Papa CJ contact details
Episode Transcript
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Sharad: Hi, everyone. Welcome to how to live a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host Sharad Lal. This is episode 24.
How do we take our passion and convert it into a career? That's the topic of today's podcast we have with us, Papa CJ, Papa. CJ is a world renowned standup comedian, executive coach, and a published author. He's been awarded Asia's best standup comedian and India's best standup comedian; he's performed in 2000 shows across 25 countries, right from Broadway, New York to the Sydney opera house.
Papa. CJ is an MBA from the university of Oxford as an executive coach. He's worked with over 50 companies across the globe.
He writes for the Harvard business review and has been invited to speak at Harvard and other prestigious institutions.
In this episode, Papa CJ and I talk about discovering one's passion, hard work needed to excel in one's craft, converting passion into a career, ways to avoid the negativity of comparisons, and defining one's personal brand. And a lot more, this episode will be relevant to many of us torn between a mainstream career and an alternative career. And also for those looking to monetize their passions.
Papa. CJ is a funny guy, but he's been serious about his career in life. It's really inspirational to hear his story. Someone from a humble upbringing who back in 2005, decided to pursue his passion in a foreign country and made it work. But before getting to the interview, here's thanking all of you for supporting this podcast. With your support, we hit number three in Singapore. We are top 5% globally and are listened to in over 65 countries over 500 cities, please do consider leaving us a rating on Spotify, Apple podcast, or wherever you're listening to this.
Thank you in advance. Now. Here's the interview.
Hi, Papa. CJ, how are you doing this morning? Welcome to How to Live.
Papa CJ: Very good. C I am excited to be here in front of that beautiful head of yours.
Sharad: Thank you. Thank you. You had seen this head back in 2005, and I'm sure you don't remember, but I'm just gonna drop that in. I was in between jobs. I was taking a little holiday in London and I was watching standup comedy for the first time in my life.
And after two guys, suddenly an Indian guy came along with long hair and started performing. It was so funny. You saw my shiny hair and you took a liking on me. I didn't expect that I'd never seen standup comedy before. So I didn't know you would get attacked when you sit in front or if you have some shiny object.
So I don't remember what you say, but it's scarreD me for a few days, but I've recovered, but that was awesome, man. I loved hearing you in 2005 and then. The success that you've created after that has been absolutely phenomenal.
Papa CJ: My God, 17 years later.
Sharad: 17 years later. Great. Let's get started, man. There are many places to start and I know just a few years before that in I think early two thousands, you went to Oxford to do an MBA. At that stage in your life. What were you thinking about your career and life? What were your aspirations?
Papa CJ: I grew up in a typical middle class, Indian family. My father was a tea planter. He worked for one tea company for 35 years. It was every Indian's dream of upward mobility. So got into a decent university, got a job. And my thinking about my career was purely corporate.
I thought I'd join a consulting firm and, rise up the ranks. I ended up doing the first half of it, which is joining a consulting firm. I did not end up rising the ranks of that firm. I spent three years and six different jobs in this company. And post that sort of took a sabbatical. Which I managed to get on 35% pay, which is a super deal with the job waiting for me when I got back. And that's the year when I went to the Edinburg festival and saw somebody doing comedy for the first time. For somebody who was in a job where I did not like it at all, not even did not like it, the people were wonderful, but I just felt incompetent.
I was working for IBM and. I just could not get the technology piece. I'm not a tech guy, it was amazing to see somebody on stage with a microphone in his hand and a beer in the other. The beer was not the motivation though, but he was a guy on stage just having fun. And that was his job.
And I just thought that was the most amazing thing to do. And that's when I took that plunge.
Sharad: So in Edinburg, you saw this guy and how did you think that, Hey, I'm funny. I can actually keep an audience.
Papa CJ: I didn't think that at all to start with, it just looked like something that was amazing to do. Three months after that I started doing it. You start by doing these small open mic nights and the beauty about a city like London, is you can literally perform every single day of the week.
Of course you get paid nothing for it, but you get to learn. . So I remember in my first 10 months I did 250 gigs.
Sharad: Wow.
Papa CJ: I was on stage every day. I had chucked up, my job started doing this stuff and half the gigs were outside of London. So over three years I did about 700 gigs. But off the 400 gigs that maybe I did outside London, I spent eight hours in a car with two other comedians.
These were comics who had been doing it for 10, between 10 and 20 years. I was the open mic or the middle slot, and one of them would be the opener. One of them would be the closer, I would see how they would prepare for their shows. I would literally beg them to watch me perform, give me feedback, see how they would analyze their content afterwards, perform in rooms where maybe I struggled with but these guys were able to capture.
So I've spent over 2000 hours in cars with comedians and that was comedy university right there, in the beginning, did I think I was funny? I had no clue, but I knew I was gonna give it a go. And the interesting thing is you learn nothing from a good show. I had a good show.
You walk off stage thinking I'm the king in a bad show. We get feedback every 15 seconds. If they're not laughing every 15 seconds, you're failing. And there's nothing worse than trying to make people laugh, getting five minutes of silence. So you've gotta ask yourself on the way home if I'm ever again, in the same city with an audience of a similar background or the same country, what can I do differently?
So I don't like a fool, so by now I've done, oh God knows, maybe 2,500 shows, I've done black audiences, white audiences, Indian audiences, mixed audiences, 80 years old, 16 year old. And you learn by playing all those different gigs, how to actually work those crowds.
Sharad: Awesome. There's nothing like on the ground training, learning for people. And like you said, 2000 hours doing that itself is great training. Did you consider any other training to upskill yourself and build a skill?
Papa CJ: I think with comedy there isn't much other training you can do. You can read books about joke writing and stuff like that, but it's one of those things that you have to learn by doing. It's like swimming, right? There's those many books you can read about swimming, but you've gotta get in the water. So it's the same with comedy. A lot of it is basically the management of energy. You can't teach comic timing, for example, it's just something you sense. And what's interesting is when I started doing stand up, I started my career in the UK. Now I hadn't grown up there. I didn't have the same cultural references.
I didn't watch the same TV programs going up. I wasn't interested in their sport or in their politics. So I was doing jokes. Here's a joke. Here's a joke. Here's a joke. Here's a joke. And when you start and you're doing five minutes, you don't have the luxury of telling a three minute long story, because then you'll have one and a half punch lines in your whole set.
So it was literally like joke, joke. I had at least 20 punch lines in a five minute set. I still remember I had a 90 second routine about a beggar that had 30 punch lines. So there was a laugh, every six seconds. I had spreadsheets with my content, I knew on a five minute set it's four minutes of me speaking.
20% of the time is gonna be for laughter. If they're not laughing, get off stage anyway, cause it's going terrible. And the solid jokes and the really good jokes were in green. The weaker ones were in yellow. So you start strong, you end strong. And in between the strong stuff, we carry the weak stuff. So it goes like that.
It was as scientific as that, you remove every single extra word that you don't need. Whereas when I move back to. This is my country. I grew up here. So I was a lot more confident in chatting with the audience. If you spoke about something, I would know what they're talking about. Sometimes in the UK, if an audience member said something to me, half the time, I wouldn't understand his or her accent.
