In Part 3, I showed you a multitude of ways to write SMART goals for your comedy career. I asked you not to do anything until you chose a method, or methods, and wrote down at least five goals. If you haven't done so, please stop reading and go do that exercise.
Obviously, I can't stop you from reading on; and no one, except you, will ever know if you read this post first before writing your goals. But you need to realize that doing things your way has gotten you to this point; and if you're frustrated then you might do well to take some outside advice, shouldn't you?
Furthermore, so few people actually write their goals that if you've already decided to "postpone" the goal writing, and you're reading this post, you're likely not going to write your goals anyway. Ironically, that means you've defeated the purpose of this post.
Just write your darn goals, okay?? Jeez.
Okay, now that you have your goals written (ahem), what do you do with them?
The most basic answer is to get into action. Actually, get into MASSIVE action. Instead of ready, aim fire, you need to adopt a FIRE FIRST approach. Too many people get stuck in "ready" and "aim" and fail to take action. They get stuck in analysis paralysis; over thinking and over planning, making sure things are perfect before doing anything.
The problem is nothing will ever be perfect, so you basically trick yourself into being stagnant.
So, let's assume you're in action. For a comic, that can look like consistent writing, going to more open mics, hanging at clubs and networking to get seen, contacting bookers, submitting your media package to a management company, soliciting agents, submitting for a festival, or even producing your own shows (caution, that's a dangerous trap for a new comic...something I'll discuss in a future post).
Now you need a plan; the "aim" portion of the equation.
PLAN OF ACTION - with each goal, you need to come up with at least the basics of a plan of action. You may not know how to get to the goal, but you may know how to start on the path. Also, part of your plan could be to align with, or hire, someone who does know how to achieve the goal.
If you have a goal to be a headliner, but you're an open mic comic, then you might not currently know how to become a headliner. You do know how to write material, you do know how to get on stage, you already know where the open mics are, and you do know that a headliner needs at least forty-five minutes of A material.
Your plan might look something like this:
A. Write for 15 minutes a day at least four days a week and go to a minimum of three open mics a week, or at least ten a month
B. Develop a no-questions-asked killer 5 minute set (then 10, 15, 20, 30 and 45)
C. Network with other comics at every show
D. Find a comedy mentor
E. Become MC at multiple clubs
F. Work up to feature
G. Work up to headliner
Again, it won't be as simple as that list says, and there will be lots of time between developing a killer 5 minute set and becoming a headliner. You need to plan for that. In fact, as this example is from the "Think BIG" goal method I mentioned in Part 3, each step in your plan is a little mini-goal, or milestone. So, you need to put a time period on them. In other words, by when do you say you want to have your killer five minutes, etc.?
PUT YOUR GOALS WHERE YOU CAN SEE THEM - you need to constantly be reminded of your goals. You should be looking at them (or, in some cases, writing them) at least three times a day, every day.
Post a list on your bathroom mirror, on your computer monitor, on your dashboard. Put your goals in your wallet or purse, in your pants pocket, on your alarm clock, on your refrigerator.
The more you look at them, the more you'll subconsciously think about them. And the more you think about your goals, the more likely you are to achieve them.
ACCOUNTABILITY - the number one reason we don't achieve our goals is because we aren't accountable to ourselves (or others). We state a commitment, and we hope that it happens. Most times we don't really have a plan to make it happen and we don't have an accountability system in place to insure that it does happen.
If you want to lose weight, are you more likely to eat right, show up to the gym when you say, work out hard and keep it going for weeks or months if you try to go it alone or, if you do it with someone who has the same goals as you? To take it one step further, you're much more likely to stay the course if you hire a trainer. You can con a friend into believing an excuse for not going to the gym that morning, but you would still have to pay a trainer for the missed appointment, which makes you much more likely to show up.
Accountability is the single most important thing when it comes to achieving our goals, or letting them fall by the wayside. If you're not willing to be accountable to someone, then the goal really isn't that important to you, which means you're most likely not going to achieve it.
Think about it. If you have a job, you're accountable to your boss and the company to show up on time; you're also accountable to the paycheck you expect to receive. If you have a gig, it's the same thing (although many comics show up late, which I think is nuts).
But the minute there's an an out, most of us take it, eventually, if not right away. To paraphrase former NBA All-Star Allen Iverson, when we're talkin' 'bout practice, as opposed to a game, we don't give it the same merit.
Let's say one of your action plan items is to write three times a week. If no one's watching you, and you don't have a specific paycheck attached to it, it's incredibly easy to say to yourself that you just don't feel inspired, you did a lot already this week, you'll make it up tomorrow/next week, you deserve a night off, etc. Then, like the first time you pee during a night of drinking, you broke the seal, so to speak. It becomes easier and easier to keep bailing on your activities as time goes on. Eventually, you stop all together and then lament how you SHOULD be doing them.
So, if it's so easy to justify our excuses to ourselves, how do we then hold ourselves accountable? Since most people cannot sustain self-accountability for long periods of time, we need to bring others into the equation:
1. Tell everyone your goals - I don't mean walk up to strangers and shout that you want to play the Laugh Factory in Vegas or L.A. I mean tell the people in your life. This is so scary, yet so simple, and all but ensures you achieve your goals.
Doing this automatically gives you built in accountability. Your friends will all keep asking you about your goals. They already do, but you haven't given them any more than the fact that you're a comic. Don't people ask you how comedy is going, or if you're still doing that comedy thing? I know it pisses you off, but that's them asking you about your goals. Imagine if you told everyone you wanted to play Vegas. They'd all ask you about that. You will have just created a mechanism for keeping your goals in front of you, whether you like it or not.
