The really interesting thing to me is how much work it took him to earn his success. In his book "Born Standing Up" he goes more into his adolescence, where he learned stagecraft, acting, and improvisation. Then as a comedian, years of refining his odd formula until he became great at it.
The key element people keep pointing out in founders - persistence - is the same even if it's a single-founder comedy startup. Martin worked for over a decade before his big success, then branched out with the same determination into acting and writing. I know it seems strange to admire a banjo player with an arrow on his head, but I really admire the guy.
The consistent work enhanced my act. I learned a lesson: it was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the circumstances.
Is this not another example of the "10,000 hours to be good" meme that's been floating about for a while? Desire gets you going, and of course it's good to have talent, but then practice and luck... Doesn't work with everything (no way I was ever going to play roundball well, but I could nicely handle soccer), but it's always amazing to see it when it works.
This should be read by everybody thinking an overnight sensation merely took one night.
Steve is a master at making his shows odd yet familiar. His mastery of the awkward sparks curiosity, which leads to attraction/engagement from the audience.
This was succinctly outlined in Scott Adams blog post:
I actually have had this steve-martin-ism floating around in my head for more than a couple of years now.. that is truly inspiring (not sure if he ripped it off from another). It's related to show-biz, but I apply it to my classical music ambitions and now my entrepreneurial projects, too: "Be so good, that they _can't_ ignore you." It's quite a zen thing, actually, and it dissolves perhaps some of the complexity of breaking through to the other side with one thing to keep in mind.