So it's not really funny. Or you can't have a rapid response when three times you're going. Sorry what did you say? Can you repeat that? Whereas now when I've come to India, I can spend 45 minutes on stage without telling a single pre-written joke. I'm just chatting with the audience and making up stuff on the spot.
So it moved from more of a science to an art, but I think eventually you've gotta, you combine both of them. You enjoy the art form and the flow of things. But when you need to, you've got those guns in the back to pull them out in fire. I dunno. Does that make sense?
Sharad: That makes a lot of sense and what I took out of it, and I see that parallel in sports, where you're taught technique. You're taught the fundamentals of a sport. And after those fundamentals are ingrained and that's the hard work you did in the UK in a difficult environment. It becomes second nature. Then you can become yourself. Then you can explore. That’s great to hear that this kind of template exists across professions.
Papa CJ: In fact, I'd add to that. I'd say then the fun is in throwing the fundamentals out of the window.
Saying, you know what, I'm not gonna play the game by the rules. I'm gonna make my own stuff up. When I need to, I can go back to that.
Like cricket, we never used to have all these scoop shots and all of this time, the reverse sweep. But now you look at T 20 cricket. They're just making stuff up. Kevin Peterson doing the switch hit. Hello.
Sharad: Absolutely agree with that. So now you're doing these interesting things. You've got a structure you've come back to India. You're yourself. And like you mentioned earlier, there was very little pay to begin with in the UK. How did you consider making this a career that would pay the bills, help you have a family?
How did that thought process work?
Papa CJ: So it's not always in your hands Sharad. I think when you make it, a career is not a decision you make. It's just, when you are earning enough to not need to do anything else, then it by default can become a career, and you never know when that point comes. Even with standup in the UK. A year in, I went broke.
So I joined a recruitment firm. I used to work in the day and perform at night, but even though I was spending eight hours in an office and 10 minutes on stage in my head, I was a comedian and the job was on the side, but when I moved back to India, that was also interesting because I remember I moved back.
An aunt of mine asked me, son, what do you do? So I said, auntie, I'm a comedian.
I tell jokes. So she was like, son, even I tell jokes, but what do you do for a living? So I think that concept really wasn't there. In the early phases of my career, I was doing a lot more public shows. And also I was supporting building the circuit, but over the course of time, we had enough comedians who started running gigs on their own.
So the live circuit didn't need me as much to, get it going. And that's when I shifted of focus more onto corporate shows. And the corporate shows are where the money lies in standup. At least in India. Your money comes in advance. You get put in a nice hotel.
You perform to a corporate crowd and you leave. That's what helps you pay the bills.
Sharad: Great. So you could stay in the same field where you were doing things that you loved, but also find money to be able to pay the bills. Was that how you were thinking or how was the mindset at that stage?
Papa CJ: Sometimes there will not be other opportunities. You have to create those opportunities. So it is for you to have a thinking that is broad enough. I remember as a kid, my dad used to tell me this story about the shoe salesman from the Bata shoe company in Kolkata.
This is a marketing manager. And he got this idea saying, let me send a salesman to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. To see what the market is like. This guy reaches the islands and he sees that nobody's wearing any shoes.
So he goes to the post office, sends a telegram to his boss saying, listen, there's a, there's no market here. Nobody's wearing any shoes. A few years pass. And another marketing manager comes along. This guy goes by ship, reaches the island and sees that nobody's wearing any shoes. He goes running to the post office, sends an urgent telegram to his boss saying the market is wide open. Nobody here has any shoes. I'm staying here, send me all the stock you've got. So I think in some cases you have to create those opportunities.
There may be things. You of value that you have to offer an audience or a customer or a group of people. They may not even know about that. So it is your job to educate them on what you have to offer and create those opportunities. Often we think, oh, there isn't an opportunity for this. There's no market for this.
Nobody wants this. It is your job to make the market.
Sharad: Love that. What were some of the skills that you had when you looked at yourself, which helped you create those opportunities, which helped you create something out of it, which was, which became a solid career.
Papa CJ: I've never been a big sort of social media or marketing guy. And frankly speaking, the part of my job that I hate the most is self-promotion, I absolutely despise it, which is probably one of the reasons I don't do too many public shows and I do more of the corporate stuff cause it happens automatically for me, I think my career largely has grown sharp because of the proof of the pudding. I absolutely love what I do. I try and be as professional as possible. I will show up early, I will do a sound check. I will set up the room. I will, do my job to the best of my ability the other thing is I genuinely like people,. I'm happy to stick around, chat with people. Some of ex clients or audience members have become some of my best friends, and a lot of those opportunities arise just by Shirley having conversations with people.
They're like, Hey dude, this is cool. Can you do this for me at so and so place, it's just making yourself accessible and also just doing the very best possible job you can. Today 99% of my work comes from people who have seen me at. So it's literally reference or word of mouth.
Sharad: Great. I think there's something you wrote about in your book as well. Referring to who was the comedian Martin where he says, you need to be that good, that people automatically come and notice
Papa CJ: Steve Martin
Sharad: Um, Steve Martin, you need to be so good that people notice you. So that kind of puts the focus on your craft, it's not necessary promotions. It's your craft. You make it better. And skills which are related to the craft, which is being friendly to people, engaging in conversations and having that entire thing working for you itself is solid enough for your focus to be in the right place and to get you to where you've come now.
Papa CJ: Yeah. There's a balance to it, so there's two sides to it. See on the one side, as they say, show business, right? Half of it is the show. The other half is busines. So there's this whole stuff around building your personal brand and all that jazz, but as time passes, Sharad, I think what I've come to realize is that if you can just be authentic and focus on what you absolutely love doing, then you're gonna shine at that.
And the work will automatically come. So I don't think you necessarily need to try and force fit yourself. Into boxes that have been designed by other people. Don't get me wrong. I also wanna be clear that passion doesn't always put food on the table, so yes, you wanna feed your soul, but you need to feed your stomach as well.
There are gigs you will do because it puts food on the table. It pays the bills. And there are gigs you do, because that's just what you love doing.
And the goal is to eventually get to a point where you can only do what you are passionate about, but that being said, I think it depends on your upbringing as well, even though you may be financially comfortable. If you've grown up in a family or come from a background where you didn't have too much growing up, the commercial gigs will still be attractive. You'll always be like, oh yeah, let me do that gig. I'm gonna get something in the bank.
Sharad: I'm glad you brought up this point of upbringing. You had a middle class upbringing where you were very careful with money. And of course, you were looking at getting a stable career. What role did upbringing have in you becoming a standup comedian?
Papa CJ: So one of the things I do want to clarify though, is that middle class in India is different to what middle class means in countries like the UK. So in the UK it's middle class means you're pretty well off. So middle class in India is like working class in the UK, with regard to my upbringing. My greatest strength since childhood and even today have been my parents, they've always been supportive.
Even when I started doing stand up, it was a profession. They didn't understand. It didn't even exist in India at the time at no point did they say, oh no, don't do that. Or get a job. They backed me completely. Of course, it's only 10 years later that they told me, listen, we thought you'll do it for six months and Chuck it up.
