Caroline Hirsch – Founder of New Yorks famous Comedy Club

Funny Girl: PINK’s New Year’s resolution: to have even more fun than last year. So we talked to an entrepreneur who’s in the business of being funny – the founder of New York’s famous comedy club, Caroline’s.

By Whitney Homans

Caroline Hirsch doesn’t put a lot of faith in New Year’s resolutions. She does, however, put total faith in her entrepreneurial instincts, which led to the 1982 opening and development of her comedy club, Caroline’s, the first of its kind in New York City. First she booked Jay Leno. Then Jerry Seinfeld. Along the way, she added Pee Wee Herman, Billy Crystal, Denis Leary, Joy Behar and Dane Cook (just to name a handful) to her list of performers.

In a recent interview with PINK, Hirsch shrugs off typical resolutions for women with hectic schedules like hers – more yoga, less junk food – but advocates taking time to de-stress (and laugh), having realistic opportunities and, above all, trusting your business intuition.

PINK: What was the moment you knew you had made it?
Caroline Hirsch: I answered the phone at work and it was the New York Times reporter Stephen Holman talking about the performers at the club. He liked the performers on my lineup and asked why I hired them. I said, “Just ’cause I liked them.” And he said, “Well, I like them too, but I think it’s more about the club, about this movement you’ve created.” And he wrote this piece saying we were the night club in New York City.

PINK: What was the most innovative thing you did to drive business?
C.H.: Early on, I needed a way to draw business in without a big advertising budget, so I learned to tie in with shows like Letterman and Johnny Carson. If one of my comedians was going on one of those shows, I’d make sure I got a plug in the interview. I solicited reporters to come in and cover comedy, which they never really covered before. I had a friend at the [New York] Daily News who loved comedy, and he just started writing about it – which started a trend in reporting on comedy.

PINK: What’s the best advice you’ve received?
C.H.: When I was in retail, a boss said to me, “You always need to be enthusiastic about what you do. If you don’t love what you’re doing and don’t get emotional about it, it’s really not worth doing.” So I always remember that.

PINK: The comedy business is notoriously male-dominated. Was that a big challenge for you?
C.H.: I never really felt that. Maybe I was naïve about the whole process. Here I was trying to open this nightclub, and there were many showcase clubs in New York City, like Improv or Catch a Rising Star, but there was never a place that truly highlighted or headlined the talent. I took Jay Leno and put him in this setting where he did an hour show with an opening act, and that really wasn’t being done in New York City, so the challenge was to get that into people’s minds. Little did we know, this whole comedy revolution happened.

PINK: What is the most remarkable thing you did to get to where you are?
C.H.: When people are entrepreneurial, they do things because they get this gut feeling – not because it’s proven, not because a book says it’s the right thing to do, not because somebody sees a trend. They make the trend, and this was part of it. I just had this feeling that we were all interested in what funny people like Leno and Seinfeld had to say. So entrepreneurial people do things by the seat of their pants. They just get a feeling and they go with it.

PINK: What was the most difficult business decision you’ve had to make?
C.H.: I opened a location downtown at the Seaport in 1987, and right after that there was a terrible crash on Wall Street and that was felt all around that area. But I persevered. I was there for five years. The club was doing fabulously well, and I said to myself, “You know, I could use more seats. I’d like to be uptown again.” So I closed down that situation and opened in midtown New York, which was the best thing I ever did for business. So I was shutting down a business that was doing OK, but saying, “Oh, I could do so much better.”

PINK: What’s your perspective on balancing life and work?
C.H.: I think you have to let go when you totally get stressed out. Now, I have this month period of crunch, but then I know it’s over. I can deal with that. But if it were like this all the time, I don’t think I could take the stress of it. And I think the balance has to mean you let it go sometimes. My business is open seven days a week. On the weekends when I’m not there, I know the club is in good hands and we’re doing business, lots of business. I just automatically shut down that part of my brain. And I don’t know if it’s a natural thing you just learn how to do after a while ’cause you need it, ’cause your body tells you, “Don’t get involved with it right now.” But that took a while to do.

PINK: What inspires you?
C.H.: My job. I’m always inspired by the next round of comedians coming up. They’re funny. I get to laugh a lot at my job. People come in, like my friend Judy Gold or Susie Essman or Joy Behar, and we just start talking and laughing and telling stories. They’re very, very funny. But it always gets into trying to make everybody laugh. It’s kind of medicinal also, my job. It’s a good job. It’s stimulating and creative, and there’s always something going on.

PINK: What would you tell women who are in a much more corporate environment and don’t get to laugh each day at their jobs?
C.H.: You have to let it go a bit. It’s not a perfect world. This whole myth of having everything is such bullshit. You have a family, which is a full-time job. And then you have your other job, which you get financial rewards from, and that’s something else. Women think they have to do everything perfectly, but if you’re holding a full-time job and managing a family, everything’s not going to be perfect. So you need to let go of that. Don’t stress out about it.

PINK: Who or what always makes you laugh?
C.H.: It’s always material that involves something that I’ve experienced in life. Those are the things that make me laugh – like when I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry David talks about things that we all realize are going on in our lives but never really come out and say. It’s all about the realism. To me, that’s the funniest stuff in the world.

PINK: What’s the secret to your professional success?
C.H.: Tenacity. Sticking with it. Believing in your mission. Not giving up on the idea that comedy was this really great art form that was going to expand over the years.

PINK: Who are the funniest women out there right now?
C.H.: Susie Essman, Lisa Lampanelli, Judy Gold, Rosie O’Donnell, Sarah Silverman. There’s a bunch of funny, funny ladies. They’re seasoned. They’ve been doing it for a long time. They know the jokes. They know the ropes. They’ve got the great material and have worked on it a long time.

PINK: What separates them from their male counterparts?
C.H.: A lot of these women are in-your-face comedians. They’ve got that aggressive mode about them like the men do, and that’s why I personally think they’re funny.