He began doing a five-minute set in a comedy club close by in Deerfield, which turned into sets that were 10 to 15 minutes. Eventually the act was ready and he took it on the road to Boston. From there he got an agent and an offer from Comedy Central. He’s never looked back.
These days, Wali Collins says he is living his dream. He just finished filming a movie with Stanley Tucci that's due to come out this year. And, he is appearing on a TV show for Netflix from the celebrated Australian director, Baz Luhrmann – also slated for 2016.
Wali still performs stand-up in top-flight comedy clubs around New York and does guest appearances on television and at corporate events. That alone can keep him running. There are about 10 major comedy clubs in New York City, he explains, and making it as a comic in the Big Apple means being in more than one place at a time, or at least in a night.
“What we do, the comics, is we go from club to club to club, what we call spots," he said. "So I might have a 9:15 spot where I do a 15-minute set, then jump on a train or in a taxi and go to another spot, and that’s a 9:45 or 9:50 spot, and do 15 minutes. Then we go to another spot and play a 10:30 spot.” He says his personal best was performing 10 spots in one night.
You might think that would be enough to occupy one person. But Wali has turned his life’s lesson into a philosophy for living a regret-free and happier life, distilling his mother’s three-word advice into a single term: “Yanevano.” Then, he turned that simple notion into a business.
Or, it more or less morphed into one. He began with a website to encourage people to follow their dreams, since it had worked out so well for him. That prompted him to write regularly on the site, and those writings eventually became a book. On a trip to Seattle a few years ago, he met an independent publisher who offered to print and distribute the book. It’s now a best-seller on Amazon.com.
What more could you ask? (Do I have to say it?) You never know.
“I’ve teamed up with a life coach and she has been deriving workshops from my book," Wali said. "We go out and do workshops to encourage people to live a regretless life. We’re up to doing two a month now, and everyone turns out to be in a better frame of mind after the workshop.”
Of course, he’s working on doing podcasts and blogs, too. Because, well. . .you know what they say.