The first time Jo Koy performed in Hawaii, he received $200 and a plane ticket and had to make his own hotel arrangements (he stayed with a friend).

That was then — 2001, to be precise. This is now.

When Koy returns to Hawaii this weekend, he won’t have to ask a friend for a place to stay. Koy will perform at 11 sold-out shows in seven days at the Blaisdell Concert Hall, between Sunday and Nov. 27. It is an unprecedented achievement. With the possible exception of national Broadway touring companies, no one — certainly no individual entertainer or group — has ever sold out 11 shows in the Concert Hall.

Koy’s two shows Wednesday at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center are sold out, too.

“I can’t believe it, man. I really can’t,” Koy said, calling from Los Angeles on Nov. 2. “We were going to do one show on Oahu and then one show on Maui. We knew it was probably going to sell out by the day of the show, but we put those two shows on sale — Oahu and Maui on the same day — and they sold out in minutes. And then we decided to add another show on the same night, and it sold out in minutes. It was crazy.

“It took us a while to get show three (on Oahu) in our heads. We were, like, ‘Do you think they want show three? Should we do it?’ We put show three up, sold out in minutes. Show four, minutes. ‘Do they really want five shows?’” Et cetera.

Koy’s ticket sales became news stories as show after show sold out almost as quickly as it was announced.

“By the time we hit (show) eight, I didn’t know what was going on, but they were talking about it on the news,” Koy related, cheerfully — but with a touch of sustained wonder. “‘Is this really happening?’

“Before I knew it we were up to 11. It happened a month ago and I’m still pinching myself.”

How did this happen? Yes, Koy is widely known as a “Filipino comedian” because his mother is Filipina — his parents met when his father was stationed in the Philippines — and there are thousands of Filipinos and Filipino-Americans in Hawaii. The thing is, though, Koy has always shrugged off ethnic labels.

The first time he performed here, he was opening for Ludacris and Snoop Dogg. Returning to headline the Wave Waikiki,Pipeline Cafe, The Republik and the Hawaii Theatre, he always entertained across racial and ethnic lines.

“What’s crazy is the labeling — ‘He’s a great Filipino comic.’ No, I’m just a comedian,” Koy said. “I can go to places where the Filipino demographic is 1 percent, and those shows are sold out. White people, black people, Latino people, other Asian people — all laughing at the same time, laughing at the same jokes.

“I’ve always thought, ‘I’m not telling Filipino jokes, I’m talking about my mom.”

Koy’s mom, who famously tried to steer young “Jo-sep” into something practical like nursing, has become a celebrity in her own right who appears in some of his video clips.

“She’s loving it,” Koy said. “It’s pretty cool to be ‘Jo Koy’s mom’ at this point. She’ll go to a grocery store, and people will go up to her and take a picture with ‘Jo Koy’s mom’ and post it.”

SELLING OUT those 11 shows — entertaining a combined audience of more than 22,000 people — is sweet indeed for a man who has spent 28 years to get where he is. Koy started out doing open-mic nights, then played small clubs and then larger clubs and then arenas. He was a guest star, a co-star and then a headliner. He appeared on “The Tonight Show” and got into podcasting. He did two successful comedy specials — “Don’t Make Him Angry” and “Lights Out” — on Comedy Central.

Netflix released Koy’s third comedy special, “Jo Koy: Live From Seattle,” worldwide in March. That was another very sweet moment for him. Koy had produced the show himself with no commitment from any of the major networks or online companies to buy it.

“I was selling out everywhere, and we asked Netflix to come watch,” he said. “And they were like, ‘Well, we already have our schedule set for 2017. Maybe we’ll check you out next year.’”

“My manager and I looked at each other and decided to shoot it ourselves. It was a huge risk. It was a lot of money. If I hadn’t sold it to somebody, I would have been selling that show out of the trunk of my car to make back the money.”

Koy declined to say how much it cost but said he “maxed out everything” to pay for it. Then, on the night of the show, he was so sick that although he did two full shows as planned, they could only use footage from the first show. Koy then did the editing himself.

He sent the finished show to Netflix. They got back to him at about this time of year, “right before Thanksgiving” in 2016.

“It was the most amazing thing,” he said. “I cried in the car. I’d never felt that much pressure in my life before, putting up that kind of money with no one to buy the project and not knowing what was going to happen after we finished editing it. I dumped everything I had it into the special — but I knew I had a great special. I bet on myself and thank God I did.

“And God bless Netflix, because they opened up that platform that reaches everyone and anyone in the world.”

And so, on Sunday Koy opens his unprecedented engagement at the Blaisdell Concert Hall. He’ll be doing two shows back to back on Sunday, and back-to-back shows three nights in a row next week. Doing a full-length set of stand-up comedy is more strenuous than it might look, but compared with that $200-and-a-plane-ticket gig back in 2002, having to do two shows a night for your fans is a great “problem” to have.

“I’m literally living my childhood dream,” Koy said. “How do you do two shows in a night? It’s like asking (Dodgers pitcher Clayton) Kershaw how can he go back in Game 7 and pitch. This is what we live for. This is our dream gig.

“When I used to go to Hawaii on vacation a long time ago, I used to sit there and go, ‘Man I wish these people knew who I was,’ but I knew in time something would happen. And this is that moment.”