Screw The Gatekeepers & Stop Waiting To Be Picked

A Few Thoughts on Seizing & Creating Opportunities (Comedy Mindhacks #140)

About sixteen years ago, while I was working on my PhD, I created an audiobook designed to help people learn ancient Greek. At the time, there wasn’t anything like it on the market. I loved it and knew that I had created something that could genuinely help others learn Greek. So, I did what authors and content creators were supposed to do back then: I pitched it to some of the big publishers. The response was the same everywhere I went. They weren’t interested because, according to half-a-dozen editors, the market wasn’t ready for something like that.

So, I had a decision to make: I could accept their assessment, put the project away, and wait until somebody or a few somebodies decided “the market” was ready. I could keep knocking on the same doors hoping one of the people on the other side would finally let me in. Or, I could decide that they were allowed to say no to publishing my work, but they weren’t allowed to determine whether my work ever saw the light of day. I chose the latter. And on the heels of that, I talked with one of my friends and professors, Dr. Fred Long, and we started our own publishing company.

That decision changed the trajectory of my life. What began partly because I couldn’t get someone else to publish something I believed in eventually became GlossaHouse. Over the years we’ve published books and other resources from more than 300 authors and content creators. And none of that happened because the original gatekeepers eventually changed their minds about me. They didn’t! (Though, now many others have followed suit and have, in fact, started imitating my creative Greek projects.) Here’s what I’m getting at: Starting GlossaHouse in the way I did is how I’ve approached things for my entire adult life.

I’ve encountered gatekeepers everywhere I’ve gone. But here’s a fact: Gatekeepers only control the gates they own. In higher education, for instance, there a handful of people at a college or university that determine who gets hired, promoted, or invited into certain circles. They exist in churches, too, where ministers and other leaders sometimes discover that someone else, such as denominational forces, have tremendous control over what they’re allowed to do. They exist in publishing, entertainment, business, and nearly every other industry I’ve encountered. And, of course, they’re absolutely everywhere in stand-up comedy.

Every local comedy scene seems to have them or some version of them. There are people who control certain rooms, shows, festivals, opportunities, lineups, and social circles, and sometimes they genuinely believe they’re protecting comedy, their venue, their audience, or their brand. Here’s where I’ll consent: Some gatekeeping might be beneficial because, truthfully, not everybody belongs on every show. There are definitely shows that I as a clean comedian do not fit on. And a booker has every right to decide who performs on a show they’re responsible for producing. BUT…the problem begins when I start believing that their decision determines whether I get to keep moving at all.

Read that line again: The problem begins when I start believing that their decision determines whether I get to keep moving. Fine, let them make their decision to keep me out. But let me create my own opportunities and keep moving. Let me keep my agency and keep my momentum going. Their decisions have nothing to do with my fate unless I let them or decide they do. And, honestly, I think that’s an incredibly easy thing to forget in comedy. Many do it without even realizing it.

We might start doing open mics and then discover that there are shows we want to be on, clubs we want to perform at, festivals we want to enter, and people whose approval seems capable of moving us forward. Before long, we can begin organizing our progress around getting picked. We hope somebody notices us, likes us, invites us, books us, recommends us, or lets us into whatever circle we think represents the next level. We start kissing butt and sucking up and brown-nosing and either selling ourselves out or selling ourselves short. And, again, without even realizing it, we’ve handed someone else control over our fate and our momentum. We should NEVER do that!

Maybe we do it because we don’t wanna be rejected. I get it. I know that rejection can hurt. I’ve been rejected thousands of times in my life. And I know being excluded can be frustrating. I’ve been excluded more times than I care to remember. But the bigger problem comes when I confuse somebody’s rejection or exclusion or their ability to deny me their opportunity with their ability to deny me opportunity altogether. Those aren’t the same thing!!! The former gives a person control over what belongs to them, but the other gives them control over what belongs to me.

A comedy booker, for example, can keep me off his or her show. But that booker can’t keep me from producing one of my own. A festival can reject my submission, but it can’t keep me from finding another stage. A local scene can decide I’m not part of its inner circle, but it doesn’t own every venue, audience, microphone, camera, podcast, social-media platform, or opportunity available to me. Somebody can close a gate to me but that doesn’t mean they’ve closed off all roads.

All that matters because it moves the focus away from gatekeepers and puts it back on me and my agency. If all my energy is spent trying to convince someone to open a particular gate, eventually my progress becomes dependent upon that person. I wait, complain, become bitter, compare myself to whoever got picked, and wonder why nobody recognizes what I can do. Meanwhile, there may be a dozen other ways to keep moving that I’ve completely ignored because I’ve become obsessed with one locked gate.

