There is a line in Ken Weber’s Maximum Entertainment that I have never been able to shake: “Superman doesn’t hem and haw. Clark Kent does. Which one are you?”
The first time I read that, I was sitting in a hotel room in Zurich, probably still wearing the suit I’d worn to a client meeting that afternoon. And I knew, with a clarity that was almost painful, which one I was. I was Clark Kent. I had been Clark Kent for every single performance I’d given up to that point. And the fact that I hadn’t even realized it was the most Clark Kent thing of all.
Weber’s analogy is deceptively simple. Superman and Clark Kent are the same person. One is the public identity — the relatable, ordinary, slightly awkward reporter who blends in with everyone around him. The other is the real self unleashed — confident, capable, extraordinary. When Superman is needed, Clark Kent disappears. There’s no fumbling, no hesitation, no apology. The transformation is complete.
The performer, Weber argues, must operate the same way. Offstage, you can be whoever you are — nervous, uncertain, self-deprecating, worried about your material. That’s fine. That’s Clark Kent. But the moment you step in front of an audience, Clark Kent needs to vanish. What they see should be Superman: someone who is similar enough to be relatable, but operating at a level that inspires something between admiration and awe.
This sounds obvious. It isn’t.
My Clark Kent Years
For the first couple of years of performing, my entire identity on stage was essentially: “Hi, I’m Felix, I’m a strategy consultant, and I also do some card tricks.” I’d lead with self-deprecation. I’d make jokes about being an amateur. I’d subtly apologize before I even started — not with explicit words, but with my body language, my vocal tone, my whole demeanor.
I thought I was being charming. Humble. Relatable. The regular guy who happens to know some tricks. I figured the audience would connect with that, the way people connect with a friend showing them something cool at a dinner party.
What I was actually doing was undercutting every moment of magic before it could land.
Think about it from the audience’s perspective. They’re at a corporate event or a private gathering. Someone gets up to perform. That someone immediately telegraphs nervousness, makes self-deprecating jokes, positions himself as “just a guy who does this as a hobby.” What does the audience’s brain do with that information? It downgrades its expectations. It relaxes into low-stakes mode. It decides, before a single card has been touched, that this is going to be pleasant but unremarkable.
And then even if the magic is good — even if the technique is clean and the effects are strong — the audience is processing it through the filter of “regular guy showing us something.” The emotional ceiling has already been set. I’d set it myself.
The frustrating part is that I’d come from consulting, where I understood this principle perfectly. No consultant walks into a client’s boardroom and opens with, “I’m not really sure about this, but here are some thoughts.” You project confidence. You own the room. You demonstrate competence through your bearing before you’ve said anything substantive. Not arrogance — competence. There’s an enormous difference.
But somehow, when I stepped from the consulting world into the performing world, I left that understanding behind. I think it was because performing felt so personal, so exposed, that vulnerability felt like the honest response. Being Superman felt like lying. Being Clark Kent felt like being real.
Weber helped me understand that this is exactly backward.
Why Vulnerability Is Not the Same as Honesty
Here’s the thing about Superman. He’s not dishonest. He’s not putting on a false front. He IS extraordinary. The abilities are real. The only thing that’s fake is Clark Kent — the disguise he wears to navigate the ordinary world.
When you’ve put in the hours — hundreds of hours of solitary practice in hotel rooms, drilling techniques until they’re automatic, scripting and rehearsing your routines until they’re airtight — you ARE capable of extraordinary things. The Clark Kent who shuffles onstage making self-deprecating jokes is the disguise. Superman is what’s underneath.
Showing the audience your nervousness isn’t honesty. It’s a failure to complete the transformation. The audience didn’t ask to see your anxiety. They asked to see your magic. They hired Superman, and you’re giving them Clark Kent because Clark Kent is more comfortable.
I had to sit with this for a while because it felt counterintuitive. We live in an era that celebrates vulnerability, authenticity, showing your real self. And those things are valuable — offstage. In relationships, in friendships, in the blog you’re reading right now. But performance is a different contract. The audience gives you their attention and their willingness to be amazed, and in return you give them the best version of what you can do. That means the Superman version. The one who doesn’t apologize, doesn’t fidget, doesn’t break character to tell you how nervous he is.
An apology, Weber writes, is kryptonite to the Superman image. And he’s right. Every time I said “sorry, let me try that again” or “bear with me, this is a tricky one,” I was pumping kryptonite into the room. I was actively destroying the conditions under which magic can feel extraordinary.
The Practical Implications
Once I internalized this framework, I started noticing specific behaviors that were pure Clark Kent. The list was longer than I wanted it to be.
Fidgeting. I’d shift my weight from foot to foot. I’d adjust my sleeves. I’d touch my face. These are all signals of nervous energy, and the audience reads them unconsciously. Superman doesn’t fidget. Superman is still. He moves with purpose, and when he’s not moving, he’s utterly composed.
