9 LAWS OF COMEDY SUCCESS

By Jared Volle

CreativeStandUp.com

The Nine Laws of Comedy Success

1. Be Remarkable
2. Be Creative
3. Understand the Big Picture
4. Continually Develop Your Skills
5. Develop a Network
6. Decide!
7. Be Confident
8. Notice What’s Working and What’s Not
9. Take Action

LAW #1: Be Remarkable

“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called everybody, and they meet at the bar.”

-Drew Carey

Would you rather be a comedian that continually struggles to gain fans or a comedian that has fans seek out YOU? It’s an easy choice. But many comedians don’t realize that they’re choosing to continually struggle by attempting to rise above the crowd rather than standing apart from the crowd altogether.

And I’m not the only one that’s noticed this…

“The sense of adventure has been replaced by the programmed predictability of a General Motors assembly plant. The comics all sound pretty much alike these days, with the same patter to loosen up topics…. Just when did the fun go out of stand-up comedy” 

-Richard Zoglin (Author of “Comedy at the Edge”)

The good news is that comedians that buck this trend stick out like a sore thumb, and audiences flock to them. The easiest way to secure your success in comedy isn’t to spend 10 hours a day writing and re-writing your jokes. It’s way simpler than that. It’s all about being remarkable. In short… be worth talking about. 

Whether you’re brand new or a veteran doesn’t matter. It’s whether you’re different from all the rest. In fact, every single comedian on the all-time 100 list, without exception, got there because they were different from the rest and NOT because they wrote jokes better than everyone else.

There’s a ton of competition out there (over 100,000 and counting). But here’s the good news. You don’t have to compete with a single one of them if you choose to set yourself apart as a comedian.

Do you think a comedian like Chris Rock or Louie C.K. is worried about their competition? Not a chance. Because there’s only one of them, and audiences know it. It doesn’t matter how funny any other comedian in the world is. There’s only one Chris Rock. There’s only one Louie C.K. They don’t compete with anyone.

Now I use Rock and C.K. because they’re easy examples. But you can do this with any successful comedian working today. Successful comedians don’t worry about the competition because they’re one-of-a-kind. 

First, a comedian becomes remarkable- they become worth talking about. It’s only after they become remarkable that they gain ULTIMATE success.

Is being remarkable the same as having the best material?

Absolutely not.

Many famous comedians don’t have the most amazing material and don’t spend hours a day writing and re-writing material. However, every single one of them did become remarkable. They were so different from the competition that they’re the only comedian an audience member could remember at the end of the night. They attracted audience members TO THEM. And they still do.

Here’s the problem…

The more you systematize your writing and performing, the more like everyone else you become. Audiences won’t be able to remember who you were, even if you made them laugh harder than everyone else. This is why so many funny comedians struggle their entire careers and wind up broke, exhausted, and confused. They chose to compete with jokes rather than becoming remarkable.

Why is being remarkable required for success?

If you want to build a fan base then being remarkable will get you further than all the YouTube and Facebook marketing in the world. Remarkable comedians stand out from the crowd so much that they draw audience members to them. They are the ones that get remembered.

How can you ever create success if no one can remember who you are?

Being the funniest comedian on the night gets you practically ZERO. Being remarkable gets you everything, even if you’re not the funniest comedian on the night (and there’s a HUGE bonus if you are).

“What’s the difference between having the best jokes and being remarkable?”

People don’t tell their friends about a comedian that got 5% more laughs than the other comedians on the night. However, they will tell their friends about the comedian they saw that was like nothing they’ve ever seen. They will happily tell their friends about a comedian that’s different, especially if that comedian appeals to their unique sense of humor.  

If you have the best jokes on the night but you aren’t memorable then you haven’t done yourself any favors that will lead to long-term success. In comedy, your ability to bring audience members to your show is directly related to your ultimate success. You’ll make more money and get far more opportunities by being memorable. This should be your focus, not just laughs.

There are two ways of becoming remarkable. The first is by being completely different then every other comedian out there, which is fairly difficult. The second is by appealing to a certain niche rather than building mainstream material. Every comedian has the ability to do this.