Okay. We didn't expect yeah. Get it out of your system. Literally. I think that's what they said. They didn't expect that I would just stick. But in spite of that, they stuck by me. And the other thing was, I was always financially independent. So I took a whole bunch of loans to do my MBA degree at Oxford, but I paid those loans off.
I had a few savings in the bank and that's when I took this leap. Because I was standing on my feet, I was okay.
Sharad: Not that for people listening. One clear rule that comes out in terms of pursuing your passion is it's not something you blindly do. Like you said, you thought of firstly paying all your loans off. It's not like you have a lot of loans and you're gonna put the world against you and make it work.
So you pay your loans off. You also find ways, like you said, to do things that you love, maybe certain things that you don't love that pay the bill, but you do that. You do the practical stuff as well. It's a very practical come idealistic way to create an alternative path.
Was there any stage in your career where you felt? Damn I'm too far in. I should have just stuck to the corporate world and make it work because I don't know how this can be a career like the dark moments in your comedy career.
Papa CJ: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I remember a specific moment, which is such a vivid memory. I had done a show out of town, out of London. And what used to happen is you would get dropped off on the outskirts of London, by the comedian who was driving, pay them your share of petrol. I wasn't getting paid for any of these gigs.
It was about 2.30 in the morning. I was somewhere in south London, it was cold. It was raining. I was freezing. I was hungry. I had to change three different buses to get home. And I remember I was literally huddled in one of the doorways of one of the shops. Waiting for 45 minutes for the first bus to come.
I remember calling a taxi service and they said the taxi would get me home would cost 22 pounds. I couldn't afford 22 pounds so for 45 minutes, I was just shivering there. And I had to change three buses. I got home at about five in the morning. At that point, I remember huddled into the doorway of that shop asking myself, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing? And I got home, went to sleep, woke up in the morning. I like awesome one more gig tonight. I was back in the horse.
Sharad: That is so good. So that grief lasted a few hours of sleep. That's it. And then you were
Papa CJ: yeah, pretty It's rites of passage, man, but it's great to look back, cuz nostalgia is fantastic. But when you're going through that, it can be really tough.
Sharad: Nice. I noticed at some stage you moved not only to gigs in the corporate world, but to executive coaching and communication with the corporate world. So firstly, my question is how the hell did you get them to take you seriously? You're a standup comedian. And now you're training the leadership of a company on communication on executive coaching.
How did they take you seriously?
Papa CJ: Here's the thing. When I joined this recruitment firm and this was 2006 or seven in London, one of my clients was a company that did executive coaching. So I qualified as a coach with them. And on my free days, I will literally say I'm free. And so days get me work. and they would say, okay, Google wants to run this workshop in Idlin.
Nike wants to do this in Amsterdam. So even before I came to India, I had trained 50 companies all over the world. Google, Accenture, Deutche bank, Nike UBS, BBC universal music, somehow over the course of the last decade or so I've still been interested in business. I don't think you need to be serious to be taken seriously.
Today, if you look at the senior guys, they have seen and been for every single type of corporate training, nobody wants a lecture.
Nobody wants a guy standing in front of you reading 300 words off a slide. So I think what I'm able to bring to the table is a fun way of bringing out lessons that you can immediately apply in your context. I've just returned from Switzerland where the guys, I was training and coaching had salaries up to three to 5 million per annum.
Really senior guys. Now you can't bullshit your way through at that level, but I'm still giving them stuff that they can use and they find to be of value. And the interesting thing is I'm really enjoying it myself. Also, I genuinely believe that you can be a category of one. Today, my experience is I have comedy. I've got coaching and that area where the comedy and coaching overlap is an area that makes me unique. So one of the sessions I run is called a comedians guide to communication strategy. I break down how as comics we grab and retain attention and how you can apply exactly those skills in your workplace, I'll give you an example. One of the best pieces of advice I got, it was from a comedian called Adam Bloom in London. Was that it's very important for you to grow in the dark because when you hit the limelight, you don't have the freedom to screw up.
So if I'm performing at the Sydney opera house, which I have, I can't afford to have a bad show. Now, when you wanna succeed all the time, what do you do? You play safe. You're like, listen, I know this works. And let me stick with this. As a result, you don't innovate. You don't take risks. You don't take experiments.
You don't grow. You stagnate. So as comedians, what is the solution to this? What we do is we go to small open mic nights, whether it may be 30 people in the room, your name is not on the poster. You will try new stuff, see what works, see what doesn't, the stuff that doesn't work. You will change it around, try it differently until it does become really good.
And when it's Bulletproof, you take it into the larger show. My question to you as an organization, is your open mic night? Where are you going to make mistakes? Where are you going to take risks?
What are the experiments you would like to tie? Try which new products, which customers, what price points, what markets. So at the end of half a day, they literally have a strategy written up on their wall. So, if you see what I've done there, most of my coaching is me doing storytelling and anecdotes from comedy, pulling out that learning, and then getting people to apply it in their context.
And more importantly, at the end of the session, they can immediately go and apply it to a problem that they're currently facing.
Sharad: That's brilliant, man. That's brilliant. We talk so much, even in companies of taking learnings from one function, finance to marketing, you've taken learnings from one field, which is a very different field, the field of comedy to the corporate world, to the boardroom. And that is so beautiful. And the way you described it, like no one wants to sit in boring trainings and you have this guy who's such a good communicator, funny guy.
And he gives you. Very powerful tools.
That's why you've established yourself in such a solid way. Even as a mainstream corporate person, while pursuing your passion of comedy.
One of the things that I've noticed us, and especially a lot of people who are in alternative paths, quite often, you compare to others. He, or she's way ahead of me. Or you compare to the new age people who suddenly come in and do some Netflix specials and go way ahead after you've done the hard yards, do those things come up for you and how do you manage yourself with those emotions?
Papa CJ: Comparison is the thief of joy. The worst thing you can do is compare. I did not leave the corporate world and join a creative field. To be in a rat race in the creative field. I do what I do, cuz I absolutely love doing it. Do you get tempted? Of course it happens to everybody. You see somebody, oh my God.
10 million views on so and so video, but then you remind yourself, you have to remind yourself. I don't like sitting in front of a camera and editing videos. That's not what I like doing now. If I have left a corporate career to pursue something that I love doing let me just get the joy out of that.
Sharad: I like that. It's going into the reality of it. I left this for a reason, or I don't truly enjoy what he's doing behind the lens.
Papa CJ: You need to remind yourself what the things are that you genuinely value. Today I could be sitting in Los Angeles and shooting a sitcom.
However, every morning I go to my local coffee shop and I sit with my mom and dad, and I have a cup of coffee with them. For me, that is far more important. Than any amount of money or fame that you could offer me. So even when I see somebody who's maybe doing a 45 day tour in the US, it looks really glamorous on paper.
Do I wanna spend 45 minutes on the road from one city to the other? No, thank you. I'm much happier where I am, see it's very easy to be drawn to all these things that look glamorous on paper, but you need to live a life that is true to yourself and your values and the things that you genuinely enjoy.
Sharad: That's a great way to ground yourself because it's so difficult, like you said, with so many shiny objects, but grounding yourself to value and reminding yourself that cup of coffee with your parents is much more important than many of the other things. And that leads to, like you said, fulfilment and happiness.