Hesitation words. I’d pepper my patter with “um,” “uh,” “so,” “well,” “kind of.” These are the verbal equivalent of fidgeting — they fill silence with noise and communicate uncertainty. Weber’s prescription is simple: when you want to say “um,” say nothing. A pause is confident. A filler word is anxious. The audience hears the difference even if they can’t articulate it.
Breaking eye contact during critical moments. This was a big one. Right at the moment when the magic happened — the exact instant when I should have been locked in, making eye contact with the audience, selling the impossibility — I’d look down at my hands. Because my hands were where the action was. But Superman doesn’t need to check his hands. Superman’s hands do what they’re supposed to do. Looking down told the audience that I wasn’t fully in control, that the magic was happening to me rather than through me.
Explaining what went wrong. Once, early on, a setup didn’t go as planned during a corporate event. Nothing the audience noticed — from their perspective, everything was fine. But I felt the need to acknowledge the deviation from my script. So I said something like, “That wasn’t exactly how that’s supposed to go, but…” I was trying to be transparent. What I actually did was alert the audience to a problem they hadn’t perceived. Clark Kent, explaining his failures to people who hadn’t noticed them.
The Transition I Had to Learn
The shift from Clark Kent to Superman isn’t a personality change. It’s a role transition. The same way an actor isn’t pretending to be someone else — they’re channeling a version of themselves through a specific role.
For me, the transition happens in a very specific moment. It happens in the seconds between when I’m introduced and when I start speaking. That’s the doorway. On one side is Felix the consultant, the guy who’s maybe a little tired from traveling, who has opinions about hotel pillows and airline food, who is still thinking about the email he needs to send later. On the other side is the performer — calm, centered, sure of what’s about to happen, and genuinely excited to share it.
I’ve developed a physical trigger for the transition. Just before I start, I take one slow breath, let my shoulders drop, and make eye contact with someone in the front row. That’s it. Three seconds. But in those three seconds, Clark Kent goes away.
The key insight — and this is something I had to learn through uncomfortable trial and error — is that the audience actually wants this. They’re not hoping to see a regular person fumble through tricks. They’re hoping to see someone who makes the impossible feel effortless. Someone who is similar enough to them that they can connect, but different enough that they feel they’re in the presence of something special.
That’s the genius of the Superman analogy. Superman isn’t an alien who has nothing in common with humans. He grew up among them. He understands them. He’s relatable in every way except one: he can do things no one else can do. And when he does those things, he does them without apology, without hesitation, without breaking a sweat.
The Consulting Parallel
I think about this in my consulting work too, now that Weber has given me the framework. The best consultants I’ve worked with have this quality. They sit in a room full of executives who know their business inside out, and they project a quiet certainty that commands attention. They don’t apologize for their recommendations. They don’t hedge every statement. They don’t lead with disclaimers about what they might be wrong about.
They’re not arrogant. Arrogance is Clark Kent trying to act like Superman — it’s unconvincing and off-putting. What they have is earned confidence. They’ve done the work, they know the material, and they present it with the assurance that comes from deep preparation. The clients can feel the difference between someone who is performing from a position of mastery and someone who is winging it.
The audience at a magic performance can feel the same difference. When the performer has truly mastered the material — not just the techniques but the script, the blocking, the timing, every transition and every recovery — a calm descends on the performance. The performer stops thinking about what comes next and starts thinking about the people in front of them. And the audience, without knowing why, leans in.
That’s Superman. Not bravado. Not showing off. Just the quiet confidence that comes from having done the work, and the willingness to let that confidence show instead of hiding it behind a Clark Kent mask of false humility.
The Question That Changed My Performing
Weber’s question — “Superman doesn’t hem and haw. Clark Kent does. Which one are you?” — is one I ask myself before every performance now. Not as a motivational exercise. As a diagnostic tool.
Am I fidgeting? Clark Kent. Am I using filler words? Clark Kent. Am I making eye contact during the magic? Superman. Am I apologizing for things the audience hasn’t noticed? Clark Kent. Am I moving with purpose and pausing with confidence? Superman.
The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is awareness. Once you can identify the Clark Kent behaviors, you can systematically replace them. Not with arrogance or false confidence, but with the earned assurance that comes from preparation.
Because here’s the truth that Weber understood and that took me two years to learn: the audience didn’t come to see Clark Kent. They came to see Superman. And every moment you spend being Clark Kent on stage is a moment you’re shortchanging both them and yourself.
The magic you’ve practiced in those hotel rooms, the hours you’ve invested, the techniques you’ve drilled until they’re part of your muscle memory — all of that IS your superpower. You earned it. The only thing left is to stop apologizing for having it and start presenting it the way it deserves to be presented.
Superman doesn’t hem and haw. Neither should you.