This should be easy

“This Should Be Easy for You.”

People say this to me all the time. You’re a trained actor. You’re a speech coach. You’re going to be terrific. And I get it. From the outside, it probably looks like I just… show up and things go well. 😳

A few weeks ago, I signed up for my second standup comedy class. Not improv. Standup. Which, if you’ve ever tried it, you know is a completely different animal. Improv is collaborative and alive. Standup is you, alone, with a microphone, trying to make strangers laugh at exactly the right moment with exactly the right words. Two words swapped, one line dropped, and the whole thing can potentially fall flat. I signed up because I believe in this work. The more I experience the thing I ask my clients to do, the better I can help them do it. And so many of you have asked me: how do I bring more humor into my presentations? I want to be able to answer that from somewhere real. What I didn’t anticipate was how full my life would become between the day I registered and the night of the show.

Sound familiar? Because this is exactly what I hear from the executives and founders I work with. You’re the face of the company. You’re walking into a high-stakes conference. The calendar was full before the keynote was even confirmed. And now it’s almost time, and you are not as prepared as you’d like to be. That was me. It was a full house and a room full of generous, loving people who wanted us to succeed, and I still walked backstage with my heart pounding, knowing I hadn’t memorized my set the way I’d planned. Regardless, in that moment I had to walk my talk, get on stage and trust!

And here’s what I want you to remember the next time you’re standing in the wings.

1. Practice in the cracks. I didn’t have big blocks of uninterrupted time. So I used the small ones. In between sessions, on a walk, while waiting for coffee. Perfect preparation isn’t always available. Good preparation almost always is.

2. Let other people hold you accountable. I ran my set in front of people who would tell me the truth. You don’t have to go it alone. A trusted colleague, a coach, even just saying it out loud to someone who will listen changes everything.

3. At some point, choose trust. There is a moment in every high-stakes performance when you have to make a decision. You can stay in your head, running the checklist, bracing for what might go wrong. Or you can breathe, slow down, and connect with the room. I chose trust. I chose the audience. And it went well. Not because I was ready, but because I was present. Did I have an out of body experience at the same time, yes! But we can always be growing.