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Zarna Garg spent 16 years as a stay-at-home mom before trying her first open mic night. Now the successful comedian has her three kids and her husband help sell merch at sold-out shows, weigh in on stand-up jokes and laugh lines, and take on household tasks so mom can tour the country.

“We are a family operation,” she tells me over Zoom. “I feel strongly that every mother in America needs to be able to say to her kids, ‘You have to help me.’ There’s nothing wrong with that.”

It’s not all work, either: At the end of Practical People Win, Zarna’s latest comedy special now streaming on Hulu, the whole family joins her onstage for a dance. And it was actually Garg’s kids who first encouraged the comedian to try stand-up. They’ve got good instincts, because within six years the comedian became a headline act at New York’s iconic comedy club Caroline’s on Broadway, opened for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on their Restless Leg tour, won Kevin Hart’s competition series Lyft Comics, and gained over a million Instagram followers. Her memoir This American Woman, which came out earlier this year, is a New York Times bestseller. Next up? A sitcom in development for CBS with Mindy Kaling and Hart.

Watch Practical People Win, and it’s clear why Garg’s career took off. The comedian is impressively adept at taking things highly specific to her life—everything from her oldest son, “so handsome,” getting a broken nose to why she wears a bindi—and making them feel somehow relatable and universal. Plus, who doesn’t appreciate a good mother-in-law joke?

For Garg, it’s about making the audience feel like they’re part of this family operation. “I wrote it with a lot of love,” Garg says of her special. “When I do live shows, I tell people, ‘This is a friends and family event.’”

Below, we caught up with the comedian about Practical People Win, what it’s like parenting as a comedian with a nontraditional schedule, and her best traveling tips. Read on.

Glamour: Can you walk through your creative process? Where do you find inspiration?

Zarna Garg: A lot comes from what’s going on in my life at the moment. Like my two older kids—I have a 22-year-old and a 19-year-old—there’s a lot of dating drama happening in their lives. The boyfriend said this, and the girlfriend said that. Something will stick in my head, and then it becomes, Oh, this is a funny idea. I’ll run with it and try to write something around it.

In this hour, I wanted to speak to what it means to be an immigrant, what it means to be Indian in America. The word immigrant has become so loaded and heated in these last few years, and I wanted to bring some levity to it. Everybody’s angry on all sides. You’re Republican, you’re Democrat, you’re not even political, and you have very strong feelings. I wanted to bring some humor to the idea of being an immigrant and what we experience on the other side, watching the Americans. I also shared a little bit about what it means to be Indian, like how we cope when everybody around us is angry.

So that was the north star, and then the real-life stories kind of kept presenting themselves. Of course, my mother-in-law is a forever presence in my life. She’s always doing or saying something that will trigger me. Then it sits in my memory. Now, instead of worrying about it and crying about it, I’m like, That’s a joke.

Do you keep notes or anything to remember these moments?

I don’t take notes, because I’m on a stage almost every night. I’m doing an open mic or a show or a spot on somebody else’s show every night. So when something happens, I’ll try something that same day. I live very in the moment. If it happened, say, this afternoon, then tonight I’ll stop by a club and do 10 minutes and just talk about it in the funniest way. I’ll work it out, and I’ll see. It probably won’t get the biggest laughs the first time I try it, but I can usually tell whether the premise is resonating with the audience or not. If it did, then I’ll dig deeper and write it down and build it into something. Some premises don’t catch. I’m all about entertaining my audience. It’s not about what I am entertained by. I’ll give you an example: I’ve been trying to write a father-in-law joke for years. It just doesn’t land. Nobody cares.

It’s like you said in the special—you come at comedy as a business, so if people aren’t laughing, you move on to what they want.

Yeah, I don’t want to change people’s minds. I’m not a political comic. I’m not here to prove to somebody that I’m an artist at this level or that level. That’s not my idea of what I do. I’m here to serve my audience. They’re giving me a very important asset, which is their time, and I take every second, every minute seriously, almost to the point of insanity. My kids will be like, “Mom, it’s okay if it’s not a laugh line.” And I’ll say, “No, no, no. That line’s got to go.” I’m very, very deliberate about it.

