Wali Collins Still Never Knows (Why Not?)

This is a story about having good luck – and about making your own.

Stand-up comedy is a tough field. Comics have a drive that supersedes their rational side. That’s why so many tell stories about well-meaning family members encouraging them to take a safer career course.

Wali Collins’ story is the exact opposite.

Wali graduated from college with a degree in architectural technology and had a good job designing buildings in western Massachusetts, when his mother planted the seeds of discontent by asking him what he’d be doing if he could do anything at all.

“I said I wanted to be an actor,” he recalls now. “So, she asked me why I was designing buildings if I wanted to be an actor. I said, ‘I live in Springfield, Massachusetts. Nobody famous ever came from Springfield, Massachusetts.’ And she said three words: 'You never know.' I was just so surprised that my parents were encouraging me to do these things. They said, ‘We just want our children to be happy.’”

That part is remarkable enough. Then came his next question: How? “I didn’t even know where to start,” Wali said.

He said his mother replied, "Why don’t you start with stand-up, and parlay that into an acting career?”

There’s probably no more precarious job in show business than stand-up comedy – well, maybe a high-wire act – but in both cases, you’re out in front of a live audience without a net. Dying, they say, is easy; comedy is hard.

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: “Y’NEVANO.” 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.

Wali Collins is America’s Most loved comedian and the author of “The Y’NEVANO book of Encouragments. See his press kit.