7 Lessons That Solopreneurs Can Learn From Comedians

Most stand-up comics are solopreneurs, at least in their careers’ formative years. Gil Greengross, Ph.D, writes in Psychology Today: “No other art, besides stand-up comedy, requires that the artist will both create and perform his own act.” Sound familiar?

During “Comedians In Cars,” Seinfeld and his guests typically discuss how they survived as stand-up comics. It made me ponder what lessons solopreneurs can learn from the lives of stand-up comedians. Here goes.

1. Don’t try to appeal to everyone. If you know Lisa Lampanelli*, you know it’s difficult to imagine what her act would be like if she tried to appeal to the masses. She once said: “A lot of people who feel out of place in society love my show.” Comedians develop big audiences because they don’t seek mass appeal.

2. Develop your own style. This is a corollary of “Don’t try to appeal to everyone.” Successful comics are the ones whose points of view are fresh. Think about how unique these all-time-great comics were/are: Lenny Bruce, Carol Burnett, George Carlin, Louis C.K., Rodney Dangerfield, Ellen DeGeneres, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, Sarah Silverman, Robin Williams.

3. Be super-observant of the world around you. Comedians get their material from observing everyday life and ordinary situations. As a solopreneur, you can develop new ideas for products and services by paying close attention to what people want and need.

4. Be a perfectionist. Watch Seinfeld explain how much care he puts in to writing jokes (it took him 2 years to write the Pop-Tart joke), and how precise he believes his writing needs to be. The next time you’re tempted to take a shortcut with something, remember the effort that Seinfeld put into the Pop-Tart joke.

5. Bomb. Die on stage. Lay an egg. The old saw is true: you learn more in defeat than you do in victory.

Improv comedian Kimmy Gatewood says, “Think about the first time you learned how to type, or when you rode a bicycle. As adults, we forget that failing is such an important part of the process because we do most of our learning as a kid. Failing is good.”

6. Be resilient. Every comedian has setbacks — bad crowds, bad theaters, bad reviews, not getting paid. The survivors are the ones who wake up the next morning and go back to work.

7. Don’t hope to be an overnight success. Again here’s Lampanelli, who worked 18 years to become an overnight success: “There’s no lucky break. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes, and lot of running around on the road forever that nobody knows exists, except us, the ones who are driving the 21 hours to Florida for the $125 and the experience.”

*My good friend Bob Andelman once had Lampanelli as a guest on his radio show. I was in the same room as Bob, and he was interviewing Lampanelli on the phone. I could hear Bob, but I couldn’t hear Lampanelli. That was interesting.