We recently connected with Greg Berman and have shared our conversation below.

Greg, appreciate you joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I’ve come to realize that life, like gambling, is all about which risks you do or don’t take. It’s not about whether to take risks or not, it’s which ones you can bet on.

To live a risk-free life is to live a life not lived. What else are you doing? If everything is a sure thing, then nothing gets to unfold, and I live for that moment. I think that’s what got me into stand up comedy. It’s such a risk. I was a magician before that, even bigger risk. You could do 30 minutes of BRILLIANT magic, and mess up 1 time and that’s the only thing the audience will remember. It’s unforgiving. So is stand up, and that’s why the stakes are so high, and that’s why I love it.

You have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, you must face every moment head on and, hopefully, transfer some of that energy into the moment that follows. Every word you say is a risk. Even in real life. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and suddenly you said something that took the conversation to an entirely different and perhaps unfavorable place? Words are powerful, and expressing yourself is a huge risk we take every single day.

So what does this whole rant really mean? I don’t know. I think I’m saying that risk-taking doesn’t have to be mystical.. Once you accept it as a part of every moment, suddenly it becomes an exciting adventure rather than a scary precipice.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a creator and an artist. I’ve juggled a lot of different labels in the past. Actor, comedian, writer, director, producer, magician, tattoo artist, and candy connoisseur, I think eventually, you just summarize them all under artist.

I like to create. I am obsessed with repurposing media. I love to create personalized and ephemeral experiences. I find new and fun vehicles for comedy. I tell stories. I like to create.

That’s how I feel, but you don’t care about how I feel, you care about what that means.

Okay.

I perform stand up and produce stand up shows. I make short films. I write for senators. I assemble comedy advice panels around the country. I create sketch shows about the audience. I make movies out of Animojis. I recently started tattooing bodies… I once dressed up as a Optimus Prime for $50 and performed at an Armenian kid’s birthday party and just ended up dancing with the kids in a circle for an hour because nobody spoke the language. That was awesome. At one point I threw candy at them. They loved it. You should have seen it. I don’t know for sure, but I think I’m in their family now. They all hugged me.

But does that tell you who I am? I don’t think so. I am a Jewish refugee from Ukraine that moved to Minnesota when he was 7 years old with his family, with a dream of working with David Copperfield… a dream he has not yet realized. So much for the American Dream.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Dig deeper. That’s it. I am begging the world to dig a little deeper.

We are so used to being handed everything on a silver platter. Our headlines have a character limit otherwise people won’t read them. Videos have to be 1 minute or they won’t be seen. Emails have to be short or people won’t respond. Expression is being compressed to match attention. Why can’t it be the other way around? Why don’t we widen our attention to match expression?

Rather than trying to catch the top headlines or listen to a podcast on 5x speed because you only have 15 minutes, maybe just bank that time, and just sit with yourself and check in with how you’re feeling. Take a moment to simply be. Then, when you have a solid hour to sit down, pick the thing that you’ve been waiting the most to read or listen to and fully immerse yourself in it. Or watch that show you’ve been dying to watch, and maybe read an article about it. Check in with some fan theories. Get deeper on a few things, rather than nowhere on everything.

Dig deeper.

Take a moment to do even 5 minutes of exploration about the artist of a new song you heard on some random playlist. Check out their website. Read an article or two. So much of art is context, so take a moment to find some. You see a cool jacket, check out the designer who made it and read about their current creative director and what inspired them. I don’t know! Anything. One step deeper than you would have. That’s all I’m asking. You never know where you’ll find inspiration.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

People pleasing is a manipulative behavior and never actually about the people you are trying to please.

Every people pleaser loves to take on this martyr attitude of doing everything they can to make sure that everyone around them is pleased at all times, but what the people pleaser never realizes is that it’s all a selfish behavior. They aren’t pleasing people because they want them to be happy, they are pleasing them to control how that person feels about the people pleaser in question. Trust me… I’m a recovering people pleaser.

At the heart of it all is an insecurity and a deep avoidance of vulnerability. This translates directly to performance. If you are working solely to please an audience you will never win because you are just trying to control their response. Give them your best, and let them decide how they feel. You are you, and they are them, and all you can do is just be you and let them be them. That’s what art is all about. A transference of a common idea or message through something beautiful. Stop forcing beauty down everyone’s throat, and just let them reach for it themselves.

This lesson, I am still learning and actively catching myself every single day falling victim to it’s comfortable grasp. It’s easy to just focus on making sure everyone likes you, because it’s much harder to focus on liking yourself. So look inward. I’m trying to every single day. Find what you love about you and stand by it, the rest of the world will either see you for you and love you, or they won’t. But, it’s okay, because it’s not your job to make them love you. Stop being selfish.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.gregberman.com
• Instagram: @bermancomedy
• Other: www.theadvicepanel.com

Image Credits
Ben French, Nic Murphy, Alexa Curran