I love that. We talked a little bit about a single brand profession like you yourself are the brand and typically in these professions more so in standup comedy, you're putting yourself on stage, you're being vulnerable. And I know you've had a journey in vulnerability where you've taken it forward and also told your story on stage, written a heartwarming book that many people have read.
What's it been like? Just putting yourself out there, putting yourself on stage.
Papa CJ: I think it's therapeutic at some level. It's therapeutic, not just for you, but for your audiences as well. Because if you see my show naked, I know you've read the book. What happens with that book or the show is when I'm using the vehicle of my life, but I'm talking about the human experience. So when people are reading it or watching the show at some point, they're thinking, oh, wait a second.
He's talking about my life because I have been through similar emotions or experiences. So not only is an incredible connection formed there. The other thing that happens is people are able to look at it and say, wait a second. If he can go through all of this stuff and find the funny side or the positive side, then I have the ability to look at my problems in a similar light.
So at least that's what, that's the feedback I have received from my audiences that they have been able to find closure or be able to look at their problems in a different light by hearing my story. And that's very gratifying.
Sharad: Absolutely. When I read the book, It was very heartwarming as you go along.
And that kind of helped me build even without knowing you some sort of a bond with you. And that's what I like about vulnerability. That's what it does. It builds a connection. This is the first time you are having a conversation apart from when you took me apart in 2005, but this is the first time it's a two-way conversation.
And I feel that bond, which is beautiful
Papa CJ: There is one of my favorite comedians is a very good friend. His name is Reginal D Hunter. And I remember he told me there is a difference between a comic and a comedian. He says a comic says funny things, but a comedian has something to say, it's perfectly fine to be either. So for the first 10 years of my career, I was a comic. I was telling jokes, but when I started doing naked, when I wrote the show naked, then I had something to say. And it was more than just jokes.
So to say, there was a story or there was an element of depth to it.
Sharad: Absolutely. Thanks for that. I know you've taken your career to the next level when you've done the happiness project. And that, to me, struck such a powerful cord where you decided to go into the most to people suffering the most and make them laugh.
How did the thought come about and what was the experience like?
Papa CJ: I had actually been supporting a charity for kids from the time I started doing stand up. So in Oxford and LA and I set up a charity in the UK called one child, which used to support underprivileged kids in India, helping them come outta child labor and back in getting them back into the formal schooling system.
Even when I was earning nothing, I used to stand with a small force sheet of paper in comedy rooms across the UK and saying, listen, if you like my show, you can donate towards this.
I don't know if there's anything in particular that spurred me on to do it. I just take on different initiatives to support people who need it. Sometimes I just go to the homes and hospital rooms of people.
Who have been suffering for a long time just to entertain them and their families? The most recent one, I went to a children's cancer ward at a paediatric hospital. And I was really nervous because I know how to engage adults, but I was told the kids would be between five and 14, but most of them were younger than 5.
so to engage children who are going through so much suffering for 90 minutes, but we did it and they had a great time. So that was very rewarding. But again, what happens in those shows, you put so much energy into it. Like for two days, your whole body just shuts down because you've just given so much. I think those are the shows that are really rewarding and gratifying.
Sharad: Now for people listening. Those guys, imagine somebody in their forties doing reasonably well in their career.
Or her career and looking for something alternative. What's the one big advice you would give them? What kind of mindset should they view an alternative
Papa CJ: I'm gonna give you a caveat right now, because this is a conversation I have with many people over coffee, and the caveat is most people end up quitting their jobs after that. So the first question I tend to ask people is if you had a billion, ask yourself two questions.
If you had a billion dollars in the bank, how would you spend your time? Not what would you buy? How would you spend your time? If I ask this to a 22 year old the guy would probably say, I'll travel. I said, okay, where will you go? I'll go to Europe. How long will you go for? I'll go for one month. When you do the mathematics.
There's a book called Frommer's guide to Europe on $50 a day. You can actually do Europe for a month in $1,500, say $2,000 where I'm trying to get people to, is that the cost of your dreams is far lower than whatever imaginary figure you might have in your mind. We tend to think I'll work till so on.
So point then I'll live my life. The second question I would like you to ask yourself is how much money do you need until the day you die, calculate it, write it down, account for children, education, marriage, holidays, healthcare from that subtract what you already have. All your assets, all your savings.
You left with a number, divide that by the number of years you plan to work, 90% of people who do that calculation figure out that they're working far harder. Than they need to work to fulfil all their dreams, which brings me back to question one then why are you not living the life of your dreams? There's a Harvard study on happiness, which has gone over 75 years and they've done it across incomes and nationalities. And it's a really large sample size.
And they've figured out that essentially. Your level of happiness, regardless of your social strata, income, country, background, gender comes down to the quality of your relationships, so why are we going around chasing all these other things? When joy is sitting in the next room, waiting for you to ask them to go have a cup of coffee with them.
Sharad: That's beautiful. That's beautiful. The relationship part, what's really important to you. Also the part of how we overestimate, what we really need or how we overestimate the expenses of our dreams. Like you put it, that puts things in perspective, which then allows people to take the risk. And like you said, quit that job the next day and go do what they want to do.
So very powerful. Thank you for that. I have this last question before people go. At the end of your life, how would you know you've lived a good life?
Papa CJ: When I interview people, I ask them almost an identical. Except my question is how would you like to be remembered? Which is pretty much the same thing. And my answer to that question is with a smile. If, when people think of me, it brings a smile to their face. That's good enough for me.
Sharad: That's beautiful. You're living your purpose. Papa, CJ. Thank you very much for your time today. I've loved this conversation. You're doing what many people want to do today? A lot of us pursuing a normal career and now are questioning what should we do in life?
And you're an inspiration to so many of us who can look at you and find ways to do something that they truly desire, truly want to do. So thank you very much for that. And
Papa CJ: That's very good to say, thanks a lot Sharad
Sharad: Thank you, Papa CJ for such an inspirational conversation. This will be very useful to many of us looking at alternative careers. For folks interested in seeing Papa CJ live. He's gonna be in Singapore on 18th and 19th of October. In Ho Chi Minh on 12th of October, in Hanoi, on 13th of October, I will put up all details in the show notes.
If you enjoyed this episode, you could consider listening to episode two, where we talk about achievement versus fulfilment and episode 11, where we explore ways to discover what one truly wants out of life.
Here's one action step we could consider: let's calculate the price of our dream life. Put a number to it like Papa. CJ said earlier, often we think living our dream is not possible, but once we do the math, it may not seem that far off.
I understand for folks in Singapore with kids just living a reasonable life seems very expensive. However, we often overestimate the monetary value of our aspiration in life. After putting a finite number, this could be a starting point to some important decisions in life.
Can we pursue a passion? Can we do part-time mainstream work and part-time passion projects? Or when can we do any of this? Hope this exercise is useful for you related to this, we will cover early retirement in a future episode. That's it for today's episode, we will be back with another episode two weeks from now on September 27th. I hope you join me for that, till next time. Have a wonderful day ahead. Bye bye.
