Core Business Concepts for Comedians to Consider from Day One
I've spent enough time in grungy comedy rooms to know that most performers have the business sense of a drunk toddler with a credit card. They stumble around feeling entitled, expecting someone to notice them, book them, tell them how killer that last set was. They trap young amateurs in endless sob stories about how “they almost made it”, how “everyone's against them”, how "‘the man’ is keeping them down”. These curmudgeons were irrelevant decades ago and I don’t know if it’s pity, or the generous boys club propping them up, but they just keep on keepin’ on.
Nobody is coming to hand them that 90’s sitcom deal. Nobody owes them shit.
But we also despise the flip side: the thirsty brown-noser who's more producer than performer, who believes TOO much in the system, subscribing to the cult of gatekeepers, the smoke and mirrors, the snake oil salesman. They think they can just fast-lane it to the top with enough paid bot-followers and expensive headshots. You know the guy, coasting on marketing chops and schmooze because he knows he can't survive in the trenches with a heckling stagette at Friday's late show, so he compensates with superficial Facebook comments and 10,000-word LinkedIn essays about "the state of comedy." Guess what dude? We don't give a shit that you’re nice. We don't care about your brilliantly designed Canva poster for a show that no more than 12 people will attend.
I don't care if your material is half-baked, your timing is off, or you've bombed three nights running trying to make that "Muppets are Sexy" bit land. Just keep getting out there. Don't be a people-pleaser but be polite, don't be a perfectionist but hold yourself accountable. Get your ass kicked and learn something real. Do it with humility. Do it because you love the work. Don’t wait around for handouts, shut up and get to grinding.
That's what separates the ones who make it from the ones who don't, that’s how you get somewhere.
But what if you don't just want to get somewhere? What if you actually want to make something of this?
Because make no mistake, *this* is a business. YOU are a business. The days of a festival spot skyrocketing you to the top are over. Now YOU have to be a promoter, producer, and performer rolled into one.
So ask yourself one fundamental question:
What's this business actually worth?
If you're serious about treating it like a business, if you’re serious about protecting your assets and livelihood, if you’re serious about maximizing your creative potential, here's where to start.
Arsenal of Assets
That mildly off putting character you've been perfecting - That's intellectual property. Those catchphrases scribbled on napkins or stashed away in your notes app? Gold. Every clip you post, every podcast you record, every piece of content you create is your inventory. Your catalog. Build it. Back it up. Develop it strategically. Smart comedians are building libraries of evergreen content, and creating ecosystems where everything feeds everything else.
Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
Platforms die. Remember when TikTok nearly got nuked? You need multiple revenue streams. Audio, social media, live shows, merchandise, courses, meet-and-greets. Find every angle. Your brand should be strong and elastic enough to stretch across opportunities you haven't even thought up yet. Can you turn your latest bit into a t-shirt? Is your hour ready to be packaged as a one-person show? A feature film? A cult following? If the answer is no, you're thinking too small.
That being said, don’t dilute your offering and don’t try to do too much at once. Just constantly stay curious about opportunities to reformat and repurpose, and when one comes up that doesn’t require a disruptive amount of energy to execute on, just do it.
Find Your Strategic Partnerships
Who are your most admirable or inspiring peers? Who are the podcast hosts, bookers, and producers that can open doors for you? What brands would actually make sense for your voice without selling your soul? Start building those relationships while you're nobody because by the time you're somebody, everyone's going to want something from you, and you'll need to know who's real and who's just another predatory piece of shit.
When you're ready to make the big ask to that high-powered agent or dream venue, don't half-ass it. Come bearing gifts. Come with value. Come with perfect timing. Show up confident but not entitled, because desperation reeks and entitlement is a boner killer that these industry veterans can spot a mile away.
The Necessary Evil: Business Infrastructure
You became a comedian to make people laugh, not to become some suit-wearing, spreadsheet-humping, corporate drone. The whole reason you're doing this is to avoid that soul-crushing bullshit, right? You think you're too cool for contracts? Too artistic for accounting? Congratulations, you're about to get royally fucked the second your business is worth anything. Ignorance will eat you alive.
So learn your rights. Understand your tax strategies. Know what you're signing before you sign it. ChatGPT can help you parse the legal sludge, but ultimately, you need to understand the business you're in.
Find allies you trust and lean on them for advice. When your first big payday comes in, cough up a couple hundred bucks to have a lawyer review the contract.
Set aside time every month for the boring shit. Make a monthly ritual out of it. Tally expenses, review investments, note red flags. Yes, you'll probably want to crawl out of your skin, but that urge to jump off a bridge will be a lot stronger if you go bankrupt because you thought business stuff was beneath you.
And when you're successful enough to hire a business manager, you'll know what you're handing off, some fancy fraud can’t swoop in and rob you blind. You'll understand the ins and outs of your operations and actually be able to protect yourself.
Measuring What Matters
Schedule a reality check. How's your audience growing? Are you actually making money, or just collecting passive followers? Do you have targets, or are you just hoping for the best while posting into the void? What's working? What's tanking? What's your position in the market? Are you the scrappy underdog or the established player? Take inventory of your metrics and realign for the next 30 days. Treat it like a performance review.
The Long Game: Building Your Empire
Once or twice a year, zoom out. Zoom waaaaay out. Look at your career as if you’re capable of anything and planning a hostile takeover of the industry.
Map your path from open mics to theatres, from Instagram reels to Netflix specials. See the connections between your projects. How does your podcast feed your live shows? How do your live shows inform your online content? How does everything you're doing today set you up for the opportunities you want tomorrow?
Know your endgame. Do you want a special? A show? A production company? Your own goddamn network? Define that North Star and work backwards, building a critical path, a roadmap, to your ideal destination.
The comedians who last, who actually thrive instead of fading into the sad obsolete abyss, they think like entrepreneurs. They're not just hustling for stage time or chasing fleeting viral moments, they’re not sitting around bitching all day. They're building something sustainable, something that can weather economic storms when folks stop buying tickets because none of us can afford groceries anymore. They’re protected against mysterious algorithm changes, not to mention the inevitable cultural shifts in what people think is funny. They protect their IP like it's their firstborn. They think about scaling, about cutting out the middlemen, about creating their own opportunities instead of waiting for some industry gatekeeper to hand them out like candy.
This is your business. Treat it like one.
Photo by Randy Laybourne on Unsplash