From Inventing a Microprocessor to Full-Time Tech Comedian with Don McMillan

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're talking to comedian Don McMillan about how he went from an engineering career with multiple patents under his belt to doing standup full-time. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:18) We do education episodes on being a great tech leader, and we do entertainment episodes. You're kind of blending in the middle here because you were in technology, right? You're an engineer building cool stuff. Tell me about it.

(Don McMillan at 00:00:33) You know, this was never a plan for my career. Let me just start by saying that. I was in high school. I was good at math. I was good at science. I said, go be an engineer. So I was good at engineering. I was good at taking tests. I became a chip designer. You know, there's nothing further from comedy than designing a computer chip. There really is not. But I worked in Silicon Valley. At first, I worked for Bell Laboratories, which for the nerds out there will know it's like, at the time, it was the ultimate research facility. Big Bang Theory was—the guy who worked, Arno Penzias, worked down the hall from me. Shockley invented the transistor. Unix was developed there, Dennis Ritchie, and an engineer-comedian worked there. That's how much research went on there—everything. And I was really good at it, but I wasn't fulfilled. And when I went to Silicon Valley, I watched startups happening, and I joined a startup and worked my ass off and got burned out. I went, well, comedy's kind of fun. Let's try that. And it's been 30 years since I quit my day job.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:34) So was your—I want to talk about that moment where you were—so you were getting a little disheartened, and then you quit your job and you went to a startup thinking that that would be the solution. Is that right?

(Don McMillan at 00:01:45) I did. I thought it would be really exciting, and it was exciting. It was stressful. But yeah. And I also saw Silicon Valley at the time was amazing. I remember when I landed for my job interview, they took me to lunch. First time in a restaurant in Silicon Valley. And it was at the Bennigan's or a TGI Friday's. And we walk in, and at the first table to the left of the hostess stand is a guy sitting there with five TTL data books designing a circuit. And I said, I am not anywhere that I've ever been before. This is nirvana. It was the most amazing incubator of technology in the '80s, which is when I moved there. And I thought, this is exciting. I'm going to be amongst nerds. We're going to be changing the world. And we were changing the world, but it took 80 hours. You had no life. It was very stressful. It wasn't fulfilling because I wasn't in it for the money. I was in it for the challenge, and it was just so stressful. And I was like, I've got to do something else.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:53) Were you married at the time?

(Don McMillan at 00:02:55) No. No. If I was married, there's no way I would've quit my day job. If I had kids, no. I had the typical engineering social life, which is, if I met somebody at work, I might date them, but I didn't have a social life. My wife—and she's not around, I don't think she's here right now. I think she's at—she found me. I did not find my wife. She found me. I was really bad at dating. I can network you on the Internet, but I can't network with humans? I'm sorry. That's just how I'm built.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:28) When did you meet her?

(Don McMillan at 00:03:30) I met her at work. When I moved to L.A., I got a manager, and she was my manager's assistant, which if you know anything about L.A., they're the people that do all the work. And so I talked to her every day for many, many, many months, probably a couple years. And then when she quit and was leaving the business, she decided to go into social work. She thought that would be better than dealing with entertainers. She said, "Hey, would you like to go to lunch?" And that was it. We started dating after that. And we were already friends, so it was great. That's how you have to—ladies, that's how you have to approach an engineer. You have to be friends with them first.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:11) There are very few ladies listening to this.

(Don McMillan at 00:04:12) Yeah. And the ones that are listening probably already know this, so I'm not helping anybody with it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:20) Okay. So she met you when you were already, like, full-on comedian.

(Don McMillan at 00:04:25) Yeah. She never knew me as an engineer. She only knew the—and when she meets my engineer friends, she goes, "That's what you were like?" I go, "No, I was not like that, but those are my friends, and I could be like that." That's one of my modes. You know? I have other modes. I'm multimodal, for you techs out there. I'm a multimodal person.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:48) Oh my goodness. So that's so cool. So up until that point of deciding comedy, all of the introspection was just on your end. It was just you figuring out that you're unfulfilled, asking yourself these questions, and then making changes accordingly.

(Don McMillan at 00:05:08) Exactly right. Very well put.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:09) For me, it was different. For me, it was my wife seeing me, like, mentally. I built some businesses. And she saw me kind of, like, check out, and she's like, "You need to go take the path you didn't take," because I had this split in my path when I was doing a little bit of comedy, and then we got pregnant with our first child. And my tech company was doing pretty good, and I said, you know what? Forget the comedy. I've got a kid on the way. I've got to do the responsible thing. And then, you know, fast forward ten years, and, you know, I was, like, not happy with life. And she's like, "You know what—"

