Why Most Talented Comedians Never Make It
And Why It Has Nothing to Do with Jokes (Comedy Mindhacks #42)
It sucks to see one of your students go to prison. It sucks to see them throw their life away. It sucks to see someone destined for greatness squander their life. Years ago, when I was regularly substitute teaching at a high school, I had a student whom I really enjoyed having in class. He was quite respectful, funny, and was maybe the best basketball player I’d ever seen. I mean that literally.
This kid was only in eighth grade and already playing like a senior. He had smooth handles and killer instincts. He had a shot like butter. This kid was the embodiment of potential. By ninth grade, he’d already been offered full rides to several D-1 schools. Coaches were flying in to see him. You could feel the heat around him. But by the end of tenth grade, it had all started to unravel.
Why? Because he wanted to live the glorified thug life. He got sucked into the wrong crowd and, before too long, he started using and selling drugs. Seemingly overnight he was hanging with the wrong people and imitating the worst examples. He got arrested as a high-school student and locked up. Then he got bailed out; he got another chance. Then he wasted that chance, too. He got locked up again. This time, however, those big schools, they pulled their collegiate offers. If I’m not mistaken, he didn’t even finish high school. He did, however, start running drugs across state lines. That was more than a decade ago. Today, he still sits in prison.
He likely could’ve played in the NBA. He had the world at his fingertips. Coaches, scouts, fans, media, pretty much everybody saw the potential. I often wonder: Did he? But here’s the thing: this kid didn’t just throw away opportunity, he threw away discipline. And here, in some ways, is the hardest part to swallow of all that: he totally didn’t lose because of a lack of talent; nah, he lost because of his bad habits.
I saw a fellow comedian, Dobie Maxwell, post an image recently that, because of it’s grainy/low-quality, I decided to remix and put a little of my own spin on. The image, as you see above, is of a water spigot pouring into a bucket (see above). The water represents talent. The bucket, of course, has holes in it. The holes are representative of bad habits, things like “poor work ethic,” “pride,” “envy,” “impulsiveness,” “excuses,” “inconsistency,” etc. And of course, the water, the talent, just runs out of the bucket through those holes. The point is: you can be the most naturally gifted or talented person in the world, but if your life has too many leaks, your talent never builds toward anything.
This is true in life pretty much all areas of life. It’s painfully true in comedy. I can have all the joke-writing talent in the world, but if I’m a pain to work with, I won’t get stage time. I can kill on stage every night, but if I never record a set, edit clips, or try to grow online, I’m invisible. I can have the best instincts in a writers’ room, but if I always have to be the smartest guy in the room, nobody wants to collaborate. I can be a great comic, but if I ghost bookers, flake on shows, get drunk before sets, or roast the crowd without reading the room, I’ve got holes in the bucket.
I can have perfect timing, clever premises, and a face made for stand-up, but if I never learn to tag, punch, trim fat, and structure a bit, it doesn’t matter. I can be gifted with charisma, but if I let bitterness grow, if I compete with everyone instead of cheering for them, if I demand attention instead of building trust, then no one’s going to want to help me win. I can be funny, but if I’m lazy, if I skip writing, if I don’t watch tapes, if I don’t study the greats, if I don’t keep track of my sets or rework material that bombs, then I’m not really growing. I’m just wasting laughs.
Yes, talent can get you noticed. But it’s habits that keep you going and make you succeed. The truth is, funny people in comedy aren’t rare. There are thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Millions maybe. But the funny and consistent people? The funny and humble people? The funny and collaborative people? The funny and self-aware people? Now those people are rare.
Some many of us just waste our talent. And so many of us desperately need to plug the holes. It’s consistency + charisma. It’s discipline + dreams. That’s how you last. You protect your talent by building the kind of life it can live in, a structure it can grow in, a bucket that can hold it. At the end of the day, you’ve gotta treat your talent like it matters. Don’t waste it! I can tell you one thing: I sure wish my student wouldn’t have!
By the way, if you have any interest at all in learning to write some jokes or doing stand-up comedy, check out my online joke writing course, “The Joke Writer’s Lab,” HERE.