Conclusion: To Sonny and Natalia, on the Definition of Success

AS YOU KNOW by now, I was raised in an environment where success wasn’t an option. Yet somehow, I broke the pattern of merely getting by and have a life I enjoy and am proud of. I think this is due, in large part, to surrounding myself with successful people. The ingrained mind-set I had to fight against came into sharp focus when I was with Jimmy Kimmel doing some media. Around season two of The Man Show, we sat down for a behind-the-scenes interview for 20/20. The woman who was interviewing us asked me, “Did you ever have any idea that you’d have this kind of success?” I said, “No. I’m a guy from the Valley who swung hammers and dug ditches. I would’ve been happy just writing jokes for someone else. I never imagined being in front of the camera, having writers and a staff or a big set.” It was true. I would have been happy just being the guy who built the set. She then asked Jimmy the same question about our success. And he said, “I’m surprised it took this long.” The interviewer laughed like it was a joke, but Jimmy was dead serious. He was twenty-seven at the time, but he thought he should have been on television at twenty-two. It’s a good way to think. When you have that kind of vision, you’ll be much more likely to make it happen.

So, Sonny and Natalia, in this final chapter I want to talk to you about success. It was a conversation I never had with my folks, because they never experienced it. I have. And let me tell you something. Success sucks. Never become successful. I’m serious. Avoid being successful at all costs, because once you are, everyone is going to want a piece of you. If you have money, your ne’er-do-well brother-in-law is going to owe you fifty grand, want another sixty and when you tell him, “Not until you pay me back the first fifty” he’s going to call you a douchebag and cause a scene at Christmas dinner. Many of the jag-offs that I went to high school or worked construction with back in the day are still hanging around, sucking off my teat. They’re decent guys who can’t get their shit together and I have too much of a heart to cut them off. Trust me on this. While you may be Planet Success, you’re going to be orbited by a bunch of loser moons.

People will come out of the woodwork that you don’t even have a connection with. Really. I got a call one day from a guy named Tony Bruno. He’s vaguely related to me in some way — he’s the brother or son of my dad’s cousin. I’m not even sure if it’s cousin by blood or “cousin” because he and my dad grew up on the same block in South Philly. Either way, I’ve never met the guy. He knew I was a showbiz success, and wanted a little help getting his own career started. He was a musician. Long story short, he had a demo he wanted me to get into the right hands. This was in 2010. The reason I’m specific about the year is because the date makes it extra funny, and pathetic, when I tell you that his demo was on cassette.

Be prepared. Once you’re successful, chances are that you’re going to be called a one-percenter, someone who hangs out on a yacht with Mitt Romney, doesn’t pay their fair share of taxes and kills seals. People will assume you had everything handed to you because of white privilege. All of this will make you a target for bullshit lawsuits from people who want to take you down to bring themselves up. As I’m writing this book I’m out six hundred fifty thousand in legal fees, having just fought off patent trolls who sued me and other podcasters for no reason other than to make money off work they did not do. I was a target simply for being successful.

But I know that, like many of my other pieces of advice, you may not heed this one, and either by luck or out of spite become successful. So, kids (and readers), if you want to measure it out and see if you’ve truly made it or not, go through the checklist below and see where you fall.

 You Have an Enormous Aquarium: The high-end aquarium is a total rich guy move. The guys who have massive aquariums custom-built into their walls and stuff them full of reef sharks and manta rays they’ve had flown in from Barbados don’t love tropical fish; they love people knowing that they have too much money.

 You Don’t Use the Phrase “Right Now” When Describing Your Job: One way you can tell you’re a loser is if when someone asks you what you do for a living you start the sentence with the words “Right now…” No true success story ever qualifies it like that. No one has ever said, “Right now I’m an astronaut.” It’s always, “Right now I’m working at a batting cage, but…”

 You Pick the Phone Up on the Second or Third Ring: If you answer your phone too quickly, it means you’re desperate for human contact. You’re a sad sack hoping for someone to reach out with good news. If you avoid the phone altogether, you’re ducking pissed off relatives, exes and bill collectors. Picking up on the second or third ring means your house is big enough that it takes you a minute to get to the horn, and that you’re checking the caller ID to see if it’s something you have time to deal with in your busy life.

What do people do when your name pops up on their caller ID? Knowing this is the only insight you need as to where you are in life. We all know that feeling when the phone rings and you see that name and think, “Oh, crap. What does he want? I’ll call him back. I’m not up for it right now.” Well, are you that person to other people? That should be your first thought every day. Are you the one whose calls get screened? If you are, then you are doing something wrong. No one screens Bill Gates’s calls. If everyone thought of that every day, and made the necessary changes to get off everyone’s Do Not Call list, we’d have a perfect world.

 You Have No Sunday Night Dread: If you go to bed every Sunday night with a sinking feeling hoping that your alarm will not only fail to go off, but will grow arms and smother you with a pillow in your sleep, then you’ve got a shitty life. When you are in a position where heading back to work after a weekend is something you’re okay with or maybe even look forward to, you’re on the path to success.

 You Have No Exposed Wiring: In general, how visible the wiring is in your house shows where you are in life. The more wires you see, the worse off you are. Exposed wiring is the worst, like when the coaxial cable is stapled to the wall or just dangling free from the dropped ceiling or, worse yet, climbing through the crack of an opened window because it’s being tapped off the unsuspecting neighbor’s cable box. Just slightly above that is the square surface wall-mount conduit, the plastic doghouse that covers the wire but still screams loser. Wire buried in the wall is okay, but when you’ve got some money, you can get an audio/visual guy in there to get you going full wireless; that’s the best. The lowest is if you are using a power strip connected to another power strip. That’s the Human Centipede of electronics.

 You Don’t Care What Market Price Is: Sadly, this little quirk is something I’ve not been able to work out of my downtrodden DNA. I’m too much of a Carolla to ever order anything that is listed as “Market Price” on a menu. I always assume the market they’re speaking of in this context is in a penthouse in Dubai. You know you’ve arrived when you have a hankering for king crab and just order it, not even curious what the market price is. Slightly related to this is the ultimate power move that my buddy Daniel, a guy who knows how to live the high life, has perfected. This involves the entrée special, one of the things your waiter lists before you order. Daniel will chime in with, “We’ll take that, but as an appetizer.” No Carolla, even yours truly, has ever uttered those words.