Accidentally owning a comedy club gave Lucas Zelnick the recipe for success on stage
Before he was headlining tours and selling out gigs, Lucas Zelnick found himself in an unintentional entrepreneurial experiment. What started as a cheap office space during the pandemic quickly morphed into a thriving comedy club, providing Zelnick with an unconventional, yet ultimately effective, boot camp for his own career as a performer.
The New York native wasted no time transitioning from start-up to stand-up, and sold off his club, Sesh Comedy, which is still thriving. A graduate of Stanford's MBA program, Zelnick has leaned on his education to build his brand, garnering a strong audience on social media.
The 30-year-old's punch-heavy material has been featured on Comedy Central. After touring as a headliner all over the U.S., Zelnick is preparing for his stop in Amsterdam this September.
He sat down with the Dam Yankee Podcast, in partnership with NL Times, this week to discuss his not-so-humble upbringing, the origin story of his comedy club, and how he finally got good on stage.
Dam Yankee: I'm so interested in how you wound up in comedy in the first place, because so much of comedy for people, you know, comes out of their personal struggle. And for you, I assume your personal struggle is different than other people's as your father was the chair of CBS.
Lucas Zelnick: Yeah, I mean, I think there was just a huge opportunity for me to be the first ever rich kid to try doing it. No one had done it before. No rich kids had ever tried to be artists. So I thought, why don’t I be the first? Why don’t I blaze this trail? One small step for me, one big step for rich kids everywhere. Sort of like the moon landing of being a nepo-baby entertainer.
No, but seriously, I think there’s this stereotype of rich kids doing art, and there’s also a stereotype of people who really struggle doing art. Both come from the same place—if nothing matters, either because your life is so good or so hard, then why not do what you really want to do? And I think a lot of people want to make art, or do something like it—whatever you want to call stand-up comedy. Make medium-quality entertainment in small rooms, maybe.
Comedy was always how I connected with people. And honestly, I don’t think I would’ve done it if I didn’t have a bit of a safety net. Knowing that, if it didn’t work out, I’d still be okay—that gave me a lot of confidence and motivation to go really hard at it.
DY: I know you’ve got your own standup club out there, which I thought was super interesting. It’s kind of your way of almost buying your own stage time, which is super cool. Can you tell me the story about how you actually ended up buying a club out there?
LZ: Yeah, well, we actually sold it now, so we don't own it anymore. All of it was kind of accidental. A friend of mine, Jamie Wolf, and I were writing scripts together around the time the pandemic was coming to an end. We wanted an office space to write in, and because of the pandemic, retail space in New York City was super cheap. So we decided to rent an office. Since we were both stand-up comedians, we thought we could probably pay the rent by doing shows in the space. It turned out to be a perfect room for comedy.
The more we looked into it, the more shows we did. It started to get written up and spread. It was only supposed to be for three months—we had just rented the space for that long—but all the shows started selling out and it kind of took off. At the end of those three months, the person who now manages and owns it, Dave Hogsett, took it over and has done a great job with it. It's become a pretty significant part of the New York City comedy scene since then. It really was kind of an accident.
DY: It's not easy to just buy a comedy club and set it up. There are so many great clubs in New York, and many great ones have failed or shut down over the years.
LZ: What we were doing was just renting a space. We never really "bought" a club in the traditional sense. People usually buy real estate or a brand. We just created a brand, rented a space, bought some chairs and a microphone. We were only in it for a couple thousand dollars, and we made that back. We had a month-to-month rent deal with some really nice landlords, so we always knew we could shut it down anytime.
Because we didn’t care that much, it actually made it a better experience for everyone. A lot of people try to build a business around their comedy club, but we just wanted to make a fun place to see comedy for cheap. That ended up being the thing that got it off the ground. Now the guy who runs it takes it a lot more seriously, and he’s doing a great job.
Starting that club was actually a big turning point in my own stand-up career. Before we started, I probably had five minutes of material. But we were producing 14 shows a week, so I was performing at all of them. Now I've been doing stand-up full time for about three years, working at all the clubs in New York City, including that one since it's still around. I probably still do about 14 shows a week.
By the end of that first summer, which was only three months, I went from doing five minutes to having about 25 minutes. It wasn’t great, but I got a lot of experience. Shortly after that, people started watching my stuff online, and that’s what really helped me launch into being a touring comedian.
Listen to this entire episode of Dam Yankee wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the full videos on YouTube. Zelnick goes on to discuss what his mentors taught him, his views on cancel culture, and getting over his stage fright.
If you’d like to catch him live in Europe, he has upcoming tour dates in London, Copenhagen, and here in Amsterdam on September 8. He’ll be playing at Boom Chicago for 32 euros.
