Welcome to the Action Digest, where creative ideas bounce around faster than the price of a freshly minted memecoin.

A glimpse at the action we’re bringing you this week:

• 🥁 We discover the radical decision that turned Steve Martin’s career around (after nearly destroying it).

• 🐴 The creative mind behind the hit TV show Yellowstone reveals when he refuses to negotiate with his writing team.

• 📈 Warren Buffett explains the personality trait that has contributed most to his success and how we can cultivate it for ourselves.

P.s., be sure to check out section #4 this week for a special holiday promotion—exclusive for Action Digest readers. 🎁

1. Climb onto the pedestal first, learn how to stand tall second

In 1973, Steve Martin was in trouble.

He’d recently made the risky decision to walk away from his profitable yet unfulfilling work as a TV writer to perform his own standup shows. 

But as a no-name comedian, Martin was always relegated to being the opening act for headliners. Opening performers were not paid well and this meant Martin’s savings were running out fast. 

So Martin decided to take what he describes as an "intuitive leap.” 

“I decided,” Martin asserts, “to be an opening act no longer. I said people do not attend or perceive the opening act. They're there for the headliner. So I decided only to headline. I went to a little club called Bubba's in Coconut Grove and this would be the first time I was gonna only headline so my income just really, really dropped.” 

At first, and for a long stretch, Martin’s leap only made things worse. In fact, it seemed a near-fatal career move. Two years after vowing to headline, “I was really down and out,” Martin recalls. “I was broke, depressed. I literally owed $17,000.” 

When he was thrown a lifeline by the Playboy Club with an offer to perform for $1500 a week, he was fired after a single show because of how little the audience laughed. 

Just as he was about ready to quit, Martin caught the attention of a producer named Bill McEuen. McEuen recognized Martin’s potential and helped him land shows at venues that would appreciate his humor. 

It wasn’t long after this that Martin produced his first of many hit comedy specials and was performing to massive audiences in sold out venues. He was finally on track to becoming one of the world’s most famous comedians and Hollywood actors. 

Sometimes you have to make the decision to step up long before anyone is ready to give you permission. 

There will come a time when you just have to take an intuitive leap—even if, and often especially if, you don’t feel ready. We must make the decision to sit in the driver’s seat and take the wheel well ahead of becoming a great driver.

Climb onto the pedestal first, learn how to stand tall second.

2. Don't compromise on that which makes you authentic

The opening episode of Yellowstone’s final season received a record-breaking 16.4 million viewers when it debuted last month. 

But Yellowstone is just one of around 10 unique shows that show runner, Taylor Sheridan, is responsible for writing and producing. Sheridan committed to the eye-watering number of productions as part of a $200 million deal with Paramount in 2021. 

“But in trying to make so many shows so fast,” one interviewer asked Sheridan, “didn’t you take on too much?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Sheridan replied. “It sure looked that way.” 

Sheridan says his initial plan was to “write, cast and direct the pilots, and then we would bring in someone as a showrunner to run a writers room and I could check in and guide them.” 

But “that plan failed,” Sheridan admits. “My stories have a very simple plot that is driven by the characters as opposed to characters driven by a plot—the antithesis of the way television is normally modeled.” “I’m really interested in the dirty of the relationships in literally every scene. But when you hire a room that may not be motivated by those same qualities—and a writer always wants to take ownership of something they’re writing—and I give this directive and they’re not feeling it, then they’re going to come up with their own qualities. So for me, writers rooms, they haven’t worked.”

The interviewer points out that Sheridan could have just allowed the writers to go in their own direction and compromise. 

“I spent the first 37 years of my life compromising,” Sheridan rebuffs. “When I quit acting, I decided that I am going to tell my stories my way, period. If you don’t want me to tell them, fine. Give them back and I’ll find someone who does—or I won’t, and then I’ll read them in some freaking dinner theater. But I won’t compromise. There is no compromising.”

The lesson here isn’t to reject compromise. 

It’s the value of knowing which compromises to reject.

Sheridan intuitively understands that audiences respond to creative work that feels authentic. Therefore, any compromise that betrays his core authenticity is one that ends up on the rejection pile. 

Great creators are able to recognize those values and elements that are responsible for the authenticity of their work—and they are unflinching in their defense of those essential ingredients. 

Have the courage to be rigid with your core values and the flexibility to be open-minded with everything else. 

3. Make up your own mind before you consult the herd

In 2011, Warren Buffett arrived in India for a live Q&A in front of an audience of budding investors. 

About half way through the event, one young investor stepped up to the mic with a fascinating question. “As we all know,” he began, “you are an extremely intelligent person. At the same time, you are very disciplined with your investing approach. So what makes Warren Buffett a great investor? Is it the intelligence or the discipline?”

“The good news I can tell you,” Buffett responds, “is that to be a great investor you don’t have to have a terrific IQ. If you’ve got 160 IQ, sell 30 points to somebody else because you won’t need it in investing. What you do need is the right temperament. You need to be able to detach yourself from the views of others or the opinions of others. You need to be able to look at the facts about a business, about an industry, and evaluate a business unaffected by what other people think. And that is very difficult for most people. Most people have, sometimes, a herd mentality which can, under certain circumstances, develop into delusional behavior. You saw that in the Internet craze and so on. I’m sure everybody in this room has the intelligence to do extremely well in investments.”

“They’re all 160 IQs,” the moderator chimes in, indicating toward the audience. 

“Well they don’t need it!” Buffett emphasizes, “I’m disappointed that they haven’t sold off some already. The 160s won’t beat the 130s at all necessarily. They may, but they do not have a big edge. But the ones that have the edge are the ones who really have the temperament to sit, look at a business, look at an industry and not care what the person next to them thinks about it, not care what they read about it in the newspaper, not care what they hear about it on the television, not listen to people who say, ‘This is going to happen,’ or, ‘That’s going to happen.’ You have to come to your own conclusions, and you have to do it based on facts that are available. If you don’t have enough facts to reach a conclusion, you forget it. You go on to the next one.” 

“That’s very good advice,” the moderator nods, “to be detached from all the noise. You shouldn’t just go with the herd.” 

“If you don’t know the answer yourself, don’t expect somebody else to tell you,” Buffett concludes, “and if you don’t know the answer yourself and somebody else says they know the answer, don’t let that fact push you into coming to a conclusion about something that you just don’t know enough to come to a conclusion on.” 

Having the discipline to work through your own thoughts on important decisions is worth more than dozens of IQ points. There can be great wisdom in crowds, as they say, but only when that crowd consists of independent thinkers bouncing around independent ideas. 

Make up your own mind before you consult the herd.

But how does Buffett do that, exactly…?

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