What about your enemies (or those jealous friends)? They'll ask you, too. Oh, will they ask you. Yes, it will probably be to mock you, but they'll keep you on the straight and narrow.
Let's switch back to the goal of losing weight. If your friends or "enemies" see you eating donuts, both are going to say something about your goal. Friends will try to get you to make a better food choice in order to support you; enemies will mock you for having no will power. Both will be holding you accountable in their own way. It's when we don't tell people what we're up to that we usually fail.
A good indicator that you're not committed to the goal is if you won't tell people about it. If you ARE committed to it, then you won't care who asks you about it, as it will just be another reminder of going for it.
**Telling the world comes with an almost magical bonus. You never know who you're talking to, and who that person knows. Let's say you're on a show with a comic you've never met before and you both hit it off as friends. In talking to the other comic, you mention your goal of the Laugh Factory and it just so happens her roommate from college is also a comedian who lives in L.A. and knows the people at the Laugh Factory.
It doesn't necessarily happen that easily and that's no guarantee you can play there...but, it's closer than you've been yourself, and you now have a line to the venue. It's makes your goal seem that much more attainable.
I was once a facilitator in a seminar of about 250 people where one woman stated her goal was to raise $50,000 for a playground in her home town. This goal had nothing to do with her business, and the people in this room were not assembled to raise money for anything. In fact, they were there to learn how to achieve their goals and make more money. Even so, I watched at least ten people raise their hands to pledge donations because they had ties to the woman's town. Very quickly, she had about $48,000 pledged to her cause. The woman went from having a dream that nobody knew about, to stating her goal, to seeing that goal virtually achieved inside of FIVE MINUTES because she told the world what she wanted to accomplish.
If you really want it, don't be afraid to tell everyone about it.
2. Accountability partners - you want to find one, or more, like-minded people who will support you as you support them in attaining each others' goals. You want someone who won't buy into your B. S. when you try to punk out on what you say you want to do, in the way a personal trainer isn't going to let you slide when you are too tired to work out that morning.
Be careful, you don't want your best friends or your significant other to be your partner because the dynamic of that will likely harm the relationship. They're more likely to let you slide anyway, but more importantly you'll start to resent them when they try to hold you accountable. Ever try to tell your significant other to put the ice cream down because they said they wanted to lose weight? How did that work out?
You should also look to form a mastermind group of three or more people that meets on the phone or in person every week, or month. Masterminds are very powerful. The instill immediate accountability. You can create topics, get questions answered, do goal achieving exercises, take turns leading the meeting/call, have guest speakers, etc. As with most things in life, you get out of it what you put into it. So, fully participate in your mastermind.
3. Get mentors - a mentor is defined as an experienced and trusted adviser. You can have mentors in and out of your industry.
If you're fortunate enough to have a veteran comic take you under your wing, that's great. Treasure that relationship, learn what you can and look to pay it forward when you're the veteran comic.
A mentor doesn't necessarily have to know they're your mentor. For instance, if you purchase Anthony Robbins' 30-day program Personal Power II, and complete the program, then you can count him as a mentor...even though he won't know who you are. Obviously, he's not a comedy mentor; he would be a goal mentor, someone who has gotten into massive action and achieved some serious goals.
3. Hire a coach - Let me be clear, I don't know anything about comedy coaches, if there even are such people. I know there are comedy classes, and this is entirely different. What I'm talking about is someone who can help keep you accountable and help you achieve your goals, not someone who can make you funnier or help you write material.
In my real estate days, before I became a coach myself, I paid someone an obscene amount of money to coach me. We would have a 30-minute call once a week going over his teachings, my issues/concerns and the commitments I had made. In my first year, I made five (5) times what I paid the coach. In the following years, I made 15 to 30 times what I was paying the coach. I think you'd agree that's a pretty good return on investment.
If you're serious about your career, you definitely should look into hiring a coach.
Regardless, I hope you get how important having accountability is to achieving your goals.
TRACK YOUR PROGRESS AND UPDATE OR CHANGE YOUR GOALS - you need to evaluate your progress so that you know if you're moving towards or away from your goals. Sometimes your goals take longer than you expect, sometimes you're just not that committed to specific goals anymore, and sometimes you achieve goals much quicker than you expected.
In all cases, you may need to update or change your goals.
As you get close to achieving a goal the tendency is to take your foot off the pedal, and you wind up killing your momentum. So, instead, as you get closer, you may want to move your initial date up or add another, harder to reach, goal.
Conversely, if you're getting close to your goal deadline and haven't seemed to make much progress, the tendency is to throttle down because you don't think you're going to achieve the goal anyway. Instead, evaluate if you still want to achieve the goal and then push the deadline out a little further, because there are no bad goals, just bad deadlines. But, just scribbling a new date isn't going to ensure you achieve the goal; you need to get back into massive action quickly and gain some momentum.
Finally, while you should be trying to do something to achieve your goal every day, on a daily basis it may seem like you're going nowhere fast. Just remember it's accumulative over time. An All-Star baseball slugger may hit forty home runs in a season, but that's roughly only one home run every four games. That means, on average, he will NOT hit a home run in three out of every four games he plays, but at the end of the year he'll have his forty home runs.
Success doesn't look the way we want it to, and it's never as easy as we hope.
Just remember to keep looking back to where you've been and feel good for how far you've come.
If you felt these posts helped you, consider bookmarking my blog so that you can read all four parts over and over again.
If you treat comedy like a business, I have no doubt you will be highly successful.
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