The transcript is auto generated. There may be errors in transcription.
Sharad: Hi, everyone. Welcome to how to live a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host Sharad Lal. This is episode 24.
How do we take our passion and convert it into a career? That's the topic of today's podcast we have with us, Papa CJ, Papa. CJ is a world renowned standup comedian, executive coach, and a published author. He's been awarded Asia's best standup comedian and India's best standup comedian; he's performed in 2000 shows across 25 countries, right from Broadway, New York to the Sydney opera house.
Papa. CJ is an MBA from the university of Oxford as an executive coach. He's worked with over 50 companies across the globe.
He writes for the Harvard business review and has been invited to speak at Harvard and other prestigious institutions.
In this episode, Papa CJ and I talk about discovering one's passion, hard work needed to excel in one's craft, converting passion into a career, ways to avoid the negativity of comparisons, and defining one's personal brand. And a lot more, this episode will be relevant to many of us torn between a mainstream career and an alternative career. And also for those looking to monetize their passions.
Papa. CJ is a funny guy, but he's been serious about his career in life. It's really inspirational to hear his story. Someone from a humble upbringing who back in 2005, decided to pursue his passion in a foreign country and made it work. But before getting to the interview, here's thanking all of you for supporting this podcast. With your support, we hit number three in Singapore. We are top 5% globally and are listened to in over 65 countries over 500 cities, please do consider leaving us a rating on Spotify, Apple podcast, or wherever you're listening to this.
Thank you in advance. Now. Here's the interview.
Hi, Papa. CJ, how are you doing this morning? Welcome to How to Live.
Papa CJ: Very good. C I am excited to be here in front of that beautiful head of yours.
Sharad: Thank you. Thank you. You had seen this head back in 2005, and I'm sure you don't remember, but I'm just gonna drop that in. I was in between jobs. I was taking a little holiday in London and I was watching standup comedy for the first time in my life.
And after two guys, suddenly an Indian guy came along with long hair and started performing. It was so funny. You saw my shiny hair and you took a liking on me. I didn't expect that I'd never seen standup comedy before. So I didn't know you would get attacked when you sit in front or if you have some shiny object.
So I don't remember what you say, but it's scarreD me for a few days, but I've recovered, but that was awesome, man. I loved hearing you in 2005 and then. The success that you've created after that has been absolutely phenomenal.
Papa CJ: My God, 17 years later.
Sharad: 17 years later. Great. Let's get started, man. There are many places to start and I know just a few years before that in I think early two thousands, you went to Oxford to do an MBA. At that stage in your life. What were you thinking about your career and life? What were your aspirations?
Papa CJ: I grew up in a typical middle class, Indian family. My father was a tea planter. He worked for one tea company for 35 years. It was every Indian's dream of upward mobility. So got into a decent university, got a job. And my thinking about my career was purely corporate.
I thought I'd join a consulting firm and, rise up the ranks. I ended up doing the first half of it, which is joining a consulting firm. I did not end up rising the ranks of that firm. I spent three years and six different jobs in this company. And post that sort of took a sabbatical. Which I managed to get on 35% pay, which is a super deal with the job waiting for me when I got back. And that's the year when I went to the Edinburg festival and saw somebody doing comedy for the first time. For somebody who was in a job where I did not like it at all, not even did not like it, the people were wonderful, but I just felt incompetent.
I was working for IBM and. I just could not get the technology piece. I'm not a tech guy, it was amazing to see somebody on stage with a microphone in his hand and a beer in the other. The beer was not the motivation though, but he was a guy on stage just having fun. And that was his job.
And I just thought that was the most amazing thing to do. And that's when I took that plunge.
Sharad: So in Edinburg, you saw this guy and how did you think that, Hey, I'm funny. I can actually keep an audience.
Papa CJ: I didn't think that at all to start with, it just looked like something that was amazing to do. Three months after that I started doing it. You start by doing these small open mic nights and the beauty about a city like London, is you can literally perform every single day of the week.
Of course you get paid nothing for it, but you get to learn. . So I remember in my first 10 months I did 250 gigs.
Sharad: Wow.
Papa CJ: I was on stage every day. I had chucked up, my job started doing this stuff and half the gigs were outside of London. So over three years I did about 700 gigs. But off the 400 gigs that maybe I did outside London, I spent eight hours in a car with two other comedians.
These were comics who had been doing it for 10, between 10 and 20 years. I was the open mic or the middle slot, and one of them would be the opener. One of them would be the closer, I would see how they would prepare for their shows. I would literally beg them to watch me perform, give me feedback, see how they would analyze their content afterwards, perform in rooms where maybe I struggled with but these guys were able to capture.
So I've spent over 2000 hours in cars with comedians and that was comedy university right there, in the beginning, did I think I was funny? I had no clue, but I knew I was gonna give it a go. And the interesting thing is you learn nothing from a good show. I had a good show.
You walk off stage thinking I'm the king in a bad show. We get feedback every 15 seconds. If they're not laughing every 15 seconds, you're failing. And there's nothing worse than trying to make people laugh, getting five minutes of silence. So you've gotta ask yourself on the way home if I'm ever again, in the same city with an audience of a similar background or the same country, what can I do differently?
So I don't like a fool, so by now I've done, oh God knows, maybe 2,500 shows, I've done black audiences, white audiences, Indian audiences, mixed audiences, 80 years old, 16 year old. And you learn by playing all those different gigs, how to actually work those crowds.
Sharad: Awesome. There's nothing like on the ground training, learning for people. And like you said, 2000 hours doing that itself is great training. Did you consider any other training to upskill yourself and build a skill?
Papa CJ: I think with comedy there isn't much other training you can do. You can read books about joke writing and stuff like that, but it's one of those things that you have to learn by doing. It's like swimming, right? There's those many books you can read about swimming, but you've gotta get in the water. So it's the same with comedy. A lot of it is basically the management of energy. You can't teach comic timing, for example, it's just something you sense. And what's interesting is when I started doing stand up, I started my career in the UK. Now I hadn't grown up there. I didn't have the same cultural references.
I didn't watch the same TV programs going up. I wasn't interested in their sport or in their politics. So I was doing jokes. Here's a joke. Here's a joke. Here's a joke. Here's a joke. And when you start and you're doing five minutes, you don't have the luxury of telling a three minute long story, because then you'll have one and a half punch lines in your whole set.
So it was literally like joke, joke. I had at least 20 punch lines in a five minute set. I still remember I had a 90 second routine about a beggar that had 30 punch lines. So there was a laugh, every six seconds. I had spreadsheets with my content, I knew on a five minute set it's four minutes of me speaking.
20% of the time is gonna be for laughter. If they're not laughing, get off stage anyway, cause it's going terrible. And the solid jokes and the really good jokes were in green. The weaker ones were in yellow. So you start strong, you end strong. And in between the strong stuff, we carry the weak stuff. So it goes like that.
It was as scientific as that, you remove every single extra word that you don't need. Whereas when I move back to. This is my country. I grew up here. So I was a lot more confident in chatting with the audience. If you spoke about something, I would know what they're talking about. Sometimes in the UK, if an audience member said something to me, half the time, I wouldn't understand his or her accent.