(Don McMillan at 00:05:39) You know, that's interesting that you say that because I kind of had—I don't—it wasn't one moment. But I remember thinking, I was a pretty good engineer. I wasn't a great engineer. I was a pretty good engineer. I'm a smart guy, so I could figure out how to do something and be good at it. But I didn't have the passion that some of my coworkers had. Like, they would think, breathe, and eat engineering, right? They would go home and think about what they did during the day, and I wasn't like that. I'd go into engineering. I would take the problem, but I didn't—it wasn't my passion. And I realized I wasn't going to—it wasn't fulfilling something deep inside of me. I didn't feel it, but I went, "This—I don't have the passion. Wouldn't it be better if I had a job that I had passion for? Wouldn't I be better at it and think about it and be a happier person?" And that's when I kind of just tried a lot of different things. I didn't know what I was going to do, but comedy was something that I immediately knew I had a passion for. And so when I had the chance to make that my career, I said, "Well, that sounds like a pretty good idea," which is not—you moved away from it and realized, "No, no, no. I need to go back to it." I actually chose that way because I thought, "Well, it makes more sense to have passion for what you do." And the best people in the world are ones that sleep, eat, and breathe what they do for a job because it's not their job. It's the way they think or the way they be or the way it's true to their person. And that sounds like what you did. You just had to go back to it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:08) Yeah. You said the moment you realized comedy, you had an immediate passion for it. Tell me about that moment.

(Don McMillan at 00:07:16) It wasn't—it happened over many years, but I'll tell you one moment that sticks in my mind. I used to do this show in San Francisco called the Alex Bennett Show. It was kind of like Howard Stern. The difference was that he would have comics on—two or three comics, usually two comics—and there would be a live studio audience of ten to fifteen people. But you'd play to the crowd that was there, so it was like live comedy improv, almost like a green room improv feeling, right? And I love doing it. I would do it once a month. And I'm driving to work one day. This is—I did the show when I was still an engineer. And somebody called in and said, "Hey, when is that Don McMillan coming back on your show again?" And right then, I went, "Oh my god. I'm actually reaching people. I'm connecting with people," and, like, something in my soul went, "I was meant to do this," that somebody took the time out of their day to call in when I wasn't on the show and go, "Have that Don McMillan guy back." It was really—whoever that person was, I have no idea, changed my life in that moment because I kind of went, "Oh no, I'm not just talking to myself. I have a relationship that I'm building with the audience." And I went, "This is what I didn't have in engineering. I didn't have a relationship with my end product." And now I did, which was really cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:34) So that's one of the big moments. What was, like, the first time you stepped foot into a comedy club?

(Don McMillan at 00:08:40) As a comic or as a civilian?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:43) As a civilian, yeah.

(Don McMillan at 00:08:45) Oh god. I actually—man, it's a really good question, Joel. I actually snuck in to see Steve Martin when I was 16 at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, which is where I grew up. And Latin Casino used to have Frank Sinatra, and, you know, all the big stars of the day would come to this little—it wasn't actually a casino, but it was like a Vegas showroom in the middle of Southern New Jersey. It was a weird thing. And he was on his King Tut tour. And I couldn't get in, but somehow we talked to somebody, and I got in, and I saw Steve Martin, who was one of my favorite comics when I was young. And I just went, "This is—wow." You know, I just loved comedy. And to see him live—it's a first live comedy show, and it was so much different. If you've ever seen a live comedy show, people have to go see a—it's nothing. It's the difference between movies and live theater. It's nothing the same. It's a completely different experience. So that was the first time. I hadn't thought of that in a long time. But yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:46) And how much was the space between that first time you saw Steve Martin and you stepping on stage for an open mic?

(Don McMillan at 00:09:56) Eight years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:58) Were you doing any—so was that show happening with Alex Bennett in between those eight years, or was it just eight years of silence?

(Don McMillan at 00:10:04) Well, one other thing happened when I was 17. My friend, Ed Hubbard—shout out to my buddy Ed Hubbard, my high school buddy, and, by the way, might be one of the funniest men I ever knew—who became a finance analyst and now teaches at—what did he end up doing? He's at a really good school teaching at New York University or something. I can't—I'm sorry, Ed. I forget what school you're at. But he's a professor now of—he made me a lot of money—investment banking. But he was a really funny guy. And he goes, "I want to try doing standup. I signed up for an open mic. You want to come with me?" So 17 years old, this 17-year-old gets up, and it wasn't a comedy open mic. It was an open mic. Most of them were singers and guitar players. He got up and did comedy, and he did pretty well. And that put this idea in my head that, "Wow, almost anybody could do comedy. There's no—you have to go to school. You just get up and do it." So that incubated in my head for, like, eight years. And then I started—I moved to Silicon Valley. Actually, it was more like ten years. It was late twenties. And I remember thinking, "I've got to find something to balance this Silicon Valley life." And I go, "I always wanted to try comedy. I've been going to comedy clubs. I've been a comedy fan since I was a kid." I once saw, at this place, Rooster T. Feathers, which I just played last weekend, by the way, I went to Rooster T. Feathers when I was, like, 21. I saw Dana Carvey was the headliner. Ellen DeGeneres was the middle act, and—I forget—oh, Warren Thomas, who's not with us anymore, a great comic, was the—and just amazing show around the corner from me. And so comedy always felt—it was there. And then when I was looking for something to do, I'm going to go try comedy. So, like, typical engineer, I took an improv comedy class. I'm like, "I don't know how to be funny, but if I can be funny with nothing, maybe I can figure out my act." So that's how I started. Took classes in improv comedy, and then the improv teacher said, "Didn't you get into this to do comedy?" And I said, "Yeah." He goes, "Well, I signed you up for the open mic next Wednesday." So he pushed me into finally doing my first set. And yeah, from—I loved my first set, and I had some bad sets, but I didn't feel bad. I was like, "Okay. I can do better." I took the engineering approach. I'll take the jokes that worked, keep them, throw out the jokes that don't work, and progress, progress—AB testing. I did AB testing for you engineers out there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:31) Yeah. Reduce, refine, repeat. You know? The three Rs.

