In order for you to properly fuel your gift, you have to embody the proper makeup, and often that requires some change on your part. When I refer to makeup, I’m not talking about the thousands of dollars you ladies spend on Revlon or MAC, or how much you men spend on Brooks Brothers; I’m talking about your getting the right caliber of traits together that will lead you to your biggest dreams. Your makeup is the driving force behind the vehicle you have attached yourself to that will lead you to success. In this chapter, we are going to explore what it takes to develop your personal makeup to the highest levels and propel you forward to reach your goals.
The first thing you need in your makeup kit is to be the kind of person who attracts rather than repels others. There are no self-made men; therefore, you have to learn the laws of attraction to draw the right people to you. You have to be easy to work with, or at least be willing to create the atmosphere that makes it easy to work with you.
Next, you have to aspire to be a visionary person with a positive outlook. Those who allow other people to expand, develop, and explore are the kinds of people you want to have around you. When you are with the right people, there are ripe opportunities for you to gain from their experiences and knowledge.
You also must recognize your shortcomings and be willing to improve on them. In recognizing your shortcomings, you may want to consider them when hiring others to be a part of your team.
Finally, you have to respect time—yours and others’—by being punctual. You have to be a person of integrity. You have to be honorable and reliable by doing what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it.
An essential part of your makeup has to be getting honest, getting real, and being willing to take on new actions.
Now is not the time to start lying to yourself. If you are tired of the way you’ve been living, it’s time to give that up. I want you to go to a mirror right now, look yourself in the eye, and be honest with where you are right now. Don’t reason it away. Don’t blame it on somebody else. What is the thing you do that keeps blocking you? Look beyond your excuses and ask yourself, Why? Your answers may be fear, failure, family circumstances, or finances. If the answers don’t immediately come to you, this may be the time to seek pastoral or professional counseling. Don’t be afraid to get the help you need in order to live the life you deserve.
This is where we get to the good part of replacing your negative actions with positive ones. Is procrastination killing you? Replace it with a strategy that will get you into action. Do you refuse to admit when you are wrong? Enlist a partner or a friend to keep you accountable for your responsibilities. Whatever the issue, make a commitment to get real and find positive and responsible replacement actions.
Here’s the problem with people who think that they have a makeup that they really don’t have. If you’re asking the question and answering it, too, you don’t have the real makeup. You can’t have the real answer. All you are doing is constantly telling yourself what you want to hear about you. You have to be willing to have a bone-chillingly honest conversation with yourself. By not being frank about the situation, the only person you are cheating is you.
Once you have become honest with yourself and you identify new actions for tackling your weaknesses, here comes the hard part—changing your habits. In his book Making Habits, Breaking Habits, psychologist Jeremy Dean challenges the myth that it takes only twenty-one days to change a habit. It might take two years to fully make a shift in some areas of your life, but that’s now two productive years for a lifetime of reward.
Don’t worry about how much time it takes to make the shift. Time is in your favor when you use it productively. Focus your energy on developing your new habits. Just take it one day at a time. And when you get done with one day, I want you to do something revolutionary—I want you to get up and do it again. And again. And again. Pretty soon, this won’t just be some new habit you’re trying to conquer—this will be your new road map for success.
Many times in my life I have had to change my makeup. I had to start becoming a more positive person with integrity to get the job done. I think the biggest shift for me was during a joke-writing period. I learned a lot from Richard Pryor. What made Richard Pryor so great was his openness. He was willing to talk about all of it—his growing up around after-hours joints, his catching on fire, the arguments in the car, and his marital issues. That’s what made him most effective.
When I began in comedy, I was so protective of who I was and where I came from. I was trying to write my jokes in the fashion that others wrote, and as a result I didn’t develop the truth of who I was as a stand-up comedian. Once I was no longer afraid to open up about me and my truth, things changed for me professionally. Talking about my truth allowed me to expand my material. I was no longer afraid to talk about my mother, who taught Sunday school; or my failed marriages; or my growing up in Cleveland. This was the first time I came face-to-face with real integrity.
As we grow our integrity, one of the first pieces to focus on is learning how to lead. We get too focused on looking to other people at times when the real answers lie inside of us. We have to take the time to recognize our own strengths and weaknesses. I think what makes me effective as a person of integrity on the radio or as a spokesperson is that people know I am going to tell them the truth no matter what that truth is. You don’t always have to agree with it, but I’m telling you my truth. I think that people have grown to respect that.
