Wisconsin native Shane Mauss, who’s coming to Minot this November, caught his first break when he was awarded ‘Best Stand-Up” at The HBO US Comedy Arts Festival in 2007. That led to his TV debut and first of five appearances on Conan.

Backstage on one of those appearances, Mauss met Dwayne Wade of the Miami Heat even though he was unfamiliar with the NBA Champion. “I’m not a big sports person, I didn’t know who he was,” said Mauss. “Backstage, you can’t really hear the interview.” Mauss exchanges pleasantries with Wade and immediately afterwards inquired with his friends who he was.

Fast forward to Mauss’ South Beach Comedy Festival appearance, where he runs into Wade in a nightclub. “Hey Dwayne, we were on Conan,” said Mauss to Wade. “He was like ‘What are you doing in Miami? After I told him, I was just about to ask him what he was doing in Miami.”

After realizing the absurdity of his question to the Miami athlete, the best response Mauss could muster up was: “So, how’s basketball?” Wade said good and awkwardly walked away.

Since that time, he’s been on Jimmy Kimmel, Showtime, has had a Comedy Central Presents, a Netflix special ‘Mating Season’ and most recently released an album inspired by breaking both of his feet in a hiking mishap. The album, called “My Big Break,” spent time at No. 1 on the comedy iTunes charts. That said, Mauss believes the hardest part about his career path is keeping the steady work coming.

“Figuring out ways to build a fan-base and get people’s attention and differentiate yourself from other comics,” he said. To be fair, Mauss has gone above and beyond to do just that.

Last year, Mauss started traveling around the country interviewing scientists about the meanings of life for his own podcast, “Here We Are,” which has a five-star rating on iTunes.

“There are infinite meanings of life,” said Mauss. “It very much depends on the context in which you’re talking about. What is poison to humans is delicious to pandas. All of life is like that.”

His inspiration behind the podcast was to separate himself from the herd.

“It’s just something a little bit different,” said Mauss. “These days comics have to be doing something like that, just giving them more content and showing more aspects of yourself. Just being a guest on other people’s podcast has helped a lot.”

Mauss has some very straightforward advice to those thinking about doing stand-up comedy for the first time. “I wish I had a magical answer to it,” said Mauss. “Go and watch it and you’ll see how it works and you’ll see that there are a lot of people in your position.”

“On this tour, I’m going to a lot of new places I’ve never been before,” he said. “I’ve never been to Minot so I’m excited to see if I can win them over,” said Mauss, who will perform at the Vegas Motel Nov. 17 at 9 p.m.