HOME BUSINESS® Magazine is greatly honored to have this opportunity to share the insight and words of inspiration from Jay Leno, one of America’s most prominent entertainers and comedians. Best known as the host of television’s Emmy Award-winning The Tonight Show and author of Leading With My Chin, Jay Leno has the versatility and mainstream appeal only a handful of celebrities and entertainers ever achieve. Like the majority of home-based entrepreneurs, Jay Leno only works part-time from home. But the highly productive work he does at home is important to his success and provides an inspiration to all home-based entrepreneurs. Dubbed the “Hardest-Working Man in Show Business”, Jay Leno’s work habits and personal discipline are qualities all home businesses owners understand.

Told early on he had a face that would scare children, Jay Leno was undeterred in exploring every facet of movies and television sitcoms, playing thuggish goofballs, before he finally took his comedy routine on the road. In the early 1970s, Jay Leno began his journey to get on The Tonight Show. Jay Leno’s drive and ability to take risks to reach this goal are inspirational. “I saw a comic on The Tonight Show who I thought was terrible. The next day I got on a plane to California. Didn’t pack, just left. I think it’s good to back yourself into a corner, because if you leave yourself any options, you’ll take them. If you have no options but success, you’ll hustle more.”

As a rising young comic talent in the mid-1970s, Jay Leno first appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show in 1977. For that first appearance he took along for moral support a friend named Robin Williams. Ten years later he guest-hosted The Tonight Show. Five years later, in 1992, he took the helm from Johnny Carson. In the first year the ratings were bumpy. In 1993 David Letterman switched networks and went head on against The Tonight Show. In the next 84 weeks Letterman beat Leno.

But Jay Leno persevered and worked to make The Tonight Show better. “Like a tortoise, I kept moving and never gave up,” notes Leno. He continually improved The Tonight Show and capitalized on items of widespread interest in the media. During the O.J. Simpson trial, his show introduced the Lance Ito Dancers and Leno interviewed actor Hugh Grant after his embarrassing incident with a Hollywood prostitute. Timing and hard work paid off. In April 1995 Leno took the rating’s lead from Letterman, and has kept it ever since. The long-term perspective, innovations and strategic thinking that led to Jay Leno dominating the late-night arena are lessons for all home-based entrepreneurs.

The anchor of the front-running Tonight Show is its cutting-edge monologue. Jay Leno’s monologue has helped establish him as an institution. So important is it to Jay that he has expanded it from six to fourteen minutes and added innovations to it such as video “drop-ins”. One of the endeavors that has helped to make the monologue successful is the time Jay Leno spends at home developing material for the monologue. Each evening, Jay meets with Tonight Show writer Jimmy Brogan at his home to create joke material and to winnow down the next day’s monologue. “Jim Brogan and I sit in my den until 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning. We sit in the same chairs every night or it doesn’t work. We’ll knock jokes back and forth until we can’t think anymore.” This home-based work helps Jay keep his creativity at its peak.

Another home-based work experience that helped Jay Leno were “kibitzes” with other comedic talent. These sessions offered an excellent opportunity to share experiences and ideas between the best talent in the business. The people who showed up are a “who’s who” of comedy in America, in cluding Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Brogan, Larry Miller, Freddie Prinze, Carol Leifer, Richard Belzer and Dennis Miller.

Getting his start on the comedy circuit, Jay Leno experienced just about all of life’s ups and downs while still displaying the perseverance one must have to succeed in a home business, or in any endeavor. He encountered every humiliation a performer has known. From the club owners who didn’t pay, to mobsters who spared his life and loaned him their guns, to the agent who wanted him to be America’s first comedy wrestler, and naked strippers who beat-up his hecklers for him. Then there were the triumphant performance nights where he was literally mugged on-stage, when his clothes were set afire, or when he was merely punched out and taunted with death threats. And also the romantic night at The Comedy Store, working with the likes of  David   Letterman, Robin Williams, Andy Kaufman, and Steve Martin, when he met his future wife, Mavis, outside the ladies’ room!

Dubbed “The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business”, Jay Leno earns every word of the title. Any home-based entrepreneur who has ever burned the “midnight oil” will appreciate how hard Jay Leno works. He starts off a typical long day at 7:30 in the morning that includes a commute to his office, an 80 minute work out with trainers, meetings with staff writers, a taping of The Tonight Show at 5:00 P.M., usually an event or gig after the show, home after 9:30 in the evening and then joke preparation in his den with Jim Brogan until early the following morning. After only four or five hours of sleep he’s back at it again.

Jay Leno has worked this way all of his life. He is mildly dyslexic and got mainly C’s and D’s in school. But that still did not deter him from applying to and eventually graduating from the esteemed Emerson college in Boston. “The admissions officer said I wasn’t what they wanted. But I sat outside his office 12 hours a day until he said he’d let me in if I went to summer school.” The tuition was $1,200. “I took out my wallet and gave him $1,200 cash. I was already making good money in nightclubs.”

This true story is prophetic of the way Jay Leno has achieved so much in such a short time. “I’m an example of success through persistence”, he says. “I’ve gotten to where I am by getting out there every night and doing it. The reason I don’t take a vacation is because I want to be ready to go when the other guy isn’t. Sooner or later the other guy will want to take a vacation, and when he does, I’ll be ready to take advantage of that”.