I’m a mom myself. I have three kids. I know what it takes to sit in front of a TV for an hour. It’s not easy for us. There are so many things going on. If I try to watch my own special, I promise you, 50 people will interrupt me. Some kid will need food, somebody’s phone will ring. You’ve got to be very mindful of people giving up their time. This is the world’s most valuable asset: human attention.

When you were talking about how much traveling you do in your special, I thought, How does she do it? What is it like parenting with a career that’s not a traditional nine to five?

I was a stay-at-home mom for 16 years. I couldn’t figure it out. I could not. I was like, How is everybody around me doing it? I could not figure it out. All those years are a blur. It was just me being home and chasing them. When my youngest was old enough to go to full-time school, like kindergarten, actual school…because in the early years, it’s 10 minutes of school, then you’re picking them up. There’s no time. So when he was old enough to go to school full time, that’s when it became, I have to do something now. Because I was also dying inside. I really wanted to get back to work.

Now my kids are older. Two of my kids are adults, and I recruit them. If I need to travel extensively, I make sure my husband’s around. He now doesn’t have the high-profile job he had for many, many years, so I’ll tell him, “Listen, I need to work, and you have to be home.” He couldn’t have done that five years ago. My older son goes to college in upstate New York. I’ll call him and be like, “You need to come back.” They all know they have to help Mom. That’s a given. That’s not a question mark; it’s understood. We have a family chat where all our logistics are managed. I’ll be like, “I need one of you guys to be here and be with the little one.” They understand that’s part of their responsibility in this family.

It’s lovely that you gave so much of your time and now are able to redistribute the load.

I feel like American moms feel shy in asking for payback. It’s not the American way. I’m not shy about it at all. I don’t know that there is any other way. I don’t feel like anybody is going to come out to help me. I don’t think any of these politicians are going to make a single thing happen for us. In fact, we only lost the things we had. Now I’m very clear with my kids that you have to help me. You owe it to your mom. I’m also a little dramatic about it, I’m not going to lie, but that’s how they step up. They’re part of this family. This is not a hotel where they’re just here to take and leave. They understand that.

I talk about it in the special too. I’ve learned how to have my voice in America. American women taught me that, but I learned the value of community from where I come from. You saw the special. My whole family comes out at the end because they’re a part of it, and I want them to have their moment to shine. I want every mom in America to know that it’s okay to go to work with your kids. It’s okay to bring them. We cannot all be pretending like these children don’t exist, or that they’re a constant inconvenience.

That’s one of the biggest struggles of being a working parent in America, that you almost have to pretend like you don’t have kids.

It’s not sustainable. It’s already falling apart before our eyes. Everybody is overworked and overstretched. In my own humorous way, I’m trying to address that. My kids are everywhere. Every show, they’re selling merch, they’re folding merch, they’re bringing me food. We are a family operation, and I feel strongly that every mother in America needs to be able to say to her kids, “You have to help me.” There’s nothing wrong with that.

It sounds like it’s a wonderful bonding experience as a family too.

Listen, they have their feelings about it, and they will be in therapy, and that’s fine.

Do they tell you, “Mom, that joke’s not funny?” Do they have opinions?

Of course they have opinions. They’re American kids. They have opinions, but they’ll never tell me, “Mom, take it down.” They’ll give me their perspective. They’ll be like, “You know what? Maybe if you came from this angle, you could consider our perspective.” I try a lot of jokes with them and their friends. I don’t need to go to an open mic. I have an open mic in my living room every day. Every day, their whole posse is in my house. The soccer team is in my house, the football people are in my house. Whenever there’s three, four people, it’s an open mic for me. They’ll offer me their opinion, and they’ll be like, “Oh, my mom said this, and I felt this way when she said it.” That helps me shape the joke and make it a full 360-degree piece.

You talked about immigration being a really important theme in this special. Looking ahead, are there some other themes you see emerging in your comedy?

