When we pursue the thing we love, hoping to ditch our soul-sucking day job and turn our passion into a full-time profession, we make one classic mistake.
There are best practices for succeeding in a creative field and in the entertainment business. I cover them in my Comedy Business School course.
One of those best practices is to fire on all cylinders. This means learning every part of our side-hustle, getting exposure every way we can, learning as much as we can, and building as much skill as we can. This way, when opportunity strikes, we’re in the best position to seize it.
Firing on all cylinders means exercising every muscle, making us a well-rounded master of the craft, well-trained for success. It means not letting any skillset atrophy.
But there’s always one particular aspect of our dream profession that we don’t like doing. Because we don’t like it, we figure it’s okay if we don’t do it.
This is the part of the job I call “the dishwashing part,” the hard and unpleasant part that we have to do, even if we don’t like it—it’s part of the job.
For those of us interested in comedy, for example, the dishwashing part is often getting on stage and doing stand-up. We prefer to write, perform sketches, or anything else. For other creative people, the dishwashing part is often writing a book. “But I don’t want to do that,” we say.
This is the classic mistake.
Do every part of the job.
Someone interested in comedy who doesn’t do stand-up is like an underwater welder who doesn’t want to get wet. A creative person without a book is like a pope without a hat.
Yes, beyond the resistance, the fear, is freedom.
I always tell people that cartooning would be great if I actually enjoyed the process of writing and drawing!