“I can’t do niche humor. I want to go mainstream!”

Almost every single comedian that’s attempting to go mainstream is going about marketing themselves in the complete wrong way.

Most comedians develop funny material that doesn’t stand out and then try to collect fans one-by-one. They collect emails after a show, invite people to subscribe on YouTube, befriend people on Facebook, ask people to follow their twitter.

The shame is it’s almost all wasted effort.

Why?

These comedians are spending all their effort trying to market their comedy as being different (“I’m worth watching”) when it should be used developing a performance that’s worth remembering and talking about in the first place.

In fact, every mainstream comedian started off by differentiating themselves, not by blending in. Different is fun. Different is interesting. Different is worth talking about. Being slightly funnier than all the other comedians is nice, but it doesn’t build a fan-base.

Take a comedian like Steve Martin, one of the greatest comedians of all time. He didn’t have the funniest material in the beginning of his career. But he was always worth talking about. It was only a matter of time before his uniqueness merged with his ability to get laughs that fame was inevitable.

Here’s him saying it in his own words…

“I was seeking comedic originality,

and fame fell on me as a by-product” 

– Steve Martin

LAW #2: Be Creative

The Second Law of Comedy Success will allow you to break away from your competition…

Creativity is the life-blood of a comedian. Every comedian in the world will tell you that they’re creative. But creativity is deeper than simply writing new material.

This is a type of creativity most comedians completely forget about. They’re so busy creating material that they haven’t taken the time to realize that they’re blending into the crowd.

Creativity is the only way to break away from other comedians and become remarkable . But not all creativity is created equal.

There are two main types of creativity, what creativity researchers have called “small-c” and “big-C” creativity. 

SMALL-C CREATIVITY

Small c-creativity is about being creative on a small scale. Every single comedian has this type of creativity. These comedians work tirelessly on developing the funniest material. They’ll throw out as many new jokes as possible to see what works. But as long as their competing on punch lines then they’ll never break away from the competition.

What’s worse, this is what every conventional teacher out there has been telling their students to do. Put your head down and start writing. But the best comedians have all taken a different path…

BIG-C CREATIVITY

Very few are Big-C creative. To be Big-C Creative, you must be willing to break away from the pack and be unapologetically different.

These are the comedians that get all the success, make the most money, and develop the largest fan base. Name any famous comedian and they’ve used this type of creativity. When you use your creativity you no longer compete with your fellow comedians.

Originality has no competition.

Think about it this way: you can’t out Chris Rock a Chris Rock. It doesn’t matter HOW FUNNY YOU ARE you’ll never be a better Chris Rock than Chris Rock. He’s not competing with you. In fact, he isn’t competing with ANYONE! That’s the beauty of being creative. 

In fact, this is why he got his big break. It wasn’t that he wrote better jokes than every other comedian out there. There’s only one reason, he was different. He stuck out of the crowd and he was noticed because he was remarkable.

Competition is all about playing THEIR game. It’s time to create your own. 

Don’t settle for low creativity in your career. If you want to set yourself apart from your competition and be remarkable then creativity isn’t just a great option… it’s NECESSARY . 

Law 3: Understand the Big Picture

If you don’t understand the “big picture” you’re playing a very dangerous game . You’re scrambling around writing jokes and hoping that those jokes will lead to a successful career. 

There are two problems with this…

First, comedy hasn’t been about simply telling jokes since the days of Lenny Bruce in the 1950’s.

You’re competing on only one factor. The audience doesn’t have a laugh-o-meter. They don’t go home and tally your laughter to see if they’ll become your fan. In fact, the best you can hope for is an audience member repeating your joke to their friends followed by “I don’t remember who said it.” If you’re not different, you’re forgotten.

Period. 

Second, if you’re always focused on the short-term (writing jokes) you’ll constantly be shooting yourself in the foot.

You simply can’t develop a unique style of comedy by acting the same way as other comedians. 

What will understanding the big picture do for you? …

Understanding the big picture gives you focus.

David Letterman understood this. He had one goal, become a late-night host. He got so good at this skill that he HAD to be given his own show. He became so good that he was chosen over Jay Leno to replace Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. He was the best choice out there. He got there because he understood the big picture, used it to create laser focus, and developed the skills that made him the easy choice for a multi-million dollar career. That same focus is available to you right now.