Yes, I feel like I touched on this in the latest one—and now, I’m kind of working more in it—is how moms compete with each other. Competitive mothering. We all have so much latent energy, and we have so many latent desires that we have to suppress when you’re being a mother. You can’t do this because you’ve got the kid. You can’t do that. I feel like it all bubbles out and surfaces in the mom competitions. All this energy that we would’ve probably put in our work environments or in other situations starts cropping up in the bake sale and the library books and whatever. I’m digging around that space right now.

For women who are looking at returning to work or a career change after their kids are more grown, it might feel a little scary. Do you have any advice for them?

Yes, be scared. You should be scared, but you’re scared for the wrong reason. Don’t be scared of what other people are going to think of you. Nobody cares. They don’t matter. Be scared of not owning your future. The thing that motivates me the most is that I’m absolutely terrified of getting old in America and not having the means to take care of myself, not having the social structure to take care of myself. You should be scared of that, and you should say to yourself, I’m scared of it, and I’m going to fix it myself. I don’t need anybody else to step in. I don’t need a husband, I don’t need a father, I don’t need any of that.

There are tools. Today, in the world of social media, women have more access to business opportunities than ever before. Use it all. I have friends who started a closet-organizing business and are making seven figures because they’re constantly posting on social media about closet organizing, which I didn’t even know was a thing five years ago. So be scared, but use that fear and anxiety to a productive purpose. Rather than shrinking or limiting you, use it to empower yourself and push you and propel you. All that fire that you have, use it to lift off the rocket ship that could be your career.

When people watch this special, what’s one thing you hope they take away from it?

I hope that they all feel like they’re part of my world. I wrote it with a lot of love. When I do live shows, I tell people, “This is a friends and family event.” I’m the most regular, flawed, everyday mom human being, and I want them to feel like they’re part of my family, and that they have family with each other. We made a family comedy because we want people to experience it with each other. The amount of people who are planning watch parties over this special, you could break the internet. People want to watch it with their husbands and wives and in-laws. Do you know how many mother-in-laws, daughter-in-laws come to my show? They bond. You would think that they hate each other, but actually they bond over the jokes. So if people can take one thing away from my special, it’s the feeling of togetherness and belonging with each other and with me.

Last question: Because you do so much traveling, any tips?

Oh my God, yes. Know that things will go wrong. Everybody I know gets angry because they’re all trying to speed through things. Me, personally, I go in prepared that everything is going to run on delay. My bag is going to get lost, and I’m ready for it. I always have a little carry-on with my emergency backup outfit. Do not book things so close that if you don’t make this flight, and if this doesn’t show.… Stop it. Travel is going to have problems. There are human beings running these airplanes and airports, and you have to give them that little allowance that things can go wrong. My bags are late, I don’t care. I’m listening to my Bollywood music. Actually, today, I landed at 1:25 a.m. The bags were running late, and I was just dancing with the bag guy. I’m like, Let’s make a Bollywood moment out of it.

My tip is to slow down. It’s not to get angry with everybody. We need to, as a nation, just stop being so angry about everything. It’s not helping. Who are we helping? You’re not even helping yourself. You are about to have a heart attack because your blood pressure is so high.

It’s true. I feel like most people know this, but then don’t do it—that when things are hard, you’ve got to laugh through it. It’s the only way to survive.

It’s the only way to survive, and it’s okay. People are people. They’re trying to help. I fly every day. Yelling at the steward on the airplane is not going to get it done. What can that guy do? They didn’t load the meal. Sometimes, I’m in row two, and they’ve run out of meals. You’ve got to laugh at it because I’m like, Oh my God, what are you going to do with row 30? Are you going to make them cook? Can you imagine going through 50 rows of telling people, “We ran out of food”?

I think everybody needs to take a moment, take a step back, and relax. The thing that saves me is my wired headphones and my music. Anything upsets me, I start playing my music. I zone out. Let it take the time it’s taking. Assume it’s going to go badly. That way, when it goes right, you’re elated.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Originally Appeared on Glamour