Improving your makeup also means that you have to be willing to give yourself a real self-evaluation. When I write a joke and I go out onstage, I give a joke three shots before I decide to throw it away or keep it. If I tell the joke and it always gets a big laugh, I rate that joke a 1. If I tell it and it gets a laugh only sometimes, then that joke is a 2. If I tell a joke and most of the time it doesn’t get a laugh, that’s a 3. When I first started, I needed those jokes because I needed the time. You’re paid fifteen minutes to open, thirty minutes for the middle set, and forty-five minutes to headline. I needed this time so I could become a headliner. I learned that if you are out there telling 3’s, that’s a shaky set. So every time I wrote a new joke and it was a 2, I got rid of a 3. The only way I did that was to have an honest assessment with myself. I kept writing jokes, and when I got a 1, I would get rid of a 2. After a few years, I had all 1’s. That’s when I really started developing as a stand-up: when I created that system of self-evaluation.
Your personal self-evaluation has to be one of complete and total honesty. The only one who can do the self-evaluation is you. Until you are ready to have a completely honest conversation, even a self-evaluation will do you no good.
I know that I’m not great with mundane tasks. I have to hire somebody around me who is good at the day-to-day details. I also know that I’m not good with graphs and charts. I learned that in college. You cut the lights and put a graph on the wall, then I’m going to go to sleep. So I hire people who like graphs. I don’t like having to repeat myself over and over again to get a person to understand something. I don’t have the patience for it. I also have to constantly watch myself and work on not coming up short. Real integrity is knowing where your shortcomings are.
Your core makeup also has to have the right balance. Through all of my experiences I have learned that the following order is essential for every successful person:
• God
• Family
• Education
• Business
If you prioritize your life in that order, success is yours on whatever level you want. In my life I have come to realize that God has to be first. I used to have business first, education second, family third, and God last. Until I got that order right, I couldn’t get my life together.
After putting God first, you have an obligation to take care of your family. You cannot have children and not take care of them. How do you expect the universe to take care of you if you don’t start by taking care of your child? How do you think more blessings will come to you if you won’t take care of the blessings you’ve already been given? Regardless of the relationship you have with your child’s mother or father, you are obligated to take care of that life. Same thing applies to your husband or your wife.
Once you have God and family in the right order, now you need to focus on education. When I refer to education, that doesn’t always mean going to a four-year institution. You should always be educating yourself about your gift and whatever business you are in. You may have to go back to school to get a certificate of training in your area of interest. For me, there was no school for learning how to do comedy. My education was watching the greats of comedy to see what they did to become great. I had to spend a lot of time observing what other comedians before me did.
I also had to spend a lot of time educating myself about show business. The term “show business” really needs to be recognized as two separate words. If I have a great show, it is because everybody who came to see me enjoyed themselves. But there’s no business in show business if I don’t know how to book myself and charge for my shows appropriately. It could be a great show, but without the proper steps in place, there is no business. On the flip side, I could have a good business sense and know how to get booked everywhere, but if I’m not funny, I won’t be invited back.
Another part of your makeup that is essential for your success is learning how to be open. You can’t get so stuck in how you do things that you aren’t open to seeing and doing things in a different way.
Some of you may feel like you already have your life together. Let me be the first to tell you congratulations. Now that you have it all together, let me ask you this: What’s next? Knowing what’s next is paramount to your success. The what’s next is the reason to keep waking up. The what’s next is the driving force for all successful people. There always has to be a what’s next.
You might already be a millionaire. Again, congratulations on your success. But in order to stay a millionaire you have to make more millions. You can’t sell the same book. You can’t tell the same joke. You can’t keep singing the same song. You have to write a new book, tell a new joke, sing a new song.
So, I ask you again—what’s next? There has to be a reason to get up tomorrow. There has to be a reason to go forward. Your calling has to be stronger than your current circumstances to help your dream keep moving forward.
Every person’s unique gift will dictate how he or she will operate in the world. Someone who specializes in working with children will need to be patient and caring, while stockbrokers will need to be sharp, exact, and quick on their feet. If you aren’t sure what traits you need to work on, think about the skills for which people give you the most compliments. Are you good with details, great at connecting with new people, or proficient at setting up a good meeting? Catalog your skills and put in the work to make them even better.
Next, take stock of the characteristics that people constantly tell you that you need to improve on. For example, are you prone to skipping steps, or do you become frustrated during tight deadlines? Don’t just chalk up poor characteristics to “Well, that’s just the way I am.” Remember that perfecting your character is as much a part of your development as executing your gift.
Outside of taking your own self-inventory, who are the people you admire and respect in your industry, your house of worship, or your community? Talk to them about how they learned to stay cool under pressure, or ask them about the makeup they used to become the type of leaders they are. Trust me, they didn’t get to where they are overnight, and any good leaders worth their salt will be more than willing to pour good wisdom and knowledge into your life to help you grow and succeed.
Be the kind of man or woman you want to be by taking on the right makeup, which will make room for your gift and lead you to the best opportunities for expanding it to an even wider audience and a bigger stage.