Understanding the big picture shows you what’s important.

When you don’t understand the big picture everything seems equally important. That’s why so many comedians are obsessed with writing jokes. They haven’t taken a step back and realized that joke-writing is only a fraction of what audience members are looking for. And it’s not even the biggest chunk of it!

Think about it: would you bet on a comedian that’s scrambling to put together jokes or a comedian that has one single-minded focus?

Would you bet YOUR career on it?

LAW 4: CONTINUALLY DEVELOP YOUR SKILLS

You’re never done developing your skills as a comedian. The greatest comedians of all time have been the ones that have continually pushed their abilities further and further. That’s one of the reasons their so remarkable.

If you want massive success in comedy, it’s simply not good enough to work as hard as everyone else. Great comedians continually develop their skills to give them a competitive edge.

This also means you have to continually try new things. New ideas are far more interesting and worth talking about then the tried-and-true ideas. Audiences love the new and the interesting, and the way comedians give it to them is by continually testing their abilities, learning new skills, and trying new things. A remarkable career is NEVER an accident. It’s always the result of a comedian continually pushing themselves forward by trying out new ideas, writing new material, and testing different styles of delivering their material. 

Once we’re stagnant as a comedian, we’re no longer able to push the envelope.

This is more difficult than it sounds. George Carlin was a top touring comedian for 4 decades, a feat that is unrivaled. And yet, he still managed to stay on the cutting edge. He didn’t do it by staying in his comfort zone. In fact, just the opposite.

He did it by embracing uncertainty and giving new ideas a shot. He continually developed his skills even though he was already one of the best comedians of all time. The minute he stopped pushing himself, the audience would have caught up to him. He’d have no longer been interesting or worth seeing.

So how do we develop new skills?

We go through 4 stages of developing any skill:

UNCONSCIOUS INCOMPENTENCE

The first stage is unconscious incompetence. It is “unconscious” because the comedian doesn’t know that they lack important skills. They are also “incompetent” because they’re skills are not at a satisfactory level.

This is where comedians don’t even realize that there is a problem. It might be surprising, but an alarming number of open-mic comedians are stuck at this level. Simply put, they don’t know how much they don’t know.

They repeat the same mistakes over and over again, rarely learning anything performance-to-performance and week-to-week. Several months later, they’re left confused, wondering why they haven’t made much progress.

Thankfully, this stage is rediculously easy to escape from.

To break away from stage one, a comedian simply has to realize that there might be a better way. Simply getting curious about what tools and strategies are out there that can benefit your career is enough.

This, at it’s core, is about learning from the past. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel. You must realize that the comedians that have succeeded in the past have succeeded because they did “something” different.

When you believe this, you’ll escape unconscious incompetence. You’ll no longer be betting your career on the false-hope that your natural sense of humor is the only thing you need to succeed. As you progress, you’ll be able to gather new tools and strategies and combine it with your humor for exponential results on stage.

CONSCIOUS INCOMPETENCE

The second stage is conscious incompetence. Like stage one, the comedian is still “incompetent.” They don’t yet have a satisfactory grasp on one or more comedy-skills. However, unlike stage one, they are now “conscious” of the problem. 

This stage is infinitely better than stage one, because now you understand that there’s more to the industry than previously imagined. Unlike stage one, this stage actually shows you that there’s room to improve.

In stage one, you realized that there can be a better way of developing your comedy skills. In stage two, you search for ways to develop your skills.

Here’s how you get to stage three:

You must identify the skills that you need to develop. These are specific skills, such as building audience rapport, developing a better opener/closer, etc.

General goals like “get funnier” don’t help because they’re not actionable. It’d be like having the goal “I’m going to be a better person.” It’s a worthy goal… but it doesn’t provide you with anything you can act on. To be actionable, you must be specific.

Once you have actionable and specific goals, you move to stage three.

CONSCIOUS COMPETENCE

The third stage is conscious competence. At this level, you’re consciously applying a new skill. Because it’s a new skill, it won’t be easy at first. Thus, it requires “consciously” working on it. There’s a lag-time between gaining a new skill and reaching compentence in it.