(Don McMillan at 00:12:34) Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:34) So that was 16, 17 age, seeing Steve Martin, fast forward eight years, 23 to 25, you're doing your first open mic. And then where did it progress from there? Did you just say, "I'm going to just keep doing open mics," and you just kept grinding it out for a year or two? How did it progress for you?

(Don McMillan at 00:12:55) Well, for comics out there right now, let me just say, I respect the fact that it's so much harder to start. Because when I started in the '80s, there were open mics every night of the week in the Bay Area. Every night, I could go somewhere and do a set. And I did. One year, I—because I'm a nerd—323, I performed. Three hundred and twenty-three nights. I drove after work, did a set somewhere. And that went on for about five years. And then when I was 32—32, I believe it was—I made the San Francisco Comedy Competition for the first time. I auditioned, and I was chosen to be in it. And the same week—it's a long story—I booked a national commercial. I happened to go on my first audition ever, booked it. It was a national commercial for United Airlines. So I'm in the San Francisco Comedy Competition. I booked a national commercial that's going to make me some money, and that's when I decided I was going to quit my engineering job. I went, "If there's no better time to quit now, I'm getting, you know, this notoriety." And I booked a national commercial, and I went into my boss and said, "I'm going to go try this comedy thing." And he stood up and shook my hand and went, "That's terrific." And I go, "I think I should be insulted right now."

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:16) "Finally, we can get a better engineer."

(Don McMillan at 00:14:18) "You're happy that I'm leaving?"

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:21) Well, you know, good managers, they will be. You know, if they really are—if they see you and they know you and they can see that there's something else that lights you up—like, if I had an employee that was very effective, but I could tell that something else lit them up, it would suck because it would be hard to replace them, but I would encourage them to go do the thing that lights them up. So maybe he saw that in you.

(Don McMillan at 00:14:41) Yeah. No. He did. He did. And he became one of my longest-time fans. He used to come to see my shows all the time. He was a good guy. And actually, a lot of my—I can't get away from my old job. They come out all the time, and then they heckle me. They go, "How about that design that you still never finished the test program for?"

(Don McMillan at 00:15:00) I can't get away with my old job. I can't get away from it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:03) Did that commercial ever air?

(Don McMillan at 00:15:05) Oh, yeah. It ran for almost two years, actually. And you're too young to remember it, but it was a really cool commercial about United Airlines. It was like the old United and the new United. I was there was a football team in the, like, the nineteen twenties that was on a train. That was a metaphor for how travel used to be and how it is now. And I was the old guy. I guess I have an old looking face, and they put me in a leather helmet. I was roughed up in it. And then they cut to a modern professional football team on the flight, sitting back and having drinks. And it was a really cool artistic commercial with this grand music. And United loved it and ran it during, you know, it was a football commercial, so it ran on ESPN and NFL and everything for years.

(Don McMillan at 00:15:52) It made me more money than any commercial ever because United just loved that commercial. So it was very lucky. I really do, I won't say I'm a religious person, but I'm a spiritual person, and I really felt like the universe was sending me a message by giving me that commercial that it was time to make this big switch and allowed me to do it. I try to read those things and I go, when you see a door open, walk through it. That's what I'm telling you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:17) Yeah. I had one of those the other day, actually.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:20) I don't know if this will make the show, but I got recognized for comedy in public for the first time yesterday. Very first time. So I walked in. They're like, "Oh, you're Joel Beasley." And I was like, "Yep." What wasn't cool was I was pretty much naked in a gown getting prepared for a colonoscopy. And I was like, "The nurse assigned to me is like a fan."

(Don McMillan at 00:16:44) Oh, that's hysterical. That is hysterical.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:46) And she told me my favorite, so I have a, my youngest child has Down syndrome. I have a funny Down syndrome joke that I do on stage. She had seen it, like, three weeks before at Zanies. I did a show with Jeff Allen and I was his opener.

(Don McMillan at 00:16:57) Oh, wow. That's good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:58) Yeah. And then she, like, was trying to tell me the joke back. It was this whole thing. And I was like, "Okay, I hear you, universe. Like, my life is funny." What's the odds that the first time I get recognized, I had a colonoscopy appointment. And I was like, I don't know if I'll ever turn that into a bit or anything, but it was hilarious.

(Don McMillan at 00:17:18) She didn't ask you to sign the gown or anything?

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:21) No. She had that moment of, like, self recognition that she probably should let the other nurse get the IV started and, like, stop talking to me.

(Don McMillan at 00:17:30) That's hysterical. That is so sweet, though.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:32) It was cool.

(Don McMillan at 00:17:33) Choose your fans.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:35) I'll never forget it either.

