Be So Good They Cant Ignore

Spoken by Steve Martin during a 2007 PBS interview with Charlie Rose, recorded to promote his memoir Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life. When Rose asked for his advice to aspiring performers, Martin said: "Nobody ever takes note of [my advice] because it's not the answer they wanted to hear... I always say, Be so good they can't ignore you." The line became widely influential, most notably as the title of Cal Newport's 2012 book So Good They Can't Ignore You, which used it as the basis for an argument that "follow your passion" is bad career advice.