This stage is different from stage 2 because your working on consciously developing competence in the new skill.

At this point, you have clarity of purpose… you want to get proficient at a comedy-skill. From here, you simply bounce between learning and applying. You begin by learning everything you can about the skill, then you apply the skill on stage. Afterwards, you use the feedback from the stage to learn new lessons. Each cycle hones the skill further and further until you’re truly “competent” in the skill.

UNCONSCIOUS COMPETENCE

The last stage is unconscious competence. At this stage, you’ve cycled through learning and applying the new skill enough times to hone your new skill. As you apply the skill more and more, it becomes less necessary to “think about” what you’re doing on stage to get positive results. Applying the skill becomes second-nature.

This stage is inspiring for two reasons.

First, it means that you’ve successfully identified a needed skill, took action, and gained competence in the skill. You now have a brand-new tool in your comedy toolbox. Congratulations.

Second, reaching stage 4 means that you no longer need to “think about” using your new skill. It’s become second-nature. Since the skill no longer needs your conscious effort, you can now identify another comedy-skill that will take you to even higher levels. There’s also a “compounding effect” here. The first skill will help you build and maintain momentum on stage, allowing you to keep audiences loving you even while working on new skills. Skills don’t simply “add up,” they multiply your ability to get laughs.

In summary, to become a great comedian, you must continually push yourself to stage four in as many areas of your career as possible. We do this through continually being on the lookout for tools and strategies that we could use to enhance our career.

How do you do this? …

Start by continually opening yourself up to new possibilities.

Don’t take anything as a fact. Once you test your assumptions, you’ll find that almost all of them are false. 

This is what happened when Louie C.K. famously snubbed ticketmaster. Comedians had long believed that Ticketmaster was the only way to book a concert. However, C.K. tested out a new idea. He sold tickets directly from his own website, something that’d never been tried before by a top touring comedian. The end result is that he sold out his entire tour within a few short days… and didn’t split a dime with Ticketmaster. 

… and just like that, what everyone thought was “a given” was put in question.

Don’t take anything as a given. There’s always a new opportunity to grow.

LAW 5: DEVELOP A NETWORK

In the last Law of Comedy Success we discussed how great comedians have continually developed their skills. But we need to do more than have funny material to have a successful, highly profitable career .

Great comedians have developed huge networks filled with other comedians bookers, talent agent, managers, and other industry professionals that allow them more opportunities than other comedians.

Every job you get in stand-up comedy is going to be as a direct or indirect result of who you know. 

“It’s not WHAT you know, it’s WHO you know.”

Comedians are constantly setting their friends up with bookers and giving each other opportunities. But before that happens, you have to be trusted in the comedy community. This means applying the previous Laws of Comedy Success to develop your performance ability. Comedians that trust you are going to get you in the door to the biggest shows in town (and on the road). 

Similarly, networking with bookers is equally important. Bookers are responsible for deciding who gets booked on their show and who doesn’t. Many times, these bookers talk to one another. Word gets around about a new comedian that’s destroying on stage. But the opposite is also true. A low quality comedian gets known for developing low quality material and bookers no longer want to book them on their shows. 

You can also expand your network beyond the comedy industry to such places as film and television. Again, you’re going to get new opportunities to show off your skills because you happen to know the right person or be perfect for a certain role. The way these producers and casting directors hear about you is through using their own network. If you’re not a part of that network it won’t matter how perfect you’d be for what they have to offer, they’ll never get the opportunity to see you in action. 

So how to you develop a strong network?

The first thing you need to do is be out there performing with your peers. The more they see you consistently having great performances the more you’ll build trust with them. A comedian won’t stick their neck out for another comedian that hasn’t built up a solid level of trust yet. Their network is valuable to them. If they refer a low quality comedian to a producer they’ll end up looking bad and possibly burning one of their bridges. So developing trust begins with consistently performing around other comedians.

Aside from performing with other comedians, you’ll also want to ACTIVELY expand your network . This means taking initiative and introducing yourself to all the comedians around you. Put yourself in a position to expand your network… don’t wait for a network to come to you. 