(Don McMillan at 00:17:37) No. That's a great moment.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:38) Yeah. So you're 32, San Francisco comedy competition, got this national commercial with the airlines. How long from then until it actually paid your bills? Like, when could you say that you're like a comic, you were full time?

(Don McMillan at 00:17:53) You're really getting into my, you'll see my personality come out. I didn't lose money the first year, which is a victory, but it's because I'm an engineer and I went into, you know, cheap mode. I just didn't spend money. I said, "Oh, I had a good paying job. I had a great paying job. I don't have a good paying job anymore. I can't spend." So I had every travel hack in the business. I still, my wife's gonna hate that I say this, I still sometimes don't want to pay $30 a day for parking. I find a parking spot and I'll walk a mile to the airport. That's how cheap I am. So I didn't lose money my first year, which is a huge victory as a young comic. I worked a lot because I was used to having a nine to five job. So I booked, like, every week I could. I went on the road. In those days, there were comedy clubs everywhere. You could work, you know, 50 weeks a year if you want to, 52 weeks a year if you want to. And my act was portable enough. I was just a likable guy. I wasn't political. I wasn't super nerdy when I first started doing comedy. I was a little nerdy because I am a nerd, but nothing like I am now. And I had worked for the Improvs, so that was, like, 12 weeks of work right there. And the Punchlines at the time, there were, like, seven or eight of those. And the Catch a Rising Stars, there were six or seven of those. So right there, you know, I have half a year's work, and then I filled it in. So I was working right away. I was very lucky the timing was. It really was.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:25) That is awesome. So then at 32, you're, like, full time comic.

(Don McMillan at 00:19:29) Yep. Yeah. And on the road a lot. I became a road dog. I barely was, I lived in San Francisco, but I was barely home. I spent a lot of time on the road.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:37) And how old are you now?

(Don McMillan at 00:19:38) I am 42.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:44) Okay.

(Don McMillan at 00:19:44) Okay. That's 66 for you people out there. But 42 sounds so much better, doesn't it? I think everybody should give their age in hexadecimal.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:53) I think we should start doing that. My wife would agree. She's 29 plus 10, though, so.

(Don McMillan at 00:19:59) Oh, that's another way to do it. Yeah. But that's an expression rather than an age. But if she wants to go with an expression, that's fine.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:06) Yeah. Just a regular one.

(Don McMillan at 00:20:08) I got expression heckled the other day. Did you? I had a, I wrote, I read a Valentine's poem, and it ended with, "Roses are red, violets are blue. My favorite formula is me plus you." I thought that's kind of romantic. This woman goes, "That's not a formula. That's an expression." That was the heckle I get, Joel. I get mathematical heckles. I didn't have an equation. I didn't have an equal sign, so it's not a formula. It's an expression. So I had to fix the joke. Fix the joke.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:36) Okay. So when you were doing this and you were doing these, you know, working your first year or two, you were making money. Was the PowerPoint thing part of your act, or were you just straight stand up at that point?

(Don McMillan at 00:20:49) No. The PowerPoint thing didn't start until the Mentor Graphics national sales meeting in 1999. I had done, Mentor Graphics is a, was a software, still is a software company that does design software for semiconductors and integrated circuit chips, which is what I used to do. So the chief technology officer worked with me at VLSI and said, "Hey, will you MC our national sales meeting?" I said, "Sure." You know, I know the industry really well, and it's three days long. So I did a lot of MCing in the day. So I'm MCing, and this guy gets up. His name is Hans. I forget his last name. They're one of their tech, does the most incredibly boring, and I'm sorry, Hans, but just the worst PowerPoint presentation ever. Busy slides, talks real slow, turns his back to, does everything wrong in PowerPoint you should do. And I turned to Don, my friend Don, the CTO, and I said, "Can I have Hans's slides?" And he goes, "Yeah. Why? What are you gonna do?" I go, "I'm gonna show what not to do in PowerPoint, and I'm gonna make it funny." And I did it the next day, and it absolutely did great. You know? The crowd loved it. And this bulb went on in my head. I go, "Why am I not using PowerPoint? Everybody at a corporate uses PowerPoint." So the next day was a three day event. I wrote a couple of bits in PowerPoint. Every one of them did great. And I went, "Well, I gotta do PowerPoint in my act now." And from then on, whenever I could, always in corporate. But sometimes in comedy clubs, I could do PowerPoint because they had an AV system. But mostly just corporate, I developed a couple hours of material in PowerPoint. And then my corporate career, that's what I did really for 20 years. I did a lot, a lot of corporates. Let me really define what my act would look like with PowerPoint and jokes, which is all it is. It's nothing. It's like, if you're wondering what it looks like, it's kind of like when Letterman or Leno would do a desk bit and they're sitting at the desk and then there's a little screen up in the corner that shows the, you know, Dave's top 10 list or whatever. So it just adds a visual to the joke. But it's, for me, it just, this freedom maybe from engineering and using PowerPoint, I can think and talk and be visual all at the same time. It just comes naturally, you know. And I did it through corporate many, many corporate shows. I developed it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:17) Yeah. And Don's super popular online. So we're gonna put a link in the show notes below to a couple of his top bits so that people can go check it out.