So it's not really funny. Or you can't have a rapid response when three times you're going. Sorry what did you say? Can you repeat that? Whereas now when I've come to India, I can spend 45 minutes on stage without telling a single pre-written joke. I'm just chatting with the audience and making up stuff on the spot.
So it moved from more of a science to an art, but I think eventually you've gotta, you combine both of them. You enjoy the art form and the flow of things. But when you need to, you've got those guns in the back to pull them out in fire. I dunno. Does that make sense?
Sharad: That makes a lot of sense and what I took out of it, and I see that parallel in sports, where you're taught technique. You're taught the fundamentals of a sport. And after those fundamentals are ingrained and that's the hard work you did in the UK in a difficult environment. It becomes second nature. Then you can become yourself. Then you can explore. That’s great to hear that this kind of template exists across professions.
Papa CJ: In fact, I'd add to that. I'd say then the fun is in throwing the fundamentals out of the window.
Saying, you know what, I'm not gonna play the game by the rules. I'm gonna make my own stuff up. When I need to, I can go back to that.
Like cricket, we never used to have all these scoop shots and all of this time, the reverse sweep. But now you look at T 20 cricket. They're just making stuff up. Kevin Peterson doing the switch hit. Hello.
Sharad: Absolutely agree with that. So now you're doing these interesting things. You've got a structure you've come back to India. You're yourself. And like you mentioned earlier, there was very little pay to begin with in the UK. How did you consider making this a career that would pay the bills, help you have a family?
How did that thought process work?
Papa CJ: So it's not always in your hands Sharad. I think when you make it, a career is not a decision you make. It's just, when you are earning enough to not need to do anything else, then it by default can become a career, and you never know when that point comes. Even with standup in the UK. A year in, I went broke.
So I joined a recruitment firm. I used to work in the day and perform at night, but even though I was spending eight hours in an office and 10 minutes on stage in my head, I was a comedian and the job was on the side, but when I moved back to India, that was also interesting because I remember I moved back.
An aunt of mine asked me, son, what do you do? So I said, auntie, I'm a comedian.
I tell jokes. So she was like, son, even I tell jokes, but what do you do for a living? So I think that concept really wasn't there. In the early phases of my career, I was doing a lot more public shows. And also I was supporting building the circuit, but over the course of time, we had enough comedians who started running gigs on their own.
So the live circuit didn't need me as much to, get it going. And that's when I shifted of focus more onto corporate shows. And the corporate shows are where the money lies in standup. At least in India. Your money comes in advance. You get put in a nice hotel.
You perform to a corporate crowd and you leave. That's what helps you pay the bills.
Sharad: Great. So you could stay in the same field where you were doing things that you loved, but also find money to be able to pay the bills. Was that how you were thinking or how was the mindset at that stage?
Papa CJ: Sometimes there will not be other opportunities. You have to create those opportunities. So it is for you to have a thinking that is broad enough. I remember as a kid, my dad used to tell me this story about the shoe salesman from the Bata shoe company in Kolkata.
This is a marketing manager. And he got this idea saying, let me send a salesman to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. To see what the market is like. This guy reaches the islands and he sees that nobody's wearing any shoes.
So he goes to the post office, sends a telegram to his boss saying, listen, there's a, there's no market here. Nobody's wearing any shoes. A few years pass. And another marketing manager comes along. This guy goes by ship, reaches the island and sees that nobody's wearing any shoes. He goes running to the post office, sends an urgent telegram to his boss saying the market is wide open. Nobody here has any shoes. I'm staying here, send me all the stock you've got. So I think in some cases you have to create those opportunities.
There may be things. You of value that you have to offer an audience or a customer or a group of people. They may not even know about that. So it is your job to educate them on what you have to offer and create those opportunities. Often we think, oh, there isn't an opportunity for this. There's no market for this.
Nobody wants this. It is your job to make the market.
Sharad: Love that. What were some of the skills that you had when you looked at yourself, which helped you create those opportunities, which helped you create something out of it, which was, which became a solid career.
Papa CJ: I've never been a big sort of social media or marketing guy. And frankly speaking, the part of my job that I hate the most is self-promotion, I absolutely despise it, which is probably one of the reasons I don't do too many public shows and I do more of the corporate stuff cause it happens automatically for me, I think my career largely has grown sharp because of the proof of the pudding. I absolutely love what I do. I try and be as professional as possible. I will show up early, I will do a sound check. I will set up the room. I will, do my job to the best of my ability the other thing is I genuinely like people,. I'm happy to stick around, chat with people. Some of ex clients or audience members have become some of my best friends, and a lot of those opportunities arise just by Shirley having conversations with people.
They're like, Hey dude, this is cool. Can you do this for me at so and so place, it's just making yourself accessible and also just doing the very best possible job you can. Today 99% of my work comes from people who have seen me at. So it's literally reference or word of mouth.
Sharad: Great. I think there's something you wrote about in your book as well. Referring to who was the comedian Martin where he says, you need to be that good, that people automatically come and notice
Papa CJ: Steve Martin
Sharad: Um, Steve Martin, you need to be so good that people notice you. So that kind of puts the focus on your craft, it's not necessary promotions. It's your craft. You make it better. And skills which are related to the craft, which is being friendly to people, engaging in conversations and having that entire thing working for you itself is solid enough for your focus to be in the right place and to get you to where you've come now.
Papa CJ: Yeah. There's a balance to it, so there's two sides to it. See on the one side, as they say, show business, right? Half of it is the show. The other half is busines. So there's this whole stuff around building your personal brand and all that jazz, but as time passes, Sharad, I think what I've come to realize is that if you can just be authentic and focus on what you absolutely love doing, then you're gonna shine at that.
And the work will automatically come. So I don't think you necessarily need to try and force fit yourself. Into boxes that have been designed by other people. Don't get me wrong. I also wanna be clear that passion doesn't always put food on the table, so yes, you wanna feed your soul, but you need to feed your stomach as well.
There are gigs you will do because it puts food on the table. It pays the bills. And there are gigs you do, because that's just what you love doing.
And the goal is to eventually get to a point where you can only do what you are passionate about, but that being said, I think it depends on your upbringing as well, even though you may be financially comfortable. If you've grown up in a family or come from a background where you didn't have too much growing up, the commercial gigs will still be attractive. You'll always be like, oh yeah, let me do that gig. I'm gonna get something in the bank.
Sharad: I'm glad you brought up this point of upbringing. You had a middle class upbringing where you were very careful with money. And of course, you were looking at getting a stable career. What role did upbringing have in you becoming a standup comedian?
Papa CJ: So one of the things I do want to clarify though, is that middle class in India is different to what middle class means in countries like the UK. So in the UK it's middle class means you're pretty well off. So middle class in India is like working class in the UK, with regard to my upbringing. My greatest strength since childhood and even today have been my parents, they've always been supportive.
Even when I started doing stand up, it was a profession. They didn't understand. It didn't even exist in India at the time at no point did they say, oh no, don't do that. Or get a job. They backed me completely. Of course, it's only 10 years later that they told me, listen, we thought you'll do it for six months and Chuck it up.