Lastly, look at different ways to expand the “breadth” of your network. Don’t just simply meet other comedians. Meet talent agents, casting producers… ANYBODY. Ideally, you want to develop a relationship with your network so that you’re the first person that gets a call when a job opportunity comes up.

LAW 6: DECIDE!

Nothing gets done until we make a decision. We can stay on the fence for forever and never make real progress in our careers. Focus requires that you make a decision about what exactly it is that you want, what you’re willing to do to get it, and how you’re going to go about reaching your goals. 

The greatest comedians of all time made a decision to not settle for anything but the best. That decision created an extreme amount of focus. When “regular” comedians wrote 5 minutes of material, they’d write 20. When regular comedians performed 3 times a week, they’d perform 15 or 20.

All of our actions stem from decisions. In order to take action, you first have to start with a decision. We do this by asking ourselves “What is my outcome?” If your outcome is to develop a fan base that’s 10,000 or 50,000 strong, you’re going to want to take different actions than you would if your outcome is to book a role in a movie.

This outcome provides FOCUS in your career. If you want to be “the absolute best option” for a movie role, you want to focus on all the various factors that would lead you to that conclusion and disregard the factors that don’t. 

Once we get clear on a outcome we need to develop focus . What is going to bring me closer to that outcome? What obstacles are in the way of achieving that outcome? This step is really about cutting off all other possibilities.

We judge everything against our end outcome. If it doesn’t bring us closer to our goals, we find something that will. We then integrate that goal into our everyday lives. We build a system that works for us that will consistently help us achieve the actions we need to take to reach our goals. 

In Law #5, we mentioned unconscious competence, the ability to get so good at an activity that we no longer need to think about the activity in order to perform it. This is what happens when we integrate our goals and actions into our everyday lives. We no longer need to think about the goals. We naturally go through the same process that we did yesterday. Eventually, the process gets so conditioned that we no longer even need to think about the activity.

What’s a decision that you need to make that will further your comedy career? Do you need to…

• Set very specific outcomes?

• Decide what’s important in your career?

• Decide what you’re no longer willing to accept in your career?

• Decide what actions you need to take in the immediate future?

Make a decision for your comedy career right now that you’ve been putting off. Ask yourself the questions above. Once you do, you’ll feel less stressed and you’ll become more productive.

LAW 7: BE CONFIDENT

It takes a certain amount of confidence to get on stage and tell jokes to strangers. But it takes a whole new level of confidence to be highly original as a comedian.

The Golden Age of Comedy is an era where creativity in comedy skyrocketed. In order to be highly creative, we must also be confident. Creativity itself implies that you’re doing something that’s never been done before.

Confidence is what allows comedians to try new ideas.

Confidence allows you to go out on a limb and try ideas that seem far out there. Confidence is what allowed Steve Martin to develop his idea of “anti-comedy,” which eventually made him one of greatest comedians of all time. Anti-comedy had been tried before Steve Martin, but nobody was willing to take the chance of making it the focal-point of their career.

It was only until Steve Martin combined the idea of anti-comedy with a extreme level of confidence that he truly differentiated himself from ever comedian in the industry… eventually becoming the “king of anti-comedy.”

Confidence means that you don’t require the audience’s approval. Once you absolutely HAVE to have the audience’s approval, you’re no longer able to be highly creative. You’ll choose the ideas that the audience already approves of. In short, you’re watering down your material so that it has a higher chance of being accepted.

Unfortunately, this has the exact OPPOSITE effect most comedians thinks that it will have. Instead of audience members being wowed by a comedian that’s doing things differently, they’ll reject the comedy as “old hat.” 

Confidence also allows us to stick to our decision once we’ve made it. Most people are scared to make a decision because they’re not sure if it’s right or not. Confident comedians overcome this. They understand that their number one goal is in developing and performing material that sets them apart from all the other comedians working today. 

In fact, to them, NOT making a decision is much worse than being wrong. Because making the decision teaches them more about comedy then they would have otherwise learned without making it.