(Don McMillan at 00:23:25) Yeah. Do you want to see what one looks like? Let's do one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:26) Let's do one.

(Don McMillan at 00:23:27) Let's do 41. By the way, what I just did, for people who don't know, in PowerPoint, you can go to any slide you want. You just enter the slide number and enter. So I hit 41, enter. That's slide 41. It's an undocumented feature in PowerPoint. So you're learning. By the way, you get college credit if you come to my show. I don't know if people know that. So I talk about Venn diagrams a lot. So I'll do this really quick. I apparently am the world's number one Venn diagram comedian. I did not know that, but people love Venn diagrams. I did a couple and then people, "More Venn diagrams. More Venn." So one of the first things I do is I explain what a Venn diagram is. So here's a Venn diagram. You gotta have circles, solid colors, and they're overlapping, and that's a Venn diagram. Okay. People at home just, oh, this is really not good for people. But if you're watching, I'll be quick. What is a Venn diagram? You have circles and overlapping and they're not solid colors, those are Olympic rings. Or it's an Audi symbol. Okay. If they're solid colors and overlapping but they're not circles, that's stained glass. And if they're circles and solid colors but they're not overlapping, those are M&M's. So that's a Venn diagram. This is one of my favorite new bits because people know Venn diagrams. The MasterCard logo is a Venn diagram. Right? It's a classic Venn diagram. They just didn't label it, so I labeled it. On the left there, that's this month's charges. Then on the right, that's past interest. And in the middle, that's your monthly salary. See? That's a Venn diagram. So there you go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:44) I like it. Dude, it's hilarious. Like, when I first saw your stuff, I was like, "This guy is unbelievable." So well written, so well spoken. The way, I had never seen a comedian, my first experience to you was a PowerPoint type, one of your sets. And so when I saw it as the way you set up the punch lines with the visuals and connect them, I mean, it's hilarious, dude. It's so good.

(Don McMillan at 00:25:13) Oh, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, comics, we all talk about timing, you know, how timing is so important in comedy. And what has happened is my clicker hand has mechanically learned comedy timing because I need to push the button exactly when the punch line's gonna come up. Right? And believe me, I've had bad clickers, like a bad battery. And if it doesn't come at the right time, the joke will not work. It will not work if you hit the button at the wrong time. This hand is a comedy genius.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:49) Yeah. That's what I noticed when I was observing you as a comedian. I was like, "His punch lines, he are nonverbal. They're nonverbal punch lines. He's showing you this image or changing something on this slide." Not all the time, but a lot of the time.

(Don McMillan at 00:26:03) Yeah. Yeah. No. There's some of that for sure. And I do that on purpose. I think that's, if you want to get into the, I like talking about the science of jokes and why things work. But one of the things, and you know this as a comic, it's you don't want to get into the same pattern of a joke. Right? Because they lose their, they lose the element of surprise. The brain gets used to the, "Okay. Here comes the punchline." And then it's not as funny. You need that surprise to add to the laugh. So if sometimes they're visual jokes, sometimes they're verbal jokes, sometimes they're longer jokes. I try to vary it as much as I can because you want to keep the audience not knowing what's coming next. It's a pretty basic thing, but it's not, nobody likes talking about the science of comedy, but it's really true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:52) Yeah. And there are a couple good podcasts out there that do talk a lot about that. Like, Hot Breath is one of them.

(Don McMillan at 00:26:58) Oh, I've never listened to it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:59) Yeah. There's a couple out there. Jerry Corley is big. He's out in, like, Las Vegas or California. He breaks it down from a very, like, nerdy standpoint. But okay. So I'm curious. I want to talk more about this projector thing. So you did your first one in '99. And at that point, was 80% of your work corporate gigs? Because in '99, I would say 1% of the clubs in America had a projector. So is that correct?

(Don McMillan at 00:27:28) You mean mostly corporate? That is correct. And then what I did was I bought a projector, a short throw projector and a screen, and I would bring them down to clubs that would let me. And it was a pain in the butt. And it was hard to light. It was really bad. But, yeah, it was not until well into the 2000s, you know, 2005, 2006 that I really started doing the PowerPoints heavy in the clubs. But I have a, it's like, "What happens if your PowerPoint goes down?" I go, "I was a regular stand up for 15 years. I can just get up and talk and tell jokes." But, you know, I'm known for the PowerPoint. People would be upset. So, yeah. And even now, there's clubs that can't give me the AV stuff I want, and I can't play them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:23) Are you still writing a lot? Do you write, like, every day?