Okay. We didn't expect yeah. Get it out of your system. Literally. I think that's what they said. They didn't expect that I would just stick. But in spite of that, they stuck by me. And the other thing was, I was always financially independent. So I took a whole bunch of loans to do my MBA degree at Oxford, but I paid those loans off.
I had a few savings in the bank and that's when I took this leap. Because I was standing on my feet, I was okay.
Sharad: Not that for people listening. One clear rule that comes out in terms of pursuing your passion is it's not something you blindly do. Like you said, you thought of firstly paying all your loans off. It's not like you have a lot of loans and you're gonna put the world against you and make it work.
So you pay your loans off. You also find ways, like you said, to do things that you love, maybe certain things that you don't love that pay the bill, but you do that. You do the practical stuff as well. It's a very practical come idealistic way to create an alternative path.
Was there any stage in your career where you felt? Damn I'm too far in. I should have just stuck to the corporate world and make it work because I don't know how this can be a career like the dark moments in your comedy career.
Papa CJ: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I remember a specific moment, which is such a vivid memory. I had done a show out of town, out of London. And what used to happen is you would get dropped off on the outskirts of London, by the comedian who was driving, pay them your share of petrol. I wasn't getting paid for any of these gigs.
It was about 2.30 in the morning. I was somewhere in south London, it was cold. It was raining. I was freezing. I was hungry. I had to change three different buses to get home. And I remember I was literally huddled in one of the doorways of one of the shops. Waiting for 45 minutes for the first bus to come.
I remember calling a taxi service and they said the taxi would get me home would cost 22 pounds. I couldn't afford 22 pounds so for 45 minutes, I was just shivering there. And I had to change three buses. I got home at about five in the morning. At that point, I remember huddled into the doorway of that shop asking myself, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing? And I got home, went to sleep, woke up in the morning. I like awesome one more gig tonight. I was back in the horse.
Sharad: That is so good. So that grief lasted a few hours of sleep. That's it. And then you were
Papa CJ: yeah, pretty It's rites of passage, man, but it's great to look back, cuz nostalgia is fantastic. But when you're going through that, it can be really tough.
Sharad: Nice. I noticed at some stage you moved not only to gigs in the corporate world, but to executive coaching and communication with the corporate world. So firstly, my question is how the hell did you get them to take you seriously? You're a standup comedian. And now you're training the leadership of a company on communication on executive coaching.
How did they take you seriously?
Papa CJ: Here's the thing. When I joined this recruitment firm and this was 2006 or seven in London, one of my clients was a company that did executive coaching. So I qualified as a coach with them. And on my free days, I will literally say I'm free. And so days get me work. and they would say, okay, Google wants to run this workshop in Idlin.
Nike wants to do this in Amsterdam. So even before I came to India, I had trained 50 companies all over the world. Google, Accenture, Deutche bank, Nike UBS, BBC universal music, somehow over the course of the last decade or so I've still been interested in business. I don't think you need to be serious to be taken seriously.
Today, if you look at the senior guys, they have seen and been for every single type of corporate training, nobody wants a lecture.
Nobody wants a guy standing in front of you reading 300 words off a slide. So I think what I'm able to bring to the table is a fun way of bringing out lessons that you can immediately apply in your context. I've just returned from Switzerland where the guys, I was training and coaching had salaries up to three to 5 million per annum.
Really senior guys. Now you can't bullshit your way through at that level, but I'm still giving them stuff that they can use and they find to be of value. And the interesting thing is I'm really enjoying it myself. Also, I genuinely believe that you can be a category of one. Today, my experience is I have comedy. I've got coaching and that area where the comedy and coaching overlap is an area that makes me unique. So one of the sessions I run is called a comedians guide to communication strategy. I break down how as comics we grab and retain attention and how you can apply exactly those skills in your workplace, I'll give you an example. One of the best pieces of advice I got, it was from a comedian called Adam Bloom in London. Was that it's very important for you to grow in the dark because when you hit the limelight, you don't have the freedom to screw up.
So if I'm performing at the Sydney opera house, which I have, I can't afford to have a bad show. Now, when you wanna succeed all the time, what do you do? You play safe. You're like, listen, I know this works. And let me stick with this. As a result, you don't innovate. You don't take risks. You don't take experiments.
You don't grow. You stagnate. So as comedians, what is the solution to this? What we do is we go to small open mic nights, whether it may be 30 people in the room, your name is not on the poster. You will try new stuff, see what works, see what doesn't, the stuff that doesn't work. You will change it around, try it differently until it does become really good.
And when it's Bulletproof, you take it into the larger show. My question to you as an organization, is your open mic night? Where are you going to make mistakes? Where are you going to take risks?
What are the experiments you would like to tie? Try which new products, which customers, what price points, what markets. So at the end of half a day, they literally have a strategy written up on their wall. So, if you see what I've done there, most of my coaching is me doing storytelling and anecdotes from comedy, pulling out that learning, and then getting people to apply it in their context.
And more importantly, at the end of the session, they can immediately go and apply it to a problem that they're currently facing.
Sharad: That's brilliant, man. That's brilliant. We talk so much, even in companies of taking learnings from one function, finance to marketing, you've taken learnings from one field, which is a very different field, the field of comedy to the corporate world, to the boardroom. And that is so beautiful. And the way you described it, like no one wants to sit in boring trainings and you have this guy who's such a good communicator, funny guy.
And he gives you. Very powerful tools.
That's why you've established yourself in such a solid way. Even as a mainstream corporate person, while pursuing your passion of comedy.
One of the things that I've noticed us, and especially a lot of people who are in alternative paths, quite often, you compare to others. He, or she's way ahead of me. Or you compare to the new age people who suddenly come in and do some Netflix specials and go way ahead after you've done the hard yards, do those things come up for you and how do you manage yourself with those emotions?
Papa CJ: Comparison is the thief of joy. The worst thing you can do is compare. I did not leave the corporate world and join a creative field. To be in a rat race in the creative field. I do what I do, cuz I absolutely love doing it. Do you get tempted? Of course it happens to everybody. You see somebody, oh my God.
10 million views on so and so video, but then you remind yourself, you have to remind yourself. I don't like sitting in front of a camera and editing videos. That's not what I like doing now. If I have left a corporate career to pursue something that I love doing let me just get the joy out of that.
Sharad: I like that. It's going into the reality of it. I left this for a reason, or I don't truly enjoy what he's doing behind the lens.
Papa CJ: You need to remind yourself what the things are that you genuinely value. Today I could be sitting in Los Angeles and shooting a sitcom.
However, every morning I go to my local coffee shop and I sit with my mom and dad, and I have a cup of coffee with them. For me, that is far more important. Than any amount of money or fame that you could offer me. So even when I see somebody who's maybe doing a 45 day tour in the US, it looks really glamorous on paper.
Do I wanna spend 45 minutes on the road from one city to the other? No, thank you. I'm much happier where I am, see it's very easy to be drawn to all these things that look glamorous on paper, but you need to live a life that is true to yourself and your values and the things that you genuinely enjoy.
Sharad: That's a great way to ground yourself because it's so difficult, like you said, with so many shiny objects, but grounding yourself to value and reminding yourself that cup of coffee with your parents is much more important than many of the other things. And that leads to, like you said, fulfilment and happiness.
