learned about the right questions to ask.

You’re ready to do something else?

Good.

Now we’re going to look at a different set of questions.

These questions will help you make better decisions.

This is how you make a million dollars.

First, you have to know where you want to go.

That’s right. You need to know where you want to go.

Why is that so important?

Because if you don’t know where you want to go, you won’t know how to get there.

That means you’re going to be lost.

You’re going to be making mistakes.

You’re going to be wasting your time.

You’re going to be going nowhere.

And that means you’re going to be lost money.

So here’s what you need to know:

You have to decide where you want to go.

Where do you want to go?

That’s easy.

You want to make a million dollars.

How do you do that?

If you didn’t know where you were going, you couldn’t get there.

So what do you do?

You ask the right questions:

Why am I going?

Why am I doing this?

Why am I taking this road?

Why do I want this money?

How will this help me?

How much money do I need?

How will I get it?

How will this affect me?

How will this affect my family?

How will this affect my business?

Who else can I get money from?

How will this affect my budget?

How will this affect my plans?

What is the bottom line?

When will I need this money?

How will I know that I’m making the right decision?

What do I want to do?

How will this make me more money?

What does this mean to me?

Why didn’t I do this before?

How will this affect me?

How will this affect my friends?

Who else is going to get the money?

How will I get the money?

How will I keep it?

What if I don’t get it?

Who else is going to get it?

When can I get it?

How can I get more money?

What will I do with the money?

Where will the money come from?

Where will the money go?

Who will I work for?

What do I want to do with this money?

How will I spend it?

Why should I do this?

What will this mean to me?

What do I need?

How will I know that I’m making the right decision?

When will I know that I’m making the right decision?

How do I want to live my life?

I need to know how to get there.

So I need to know where I’m going.

And what do I want to do?

I want to earn a million dollars.

Why?

Because I want to feel more successful.

I want to feel more complete.

Because I want to feel happy.

I want to have more time.

Because I want to be more independent.

Because I want to be more free.

Because I want to spend more time with my family.

I want to enjoy my life more.

I want to feel more complete.

I want to feel like I’m doing something.

I want to be more successful.

I want to be happier.

I want to be more independent.

I want to spend more time with my family.

I want to feel like I’m doing something.

I want to enjoy my life more.

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