(Don McMillan at 00:28:27) Yeah. Yeah. This tour especially, it's called Don McMillan, Now Powered by AI, Don McMillan 2.0. And, really, what it is, it's me examining AI comedically and engineering wise. And what I do, the funnest part for me is I will have, every day, like, I'm at the Stress Factory in Newark next Tuesday. So what I will do probably Monday or Tuesday is I'll have AI write a bunch of jokes about New Jersey, Newark. I'll pick a couple of topics, and I will share AI's jokes. And then I will go and write my jokes, and I'll have the audience decide who wins. And then I also have a way of evaluating. I use Venn diagrams to evaluate how funny a joke is, and I kind of evaluate, and my model works really well, by the way. I can pretty much predict how what kind of reaction a joke will get, and I make that part of the game too. But it's making me write a lot. Like, I write a lot more than I ever have before so that I can take on AI head to head.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:32) Yeah. When I was researching you, I saw that you do a lot of custom corporate stuff. Like, you will do a corporate gig, but you'll customize it to them. Is that correct?

(Don McMillan at 00:29:43) Yeah. Like, I just got off the phone. I'm doing a big insurance cooperative insurance company next week. And one of the bits I wrote for them that I'm doing is I'm going to offer them three plans, a platinum, a gold, and a bronze comedy plan, and they get to pick which one they want.

(Don McMillan at 00:29:59) I have a whole chart. I go, you know, the platinum plan comes with total comedy support, IT support, all the drugs necessary to support my comedy will be paid for. Then the bronze plan, of course, will be a co-payment with every joke. Yeah, I do that.

(Don McMillan at 00:30:12) It's, to me, that's fun. It's fun, and they really appreciate it. They're like, yeah, you get our world. You know? It's part of that relationship that's important in comedy with you and the audience. So, yeah, I do it. I do it in my live shows too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:29) So you'll just customize, like, the first five minutes to them specifically, or you do the whole thing?

(Don McMillan at 00:30:33) I'll do more than that. I'll do about 50%.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:36) Really?

(Don McMillan at 00:30:37) Yeah. Wow. And one of the things I can do well, like, another bit, I have, again, very engineering. I have a library of jokes, types. Like, I'll take their verbiage, all their, I'll pick out, like, HIPAA. Okay, it's the one that comes to mind. Yeah, HIPAA is a big insurance. Everybody knows HIPAA now. Insurance companies know HIPAA. Well, that actually, and I'll take a word they all know or an acronym they all know, and I'll attach a joke to it. And my theory is that next time they hear that word at work, they'll think of my joke and go, "It's Don's joke." So I get a little time-release comedy, a little laugh down the road. So HIPAA is, Health Insurance Pain in the Ass Act. That's what it stands for. So I do stuff like that. And I'll, and I have to learn their verbiage, so I'll go and do a little research and get their terms. And I also do phone calls. I'll do at least an hour phone call with them beforehand and kind of get the feeling of the crowd in the room.

(Don McMillan at 00:31:27) And then, I don't know. It's, I think some comics don't realize that, especially corporate comedy, is a service. Right? I need, I'm providing a laugh service to relieve the stress and the humdrum of, especially technology companies' jobs. So if I can reach them where they are, that's going to be a lot better.

(Don McMillan at 00:31:52) The more specific a comment, a joke is, the better it's going to be. That's, I really believe that, and most comics know that. So if I can learn about their world, they're going to love it. They're going to take it back. They're going to, to their friends are going to say, "Oh, yeah. He gets us." It just, it's such a better comedy show that it, to me, it's worth the work. So I put it in. But it is work. It's a job. And some comics don't like to work that hard. But I think coming from my background, it's just, well, that's what I've got to do. It's part of my job. That's the way I look at it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:21) Well, my brain's going to run either way. So it's like, what am I instructing? It's like, I'm going to wake up, and it's going to start going. And so I have to instruct it to do something.

(Don McMillan at 00:32:30) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:30) And it's like, might as well do the thing that's in line with my goals. Yeah. That's funny. Comedy as a service. I didn't think about it like that. That's, yeah.

(Don McMillan at 00:32:41) Cheaper than, it, it, it's, yeah. Cheaper than therapy. Is that what you're going to say?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:44) No. No. Cheaper than your AWS bill.

(Don McMillan at 00:32:47) Oh, that's true too. Yeah. But it's one of the many taglines I've tried through the years is, Don McMillan's Custom Comedy, he sees the stuff that's funny that you're too busy working to notice. Yeah. You know, it's kind of what it is.

(Don McMillan at 00:33:00) It's kind of what it is. They don't realize, like, I'm, this guy introduced me to the head of their sales guy, and his name is Rich Byer, B-Y-E-E-R. Rich, I go, what a name for a sales guy. It's every sales guy's dream. A rich buyer. Yeah. It never occurred to them. I go, that's so obvious to me, but I can take a step back and look at their world and see things that they're, they're too focused on their job. So that's my job as a service, is to come in and find that funny stuff that's right in front of them they may not notice.

(Don McMillan at 00:33:29) And that's my task, so as an engineer and a comic communicator.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:35) And so you said something, I think, I don't know if you said it or I read it in your research, but you have a couple kids? One kid, two kid? How many?

(Don McMillan at 00:33:43) Yeah. My son. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:44) You have a son. And how was it growing up or raising him while being on the, did you take him with you? How did that work out?

(Don McMillan at 00:33:54) No, I didn't take him with me. But the thing about corporate, which is why nobody in, I would get, I've been, I lived in LA for thirty years. Okay? I moved down from San Francisco when I was doing pretty well and I and decided if I wasn't, if I was going to, you know, maybe do some TV or something like that, I couldn't be in San Francisco.