Lastly, developing confidence also makes you fearless as a comedian. Look at your favorite comedians of all time and you’ll notice that they’re doing something different. You’ll also notice that that their uniqueness is a direct result of them have high levels of confidence in themselves.

LAW 8: NOTICE WHAT’S WORKING AND WHAT’S NOT

Just because we’ve made a decision and we’re confident in it doesn’t mean that our discision is set in stone.

Great comedians are able to notice what’s working and what’s not working. This allows them to change course as new information and strategies become available.

Both George Carlin and Richard Pryor went through this exact process . Both comedians famously reinvented themselves mid-way through their career. It was only after they reinvented themselves that they became top touring comedians. But it came as a result of noticing what was working and what wasn’t. They weren’t willing to stay at a level of unconscious incompetence. They realized the big picture. They realized that there’s more to comedy than simply writing setups and punch lines.

Richard Pryor famously walked off stage during a sold out show in Las Vegas. He realized that what he was doing simply wasn’t what he needed to be doing. He disappeared from the comedy industry for a full year before reimerging as the Richard Pryor that we all now know today, the Richard Pryor that’s ranked #1 on the Greatest Comedians of All-Time List by Comedy Central.

George Carlin, at one point, told his manager that he needed to be doing something else with comedy. Like Carlin, he’d already had some moderate success, but it paled in comparison to the success he was about to obtain. He noticed that what he was currently doing wasn’t working. When Carlin finally reemerged back into the comedy scene he got his first ever standing ovation. Like Pryor, he understood the big picture and used his ability to sense what was working and what wasn’t to develop something new that made him truly remarkable.

You need to become acutely aware of what works and what doesn’t. Don’t just accept that you got a laugh and call it good. Dig deeper. Notice what parts of the joke are getting the laugh and which parts are dragging your material down.

Also, learn why it’s working. If you simply learn what jokes work and which don’t, it won’t help you develop material in the future. You’d simply edit out what doesn’t work and take another shot in the dark. But when you learn why material does or doesn’t work, it gives you the ability to write material in the future that’ll be sharper. You’ve essentially learned the lesson from the first attempt and are now able to apply it to every other attempt you take in the future. But this only comes from understanding the “why” behind comedy.

LAW 9: TAKE ACTION

In several of the past Laws of Comedy Success we discussed how great comedians are continually searching for the best tools out there that they can use in their comedy career. Law #9 will take everything we learned from the previous Laws of Comedy Success and put them into action.

We need to take action. It simply isn’t good enough to have hopes and dreams of achieving something. Nothing gets done unless we first take action.

Take what you’ve learned in these Laws of Comedy Success and take action on them IMMEDIATELY. Look for ways to build your creativity. Look for ways to develop expertise in comedy. 

The actions that you take will determine where you end up in your career.

The comedians of the Golden Age of Comedy were able to consistently take action towards achieving their goals. Richard Pryor developed a very deep, personal style that was never seen before in stand-up comedy at that time. He didn’t do it by thinking it’d be great. He did it by making a decision and using that decision to take new actions that would lead him to his goal. He didn’t get paralyzed by wondering whether he was right or wrong to try such a new idea. He simply took the actions required to realize the goal. 

You’re going to regret the actions that you DON’T take far longer than the ones you do. In the short-term, you might regret that an action was incorrect. But over the course of your entire career, you’re going to be right much more often than you’ll be wrong. Consistently taking action allows you to build on the past successes of the last action you took and expand your abilities and skills further than people that get paralyzed by even the simplest of decisions.

Learn to enjoy the process of taking action . Don’t worry about if the action is right or wrong. Understand that taking an action and being wrong is better than not taking an action at all. When you learn to consistently take action you build momentum. Eventually, taking action becomes the norm. You do it naturally. But you can’t build momentum from questioning yourself constantly. The only thing that will ever do is paralyze you.

It’s probably a safe bet to say you got into comedy to have fun (among other things). So allow yourself to have fun while consistently taking action on your goals. Don’t over-analyze them. If you’re over-analyzing a decision the only reason is because you’re unclear on what’s most important to you. Once you do decide what’s important to you, you’ll find that taking action is a fun, easy, and rewarding natural step. 

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