I love that. We talked a little bit about a single brand profession like you yourself are the brand and typically in these professions more so in standup comedy, you're putting yourself on stage, you're being vulnerable. And I know you've had a journey in vulnerability where you've taken it forward and also told your story on stage, written a heartwarming book that many people have read.
What's it been like? Just putting yourself out there, putting yourself on stage.
Papa CJ: I think it's therapeutic at some level. It's therapeutic, not just for you, but for your audiences as well. Because if you see my show naked, I know you've read the book. What happens with that book or the show is when I'm using the vehicle of my life, but I'm talking about the human experience. So when people are reading it or watching the show at some point, they're thinking, oh, wait a second.
He's talking about my life because I have been through similar emotions or experiences. So not only is an incredible connection formed there. The other thing that happens is people are able to look at it and say, wait a second. If he can go through all of this stuff and find the funny side or the positive side, then I have the ability to look at my problems in a similar light.
So at least that's what, that's the feedback I have received from my audiences that they have been able to find closure or be able to look at their problems in a different light by hearing my story. And that's very gratifying.
Sharad: Absolutely. When I read the book, It was very heartwarming as you go along.
And that kind of helped me build even without knowing you some sort of a bond with you. And that's what I like about vulnerability. That's what it does. It builds a connection. This is the first time you are having a conversation apart from when you took me apart in 2005, but this is the first time it's a two-way conversation.
And I feel that bond, which is beautiful
Papa CJ: There is one of my favorite comedians is a very good friend. His name is Reginal D Hunter. And I remember he told me there is a difference between a comic and a comedian. He says a comic says funny things, but a comedian has something to say, it's perfectly fine to be either. So for the first 10 years of my career, I was a comic. I was telling jokes, but when I started doing naked, when I wrote the show naked, then I had something to say. And it was more than just jokes.
So to say, there was a story or there was an element of depth to it.
Sharad: Absolutely. Thanks for that. I know you've taken your career to the next level when you've done the happiness project. And that, to me, struck such a powerful cord where you decided to go into the most to people suffering the most and make them laugh.
How did the thought come about and what was the experience like?
Papa CJ: I had actually been supporting a charity for kids from the time I started doing stand up. So in Oxford and LA and I set up a charity in the UK called one child, which used to support underprivileged kids in India, helping them come outta child labor and back in getting them back into the formal schooling system.
Even when I was earning nothing, I used to stand with a small force sheet of paper in comedy rooms across the UK and saying, listen, if you like my show, you can donate towards this.
I don't know if there's anything in particular that spurred me on to do it. I just take on different initiatives to support people who need it. Sometimes I just go to the homes and hospital rooms of people.
Who have been suffering for a long time just to entertain them and their families? The most recent one, I went to a children's cancer ward at a paediatric hospital. And I was really nervous because I know how to engage adults, but I was told the kids would be between five and 14, but most of them were younger than 5.
so to engage children who are going through so much suffering for 90 minutes, but we did it and they had a great time. So that was very rewarding. But again, what happens in those shows, you put so much energy into it. Like for two days, your whole body just shuts down because you've just given so much. I think those are the shows that are really rewarding and gratifying.
Sharad: Now for people listening. Those guys, imagine somebody in their forties doing reasonably well in their career.
Or her career and looking for something alternative. What's the one big advice you would give them? What kind of mindset should they view an alternative
Papa CJ: I'm gonna give you a caveat right now, because this is a conversation I have with many people over coffee, and the caveat is most people end up quitting their jobs after that. So the first question I tend to ask people is if you had a billion, ask yourself two questions.
If you had a billion dollars in the bank, how would you spend your time? Not what would you buy? How would you spend your time? If I ask this to a 22 year old the guy would probably say, I'll travel. I said, okay, where will you go? I'll go to Europe. How long will you go for? I'll go for one month. When you do the mathematics.
There's a book called Frommer's guide to Europe on $50 a day. You can actually do Europe for a month in $1,500, say $2,000 where I'm trying to get people to, is that the cost of your dreams is far lower than whatever imaginary figure you might have in your mind. We tend to think I'll work till so on.
So point then I'll live my life. The second question I would like you to ask yourself is how much money do you need until the day you die, calculate it, write it down, account for children, education, marriage, holidays, healthcare from that subtract what you already have. All your assets, all your savings.
You left with a number, divide that by the number of years you plan to work, 90% of people who do that calculation figure out that they're working far harder. Than they need to work to fulfil all their dreams, which brings me back to question one then why are you not living the life of your dreams? There's a Harvard study on happiness, which has gone over 75 years and they've done it across incomes and nationalities. And it's a really large sample size.
And they've figured out that essentially. Your level of happiness, regardless of your social strata, income, country, background, gender comes down to the quality of your relationships, so why are we going around chasing all these other things? When joy is sitting in the next room, waiting for you to ask them to go have a cup of coffee with them.
Sharad: That's beautiful. That's beautiful. The relationship part, what's really important to you. Also the part of how we overestimate, what we really need or how we overestimate the expenses of our dreams. Like you put it, that puts things in perspective, which then allows people to take the risk. And like you said, quit that job the next day and go do what they want to do.
So very powerful. Thank you for that. I have this last question before people go. At the end of your life, how would you know you've lived a good life?
Papa CJ: When I interview people, I ask them almost an identical. Except my question is how would you like to be remembered? Which is pretty much the same thing. And my answer to that question is with a smile. If, when people think of me, it brings a smile to their face. That's good enough for me.
Sharad: That's beautiful. You're living your purpose. Papa, CJ. Thank you very much for your time today. I've loved this conversation. You're doing what many people want to do today? A lot of us pursuing a normal career and now are questioning what should we do in life?
And you're an inspiration to so many of us who can look at you and find ways to do something that they truly desire, truly want to do. So thank you very much for that. And
Papa CJ: That's very good to say, thanks a lot Sharad
Sharad: Thank you, Papa CJ for such an inspirational conversation. This will be very useful to many of us looking at alternative careers. For folks interested in seeing Papa CJ live. He's gonna be in Singapore on 18th and 19th of October. In Ho Chi Minh on 12th of October, in Hanoi, on 13th of October, I will put up all details in the show notes.
If you enjoyed this episode, you could consider listening to episode two, where we talk about achievement versus fulfilment and episode 11, where we explore ways to discover what one truly wants out of life.
Here's one action step we could consider: let's calculate the price of our dream life. Put a number to it like Papa. CJ said earlier, often we think living our dream is not possible, but once we do the math, it may not seem that far off.
I understand for folks in Singapore with kids just living a reasonable life seems very expensive. However, we often overestimate the monetary value of our aspiration in life. After putting a finite number, this could be a starting point to some important decisions in life.
Can we pursue a passion? Can we do part-time mainstream work and part-time passion projects? Or when can we do any of this? Hope this exercise is useful for you related to this, we will cover early retirement in a future episode. That's it for today's episode, we will be back with another episode two weeks from now on September 27th. I hope you join me for that, till next time. Have a wonderful day ahead. Bye bye.