(Don McMillan at 00:34:14) So I moved to LA. I'm there thirty years. After twenty years, I'd still have people in the comedy clubs go, "So when are you moving down to LA?" I go, "I've lived here for twenty years. What are you talking about?" And the reason they didn't know is because corporates, I'd go out, do a show, and come home. So I was home a lot, but I would go out for a day or two and make, you know, I would do 50 corporate shows a year. That's maybe two days for each. I'm still home two hundred days a year. So I got to go and I would time it. I got to go to all my son's events. If I'd gone on the road and done comedy clubs for three and four days, I wouldn't have been home very much. But doing corporates allowed me to earn money, do comedy, and be there for my son. So I really felt like it was a great way to still be in my son's life and have a comedy career. But nobody in a comedy club is, I didn't, I didn't sell tickets because nobody in the general public really knew me until I did America's Got Talent, and now I'm selling tickets.

(Don McMillan at 00:35:08) My son's in college. I can go on the road. I'm not, you know, my wife is like, I'm sick of you. No, she didn't really say that. She goes, "No. Go ahead. You don't need to stay home anymore. Go, go be on the road and do your comedy stuff." So it's like a rebirth to my comedy, like an empty nest opening to be able to go out and do the thing that I did before my son was born. So it's worked out well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:32) Nice. So the corporate stuff allowed you to be present and be there.

(Don McMillan at 00:35:36) Yeah. Definitely. Nice. And he, I don't know what the effect on him personally was having a comic as a dad. It certainly wasn't my, what I, I often go, my dad was an engineer, and, you know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:47) My dad was too.

(Don McMillan at 00:35:49) Yeah. And he had very little effect on my daily life. You know, he basically went, "How are you doing today?" "Okay." "You got any problem?" "No." "Okay. Good." That was my dad. You know? He was very, he wasn't a huggy guy. He wasn't, mostly, you know, never had any deep talks with my dad. Good guy. You know? I like my dad. I know he loved me. But but me, with my son, you know, I would take, I would joke with my son, and he's turned out pretty well so far, but it was nothing like my upbringing. So oftentimes, I'll look at him and go, "I don't know what it was like growing up with a comic for a dad, but I hope you're doing okay."

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:23) You're alive. I did my job. Yeah.

(Don McMillan at 00:36:25) Yeah. Well, that's true. And my dad would've looked at it that way too. I fed you. I, I did what I was supposed to.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:31) I tell my, every time my wife and I, we have three little ones under the age of 10. And every time we get stressed out, I just say, remember, we're lowering the bar to keeping them alive as success. Yay. We're successful. They're alive today. We're successful. Like, let's, now, now we take the pressure because there's so much pressure to be a great parent and all this stuff.

(Don McMillan at 00:36:48) So you've got to. And I feel bad, my son, well, he might listen to this. I won't tell him about this. But he, it, it also I, like, okay, he's not going to, what he's going to do with his life now, and he sees his dad was a comedian. What is that? What, there's no, there's no, like, follow your passion is all I could tell him every, and try to try to make some money at what you like to do. But he's not, he doesn't want to be a comedian, so he's like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. I'm not a comedian. Yeah. I feel bad. I've set the, I've set the comedy bar too high for him, I think. I, I said, don't try to be me. Just go be you. But it's, it's different with sons and dads, I think. So.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:26) Yeah. What is, does he have any areas of interest currently?

(Don McMillan at 00:37:31) He, here's a surprise. He's a nerd. He's also really into gaming, but he's also artistic. He's also very bright. I tell him this all the time. He's very, like, he, when he was 10, he was into Minecraft. Right? And so he comes to me at ten, and he goes, "Dad, I hope you don't mind. I reconfigured the server to make a private server so that my friends and I could play Minecraft without other people coming in." And I went, "How'd you do that?" He goes, "I saw a video on it, did it on, set up the server." I went, "I love you, son. You're a brilliant kid." So he knows how to figure out what he wants to do when he wants to do something. So now he's just got to figure out what he wants to do, and I can't answer that for him. I can't, you know? He's kind of fun. He's very personable. He, he, he likes working. Right now he's working in a home with autistic folks helping them out every day with their, like, taking them to work, taking them grocery shopping, helping them in the, and he really gets fulfilled by that.

(Don McMillan at 00:38:33) What he does with that and his skills, I don't know, but he's got to figure that out. I didn't know what I was going to do with my skills, but I sense that it fulfills him, but where it leads him? Yeah. God bless him. I don't, yeah, I, I don't know where he's going to go, but as long as he likes the ride, that's what I tell him. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:50) He'll figure it out. He's 19.

(Don McMillan at 00:38:52) Yeah. He's, well, he's twenty-two now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:55) Twenty-two? I mean, I'm 38, and I'm still trying to figure it out. Yeah.

(Don McMillan at 00:39:02) It's, it's never ending. I'm trying to figure out what to do with this part of my life. It's another part, so it never stopped.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:07) Buy an RV. Get the wife in there.

