Labor of Laughter: Comedian Jared Freid on the Work Being Funny Requires
“There are a lot of ways to skip lines, especially nowadays. But what felt most comfortable for me was to take the hard route and create my own stuff. That way, I knew I could back it up.”
“You have to have simple goals,” Jared Freid says about his craft.
I’ve been a fan of the Boston-born comedian for nearly three years, after first being introduced to him when he appeared as a guest on a podcast I liked. His over-the-top energy and thick East Coast accent make him hard to ignore, but his ability to inject equal parts humor and nuance into almost any topic of discussion is what hooked me.
And thus, my being-into-comedy career began. With Jared as my conduit to the larger funny-person community, I’ve now seen shows in every corner of the country and consume some form of comedic content every single day. It’s very much become a therapeutic outlet. After all — laughter is the best medicine, right?
We start off talking big-picture.
“A lot of creative people are not very organized. It’s one of the biggest mental hurdles for us,” Jared tells me. So each week, he’ll pick one thing that he wants to work on — and that’s quite literally all he does. If inspiration strikes after the fact, it’s getting jotted down to be dealt with at a later date.
For full-time comics, who deny themselves the structure and safety of a standard gig, self-devised systems like Jared’s are all but critical. “By creating ways to concentrate on one joke and really build it out,” he continues, “you’re usually going to end up with something pretty good after a while.”
He recounts a recent night doing four different shows at four different clubs. The premise of the one joke he would focus on that particular evening was already determined: how his dad had been trying to set him up on a bunch of dates.
At the first show, it was pretty bare bones. But by the fourth one, the joke had full-blown legs. It evolved into a bigger and better bit about how asshole-ish it is to set someone up without presenting sufficient photographic evidence. (Hold the sunglassed-selfies and big group pictures; clear, full-body shots are the only acceptable form of ID for the potential partner.) Jared deemed the night a productive one because he ended it with a joke that was much closer to what he really wanted to say than he had when it began.
“Again, simple goals,” he repeats his mantra. “Sometimes you want to do seven new jokes in one show, but that’s never going to happen. You have to be fair to yourself and to your material.”
Naturally, no one is a better case study for this approach than Jared himself.
Some highlights from his resume include three dating and lifestyle-focused podcasts supported by millions of monthly listeners, a top-charting comedy album, a YouTube special, and an appearance on The Tonight Show alongside none other than Ms. Taylor Alison Swift.
His affinity for manageable, short-term goals was inspired by Bill Burr, a fellow comedian and Boston native. It seems like prolonged Dunkin’ Donuts exposure may be the secret to comedic success, but Burr believes it comes from focusing on getting one new minute of material a week. If a comic does this, they’ll have a 52-minute special by the end of the year.
Reaching out to established figures like Burr for guidance was just one of the many ways Jared embraced comedy once he decided to pursue it after graduating from Penn State and moving to New York City. He was selling life insurance, but the best part of his days quickly became the funny emails he’d exchange with his friends (which is apparently how young people communicated before the advent of the group chat). “I’d get super into writing those and finally it clicked that I liked making people laugh. That’s when I went for it.”
Wanting to calm the initial anxiety of not knowing what his career would become, Jared set out to maximize the support at his disposal. He put his own money into sketch and improv classes. He went to every open mic he could find. He got to know club owners and staff. He wrote for different websites to build his audience.
In short, he grinded it out not only to earn a name for himself, but also to ensure that that name would be protected. “There are a lot of ways to skip lines, especially nowadays,” Jared reflects. “But what felt most comfortable for me was to take the hard route and create my own stuff. That way, I knew I could back it up.”
Now having made it to the proverbial front of the line, he still has good weeks and bad weeks. Fortunately, there’s a (mostly) surefire way to minimize the bad ones: setting deadlines.
“When you get a bit of an audience, people start expecting certain content at certain times. You might be disappointing somebody beyond your mom or your best friend if you don’t follow through,” Jared explains. To stay ahead, he’s gotten really good about creating his own due dates.
Meeting these due dates usually means a lot of writing. And that usually means a lot of writer’s block — about which the Board Lord believes the only way through is through. “I think most people who write anything get it in their head that the first time has to be the best time, but that’s all wrong,” he says matter-of-factly. “You write to edit.”
I jot this down and stick it on my desk after we hang up, hoping it’ll work to ward off my own perfectionist tendencies. So often, I’ll sit and stew over a project, paralyzed by fear of error — despite the path of least resistance being blatantly, painfully obvious: get something down, get feedback, and get back to it.
Already a master of this process, Jared has curated a crack team of peer-reviewers over the years; close friends, family, and mentors who provide him with feedback that’s honest, not emotional. And the key to honesty, he says, is context. You want to bring your stuff to people who “really know where you’re coming from.”
But being a public person means Jared also gets unsolicited feedback from those who absolutely do not know where he’s coming from — strangers on the internet.
Instead of ignoring comments like some artists do, he’s developed a keen eye for spotting the difference between genuine critique and trolling. “I read everything people say to me with the mindset of ‘What are they trying to do here?’ Do they actually want this to get better, or do they just want to say something mean?’”
Being discerning in this way — knowing who to take seriously and who to not — allows him to consider potentially helpful perspectives on his work while maintaining a positive headspace.
Another aspect of having a substantial following that Jared doesn’t really sweat? Parasocial relationships.
For those who aren’t chronically online, this is essentially when a fanbase develops the illusion of a face-to-face relationship with a particular performer or personality, expecting a certain level of intimacy even at a distance. It’s been a favorite topic among the Twitter types as of late, and it’s often presented as a negative or harmful thing. Jared doesn’t see it as such.
“You can’t speak to your audience like they’re your friend — you can’t put your whole life on display — and then get weirded out when people reach out to you acting like they’re your friend. I recognize I play a role.”
But this admission doesn’t mean efforts aren’t made to preserve his time and energy. When interacting with followers who DM him looking for dating advice, he again gets “business-y” and sets deadlines around responding, or directs folks to compensated channels like his Patreon for quicker access.
And yet, despite all his digital deftness, Jared believes the real work of comedy is still largely offline. “I just love doing standup. As a comic, there’s no better feeling in the world than being on stage and getting the laugh.”
The next goal is landing a full-length special. To achieve it, he’ll follow the same slow-and-steady blueprint he always has.
Ultimately, whether you find yourself in the unorganized camp (like Jared) or the unfunny one (like me), the lesson here is clear: success doesn’t have to be super stressful. Over time, simple goals can lead to outsized achievement.
Just don’t lose sight of that one minute a week.
A great reminder of how the little things add up. Very inspiring and interesting insight to his creative process!
Hi Ellyn, this is fantastic. So well written, and so rich. Thanks