MBA908 Must-Read: Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

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Yes, this is not a typical business book, but I learned so much from this book and has helped me in my business that I want to share it with you. I'm going to share with you how Steve persevered through a very very difficult first 10 years of his career, how he made major strides with zero contacts and what he calls zero talent. I'm going to share with you also his techniques with dealing with tough times in his career or business because yes, he's in show business, but also how to protect yourself when you are successful. There's so much I want to share with you when it comes to this book, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Born Standing up is Steve Martin's autobiography. Now, it's not his whole life. He just focuses on his years as a stand up comedian, or I should say as a comedian in general, because towards the end of the book he talks about how he got into movies and things like that. But he covers a span of 30 years in his career. Now, even though he covers a lot in this book, it's amazing that the book is not that long. I was actually quite surprised. It's also a great book to listen to as an audiobook because he narrates the book and in fact, a little bit later I'll share with you how you can get this book for free. But he starts off the book with his early childhood, his upbringing with his parents, and really how he came from nothing to become a comedian. He started his career out actually as a magician and he just really enjoyed entertainment and he liked to get a reaction out of the crowd. Now, throughout this book, Steve actually proclaims that he doesn't think he's that talented. Now, that's kind of hard to believe because he's had an incredible successful career, not only in comedy but in films. And he actually moved on to music. He plays in a bluegrass band and won Grammys for his music. But he firmly believes the reason why he's successful is because he's hard working and that he persevered, that he actually just waited it out. And one of my favorite lines in the book is the opening line where he talks about the first 10 years of your career in anything. And as soon as I came across this line in the book, I immediately thought about entrepreneurship because it's so true. And he talks about your first 10 years is really a struggle and you're just figuring things out. You're trying to figure out what's going on, what kind of entrepreneur you're going to be, what kind of business are you going to run? You're still learning the ropes. And the same thing with comedy, you're still trying to figure out how to be funny. And how you're going to be uniquely funny as a comedian is his journey. You know, he's trying to figure out how he can kind of carve out his own niche. And the same thing goes with business. You got to figure out how you're going to differentiate yourself and how you're going to be unique as an entrepreneur. What kind of unique value are you offering the marketplace? Then he talks about the next 10 years. You start getting some ground, you start getting some traction, you start realizing, okay, wow, okay, I can do this thing. And then the last 10 years is just wild success for him. So basically, if you can hold off for 20 years, it's going to be fantastic. No, I'm joking. But seriously, that's a huge takeaway. To have the patience, to have that long term view, to understand that, hey, if you want greatness, if you want to be the best at what you do, or one of the best, it's gonna take some time, it's gonna take some effort, it's gonna take some reps, you're gonna have to actually put in the work. So for that insight alone, I would definitely recommend reading this book. And he goes throughout the book and reiterates this, how difficult it was in those first 10 years for him to even get a gig. Sometimes he would spend more money getting to the gig and doing his standup than actually what he earned. He often performed in front of crowds that didn't understand a word he said because they're maybe foreigners on a tour group. But here is some of the advice he gave that I want to share with you to survive through that rough patch. At the start, I don't want to sound like this is all doom and gloom. You could definitely make a living and do your thing. And he made a living, but he wasn't wildly successful. He didn't get on Saturday Night live those first 10 years, but he eventually did. And he believes if you can just hang on and keep working at it, you'll start to get some progress. But the key is to hang on. So how do you hang on? So first he talks about his finances. He stayed incredibly lean. Now what comes across in this book is that Steve is very humble. Actually. He doesn't actually believe that, you know, he's that special. And therefore he thinks that if he works hard enough and he does become successful, he doesn't want to lose that success. So he built these habits at the start of being actually quite thrifty and frugal with his spending. He didn't spend much on himself. And really all the enjoyment he got out of life was, was being a standup comedian and doing the work. And yes, he didn't go on fancy vacations or go to fancy restaurants or any of that kind of stuff. So those habits actually stuck with him when he became successful and started to have some money, which meant he kept the money he was earning instead of blowing it off like a lot of his colleagues or friends in the industry. So one survival technique is really be careful with your money when you're Struggling, be as economical as possible, or like Mark Cuban says, live like a student. Well, maybe not to that extreme, but maybe as close as possible. You can live it up later. Now, of course, live it up as relative. We talked about here another recommendation that Steve had. When you're in those first 10 years of struggle, of trying to understand who you are as an entrepreneur, as a career person, as somebody who is a comedian, whatever you're doing, he really believes that journaling helps. He used to journal a lot and write down his thoughts, write down his ideas, even on the margins. He would come up with jokes and ideas for a set when just journaling about how he's feeling about the day. And journaling is one of the best ways to actually get your thoughts out of your head. And when your thoughts are out of your head and on paper or on the computer screen, they really have a chance to live and breathe and become a reality. Now, if you're not into journaling, if you have a hard time, just like writing a diary or journal, that's something that you have a hard time with. And I have, to be honest, I have a hard time with that. I. I've always had a hard time with that. But what I found is a great replacement for that is blogging. It's a lot easier for me to write down my thoughts when I'm writing it for other people and I'm not just talking to myself. I don't know why, but for me, that was difficult. And blogging solved that by writing blog posts, by writing articles and just conveying the ideas I have in my head and just getting used to communicating those ideas. It really helped me get those ideas out there. And often those ideas, you know, weren't the best ideas, but