(Don McMillan at 00:39:10) No. Go tour the country. My wife would love that. No. I'm not doing that. Why not? My wife would. The guy, no. I, no. I've been on the road too much now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:19) Have you seen the, all right. You've got some money built on this.

(Don McMillan at 00:39:21) I've seen the prices.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:22) Yeah. Come on. Have you?

(Don McMillan at 00:39:23) Have you talked to my wife, Joel? No. We, exactly like my wife. So, yeah. No. She, have you called her? Because this is exactly. Have you seen the new ones? You can have your rocker recliner on there. Dude, they're so nice. You can have your Peloton on there. Oh, yeah. I, I'll give you a little, it may not be the same for you, but one of the biggest, when you get to the teenagers, you know, everybody knows it's interesting with teenagers. You know? Necessary process, you know, they've got to break away, but sometimes it gets, but the one thing I bonded with with my son, and I still, I'm close with my son. I am closer than I certainly was with my dad. He used to love to come with me to the Comedy Magic Club and hang out in the green room with the other comedians. I used to bring him down when he was 15 or 16. And he just loved that because the comics would treat him like he was one of the comics, and they would joke with him and give him crap. And, you know, I, the idea of hanging out with my dad and his friends is so foreign to me. I'm like, "Really? You want to come down?" And he loved it. And he knows, I always want to be a comic, but he just really enjoyed hanging with the comics. So maybe you get to do that someday. Comics are really cool with kids at, in, for the most part.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:39) Yeah. So, especially at, like, the 7PM shows. You know?

(Don McMillan at 00:40:43) Yeah. Right. Well, but my son was an internet kid. He, believe me, he, his, his words, he, he knew more bad words than I did. So by the time I brought him into the comedy, I had a club, I wasn't worried. And you know Alan Havey? Do you know Alan Havey?

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:57) No. I don't.

(Don McMillan at 00:40:58) Comic. Hell, Alan Havey is a very acerbic, very funny, but for, Alan's one of my favorite comics. Makes me laugh all with him. But he's very acerbic and very edgy. And Alan would give my son grief, and my son would give him right back to him, and he so enjoyed it. And Alan liked it. And I'm like, "Alan, you're good with kids." He goes, "Of course, I am. Kids love me." I go, "No. I would have never guessed you were good with kids." So it's a fun thing. Maybe you could do that. Yeah. Comedy is something you can share with your kids, so don't, don't be afraid to do that either.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:27) So as we start to wrap up here, let's do some work for you. People, if they want to come see your comedy in person, where can they find your tour schedule?

(Don McMillan at 00:41:36) At donmcmillan.com or technically funny. That's my company name. Technicallyfunny.com. My tagline used to be, "I'm not, if I'm not actually funny, I'm technically funny," mathematically. And, but, yeah, that's it. And I am, it's, we have a bunch of, I'm not, I'm not the workhorse that Jeff Allen is. He works way more than I do. But I am, I'll be all over the country for the next, you know, several months for sure, and then take a little break in the summer and then back in the fall, and I'm all over the place. I'm all four corners. So, hopefully, I'm somewhere near you guys. Come out and see me. It's, it's been really fun finding nerds in every corner of America. Like, Lowell, Arkansas, I'm, they're going to hate that I'm saying this. Lowell, Arkansas is the most amazing nerdy place. The Walmart headquarters are there, JB Hunt's headquarters are there. Yep. And all the companies around that support those companies are there. I could not get dirty enough. I never thought that a town in Northwest Arkansas would be where I could tell jokes about Fibonacci numbers, and people would get them. I just would never have guessed. By the way, I went to an Italian restaurant called Fibonacci's where every pasta is the sum of the two pastas that came before it. The joke did great there. I could never tell that joke in most cities. So I'm finding these little, Huntsville, Alabama. People know it's space capital. But there's, there's nerds everywhere, and they're finally coming out to see me. So, please come out if you see that I'm in the area.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:09) Yeah. I was in LA last week.

(Don McMillan at 00:43:11) Oh, I love that. I love Lowell. I, I degraded Lowell.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:15) Yeah. Yeah. I love it there. There was the new part, like, ten minutes north, Bentonville, where the headquarters, yeah, it is so beautiful. We stayed there.

(Don McMillan at 00:43:23) Isn't it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:23) And that it was locked at.

(Don McMillan at 00:43:24) They hate that we're saying.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:26) I know.

(Don McMillan at 00:43:26) They hate that we're saying this. They don't want people from California moving there. Don't tell. Okay, we don't want people. Yeah.

(Don McMillan at 00:43:31) No, just quiet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:31) It sucks.

(Don McMillan at 00:43:32) But it is. It's very nice. It's new. It's upbeat. It's just, there's life there.

(Don McMillan at 00:43:38) It's vibrant, I feel like.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:40) I was very surprised because when I heard I'm going to Northwest Arkansas, I thought cow fields. It's gonna, and then I get there and I said, we're in the future. This is beautiful.

(Don McMillan at 00:43:51) Yeah, yeah. So I'm finding those areas. They're out there for sure. So if you see me in the area, come on up.

(Don McMillan at 00:44:00) Alright, so—

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:01) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email: [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.