Do You Feel Like You Are “Killing It” In the Abyss And No One Seems To Care?

Aaaaarrgghhh!!!
Do you just feel like you’re yelling and no one is listening?

A Conversation Between Two Standup Comics

I recently heard an interview with Andrew Santini and the story he shared was really poignant.

He had received some advice from Bill Burr and at the time, Andrew was an up-and-coming comic.

Bill Burr told him, “I bet you are just killing it in the abyss, right?”

And Andrew didn’t know what he was talking about.

And Bill said, “Yeah, I bet you’re going into these small clubs, and there are 5 or 10 people in the audience, you go out there and they’re laughing. They’re having an awesome time. And at the end, the audience members are saying ‘Hey, you’re amazing. I can’t believe more people don’t know who you are.’

Sound familiar to you as a business owner?

You’re just doing this over and over and over again. You feel like maybe your skill is to a good level, but that there’s not really a very large amount of reception out there for you yet?

Bill Burr advised Andrew to keep doing it. Eventually, it will break loose.

And that is totally been my experience in this world as well.

Why Can’t I Seem To Get To The Next Level?

So oftentimes, we put in our time building our skill, building our talent, getting good at our craft, and then we start to go out there and get some positive feedback.

Eventually, though, we hit a plateau and we don’t seem to be making it past this roadblock.

This is a natural delay that happens here. I want to prepare you for that. This delay is super normal to be stuck here for a minute. It takes TIME for things to pick up. Keep your head down, and keep doing the work!

What About A Shortcut?

If you didn’t take the time to build the skills it is possible you can take off (it’s like winning a lottery ticket is pretty rare, but it can happen.) But the instant things don’t go well, you are going to go back down to zero! That is a very low probability and a high-risk chance to take even if you did get lucky!

However, if you’ve built these foundational skills and if you have a hiccup, you’re able to regain mobility to keep things going well, because you have those foundational skills. So that is the correct way to grow.

This is because you’ve done the work and it just takes some time for the public consensus to build around that fact. “Wow, you are an expert at what you’re doing. You are doing a good job.”

Your job is just to keep your head down and keep doing a good job and checking for opportunities. Keep building your skill and your craft and it will break loose eventually.

Why is Killing It In The Abyss SOOOO Confusing?

The hesitation we feel here usually is because to build that skill we’ve listened to a lot of feedback. We’ve heard people saying “I didn’t really like that joke.” And we have reworked what we do.

That has been helpful to get us to a certain point.

But then we can look into these audiences and say “wow, there are only 15 people in this 40-person auditorium. Am I doing something wrong? Is this not picking up because it’s ME? Do I just not have what it takes?

And to recognize when the lesson is “there IS something to improve on” versus when the lesson is “no, I’m doing everything right” and to just keep doing it.

This is a super important part of skill building is recognizing
1.) Am I doing anything wrong?
2.) Or am I on the right track and I just need to keep staying consistent?

So, if you’ve hit that level where you’re killing it in the abyss. You’re doing a great job and people just aren’t quite noticing it yet.

Just keep at it. Keep your head down. Keep doing it. It will continue to pick up.

I hope that helps.

Have a great day.