a lot of them were, and they became the future of a lot of my businesses. So definitely take on that advice. Now. On a personal note, one of the best takeaways I got from this book is you learn early on that he didn't have a great relationship with his father. Actually, it was a horrible relationship. And in a lot of ways, you get the sense that his father resented him because maybe his father wanted to be an entertainer and gave up on that dream early on to have a family. And no matter how much success Steve would get, whether it's joining Saturday Night Live, which is a huge show, his father would just never think it was good enough or really give him any praise, sometimes even the opposite. But Steve had the patience and the compassion to understand where his father's coming from, even though he's being mean to him really is really being cruel. He still maintained a relationship with him. He still tried to be close to his father. You might ask yourself, like, why? Why would somebody do that? Just forget it. But I think Steve has a huge amount of empathy and kind of just sees him as an individual rather than just his dad and understands that, hey, maybe he's having a hard time computing what's happening to his son. And eventually, because Steve stuck it out before, before his father passed, that relationship was mended. And I know this is not really related to business, but, hey, it's important. Family is important, and it does affect who you are as a person. It does affect your thoughts, and it will affect your business, because it's affecting you. So it reminded me, if I have any severed ties with any of my family members, I should really think about trying to mend those and just try to see that perspective of, hey, they're acting this way because of their own reality and not through my own filter. Now, another huge takeaway I want to share with you is how much work he put in to become a professional comedian. The amount of preparation that he had before he went on stage was incredible. He used to prepare all day. Can't wait for that night to fall so he can get on stage. And years and years and years of practice and going through his whole set, refining his set, recording himself, and then, hey, listening back to that recording and seeing where are the laughs dropping, where they're not. He also noticed when the waitresses at the club would laugh at the jokes, and he thought that was a good sign because they're there every night. So if they're still laughing at those jokes, those are solid jokes he should keep in the set. But it made me think, as an entrepreneur, how am I reviewing my progress? How am I reviewing my work? How am I improving and auditing myself? Whether it's I'm on stage, speaking at a conference, how am I improving? Am I actually looking back at my recording and saying, hey, am I actually conveying the right message? Am I delivering my message properly? Whether it's evaluating how I'm working with my team or treating my team, or just straight up, how satisfied are my customers with my product? You really need to put your feet to the fire and grill yourself, really, you know, metaphorically, to find out if you're doing a good job, to evaluate if you're doing a good job so you can improve, so you can keep on improving. One of the things I always say is, there's no Stacy's in business, there's no staying the same. You're either getting better or you're getting worse. So you might as well try to work on getting better, because if you're not making that effort, you're going to get worse. So I love that takeaway from the.

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To wrap up today's must read episode, I gotta be honest with you. Before I read this book, before I actually got into it, I wasn't a huge fan of Steve Martin. In fact, I didn't really find him that funny. But I knew he was successful. And actually when I listened to his book, I really discovered the humor in his comedy because his whole comedy was have no punchline where like no punchline is the punchline where people are just kind of guessing hey, what just happened there? And that was kind of his own brand, his own niche of comedy. I share that with you because just because you don't agree with somebody or don't like something they do or not a huge fan of somebody, doesn't mean you can't learn a ton from them. Especially if they've had some sort of success in life. You can find out what they did, you can find out what they went through, how they actually got through those hurdles and do the same. Not only is it incredibly practical, but it's actually motivational too. And after reading Born Standing Up, I really had a greater appreciation for who he is as a professional and a person. The other thing I want to share with you that even though he's a comedian, I'm an Entrepreneur. You're starting a business, you're building a business, you're in business. There's a ton you can learn from in different disciplines. At the end of the day, he's a performer and you're a performer. You're trying to perform your best for your customers, for your employees, for your business. You gotta show up and rock that stage, your stage in life. And there's a lot of things you can learn from somebody who performs every night or who performed for 30 years every night. So don't just discount the fact that, oh, this guy's a comedian. What can I learn from him? You can learn a ton. And I just scratched the surface in today's must read. But I really recommend that you read this book because you're going to learn so much about what it takes to be successful. Especially if you're the kind of person like Steve who says, maybe I'm not super talented, but I still want to be successful. How do I do it? And he shows you how he did it. And I'll save you all the interesting stories that, you know, he went through his experiences, he didn't get any handouts. So he definitely persevered and made it happen. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. It's always great to pick up a book and get a fresh perspective on certain things in life and in business. Alright, guys, before I go, I want to leave you with this. You might have noticed that I said we're daily in the top of the episode. Yes, we're back to daily. The $100 NBA show was daily from August 2014 until the end of 2016. This past year, 2017, we went weekly, but now we're back to daily. And you might be wondering why. Well, this past year I was working on an intensive, intensive project. Our software business, Webinar Ninja. We're releasing our latest update, which is webinar ninja 5.0. I needed the time to work with my team. And now that I have hired the right players in place in that team, and even though I'm very much involved, I have more time now to record the show daily and provide you this content that I hope is useful. And the reason why I share this with you is because sometimes you got to know what to work on, what's the right thing to work on. I'll be sharing why I made these decisions and how you can know what to work on next and what to focus on in tomorrow's episode. So tune in, hit subscribe so you can get that episode automatically. All right, I'LL check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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