I was recently asked to be part of a comedy group on a social media platform. The creator of the group asked me if I would post and share my articles. So, I joined and did that. Well, it turns out an original member of the group didn’t like my stuff and, so, they went to the guy who asked me to join and complained. That person, the complainer, was simply trying to gatekeep. Rather than deal with the toxicity, I left the group. That person then followed my posts in another group and started commenting on my posts there, thinking he was exposing me because I’ve not been in comedy long enough to suit his tastes. It’s laughable and ridiculous. And I could’ve let his attempts to gatekeep slow me down or hamper me, but I chose to laugh in the face of them and keep doing my thing.

The truth is, I’ve never been very good at waiting for someone to pick me. Ever. When I wanted to publish something and publishers said no, I created a publishing company. When I wanted more opportunities to perform comedy, I started producing shows. When I wanted to talk with comedians and learn from their experiences, I created a podcast. When I wanted to share what I was learning about comedy, psychology, creativity, and momentum, I started writing about it. I take full control of my agency and make the most of it. And in doing that, I’ve created opportunities for others.

Now, here’s something I want to be absolutely clear about: NONE of that means those things immediately became successful. Creating our own opportunities doesn’t eliminate the hard work that comes afterward at all. Starting a show doesn’t guarantee anyone will attend, starting a podcast doesn’t guarantee anyone will listen, and publishing a book doesn’t guarantee anyone will buy it. Agency doesn’t guarantee an outcome. Having agency just means that I refuse to make someone else’s permission the prerequisite for my effort. I’ll never do that.

Here’s another thing: All this also keeps me from becoming entitled or having an entitlement/victim mindset. Choosing my own agency doesn’t mean I’m entitled to anyone else’s opportunities. It just means that their opportunities aren’t the only ones available to me. Likewise, agency doesn’t mean ignoring criticism, refusing feedback, or convincing myself that everyone who says “No” is an idiot. It means I can learn from a closed gate without building my house in front of it. The best thing I can do is make adjustments and keep moving.

I think this becomes especially important for those of us who came to comedy later in life. Waiting three years for somebody in a local scene to decide I’ve paid enough dues or waiting indefinitely for the right person to notice me doesn’t sound appealing at all. I’d rather keep improving while simultaneously creating as many opportunities as I reasonably can. I can respect somebody else’s gate without spending my life standing in front of it begging. Sometimes momentum means moving around that gate, building beside it, or creating something entirely different. The important thing is that someone else’s decision doesn’t become the moment when I surrender my own agency.

Looking back, I’m incredibly grateful those publishers rejected my ancient Greek audiobook sixteen years ago. I certainly wasn’t grateful at the time, but their rejection forced me to make a decision I might’ve never made if one of them had simply said yes. I wanted someone to pick my project, but eventually I had to pick it myself. And what grew from that decision became far bigger than the opportunity I originally wanted.

As I said, that’s a pattern I’ve carried into comedy and nearly every other part of my life. I don’t need every gate to open. I simply need enough agency to keep moving when one stays closed. Sometimes that means improving until I’m ready for the opportunity, sometimes it means finding another opportunity, and sometimes it means creating one that didn’t previously exist. Either way, my momentum doesn’t have to end because somebody told me no.

So, screw the gatekeepers. Stop waiting to be picked by them. Stop giving them more power than they actually possess. Yes, they can control their gates, but I get to decide what I do when one of those gates doesn’t open. I’ve learned that the creative life is too short to spend it standing outside somebody else’s gate hoping they eventually call my name or say yes. What I can do anyway is keep writing, performing, producing, creating, learning, improving, and building whether somebody else validates my efforts and work or not.

Now, one last thing while you’re still here: Recently, I created a new app, a tool I wish I’d have had early on: Comedian Persona Explorer. It can help comedians figure out what they didn’t realize they were missing regarding their persona. Whether you begin with a single report or continue using it as you grow, my goal in creating it is simple: I hope you’ll spend more time becoming the comedian only you can be. Check it out HERE.

Along the same lines, let me just say that, if reflections and tools like these are helpful to you, that’s also exactly why I wrote Comedy Mindhacks. My goal isn’t simply to help comedians write better jokes. It’s to help comedians understand the invisible thinking behind better comedy. Every mental model becomes another tool for building momentum, and over time those small shifts in thinking have a way of producing much bigger shifts on stage.

This entire book is built around helping comedians identify the mental obstacles, hurdle over them, and boost their momentum. If this article resonated with you, you’ll find a lot more like it inside the book. You can check out sample pages HERE. If you’re not yet a subscriber, use code MH10LIVE at checkout HERE for 10% off. Free subscribers automatically receive 15% off, and paid subscribers receive 35% off because I’m a big believer in rewarding people who invest in themselves. 👉 Click HERE to grab the book.

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