There’s a trap that catches well-meaning performers, and I fell into it headfirst. The trap is the belief that being relatable means being ordinary. That the best way to connect with an audience is to be exactly like them — same level, same uncertainty, same fallibility. The “I’m just a regular person” approach.
I spent the better part of two years performing from that position. And I can tell you with confidence that it doesn’t work. Not because the audience is elitist or demanding, but because they came to you for something they can’t get from the person sitting next to them.
This is a natural extension of the Superman framework I wrote about in the last post, but it deserves its own exploration because the mistake is so common and the reasoning behind it is so seductive. The logic goes: people like people who are similar to them. Therefore, the more similar I am to my audience, the more they’ll like me. Therefore, I should be as normal and ordinary as possible on stage.
Every step of that logic is correct except the conclusion. The audience does want someone they can relate to. But they also want someone who is something more. Not arrogant. Not untouchable. Not a different species. Just… elevated. Operating at a level that makes the experience of watching them feel like it was worth showing up for.
The Consulting Client Who Taught Me This
Before I get into the magic side, let me tell you about something that happened in my consulting life that made this principle click.
I was working with a mid-size technology company in Graz. They were hiring a new head of product, and the CEO asked me to sit in on the final interviews and give my assessment. There were two finalists.
The first candidate was brilliant. Deep technical knowledge, sharp strategic mind, clearly capable. But his interview style was almost aggressively humble. He’d answer questions with qualifiers — “I’m not sure if this is right, but…” and “Other people might disagree, but I think…” He made a point of emphasizing what he didn’t know. He wanted the CEO to see him as approachable, as a team player, as someone who wouldn’t intimidate the existing leadership.
The second candidate was equally qualified but carried herself differently. She spoke with certainty. She shared her opinions as conclusions she’d reached after careful thought, not as tentative hypotheses. She acknowledged complexity without drowning in it. When she didn’t know something, she said so clearly and without apologizing for it. She was warm, personable, engaged — but never ordinary.
The CEO hired the second candidate. When I asked him why, he said something I’ve never forgotten: “I didn’t hire a head of product so I could have another version of me in the room. I hired someone who could do what I can’t do. And she made me believe she could.”
That’s it. That’s the entire principle. People don’t seek out a performer, a consultant, a leader, or a specialist so they can see an ordinary version of themselves. They seek someone who can do what they can’t. And the experience of encountering that person should feel like it was worth the encounter.
The Performer as Slightly More
Darwin Ortiz puts this in practical terms in Strong Magic: the effect happens in the spectator’s mind, and everything the performer does exists to create that mental event. If the performer presents himself as ordinary, the spectator’s mind files the experience under “ordinary.” If the performer presents himself as someone operating at an elevated level, the spectator’s mind files the experience under “extraordinary.”
This isn’t about ego. It isn’t about pretending to be something you’re not. It’s about presenting the truth — you’ve practiced for hundreds of hours, you’ve studied deeply, you’ve prepared obsessively — in a way that the audience can feel.
The problem with aggressive normalcy on stage is that it actively works against the experience the audience is hoping to have. Think about what happens when you go to see live music. You’re not there to watch someone who plays at the same level you do. You’re there to watch someone who plays at a level that makes you feel something. The best musicians are relatable — they joke between songs, they tell stories about their lives, they make eye contact and seem genuinely happy to be there. But when they play, they play at a level that reminds you why you showed up. They’re one of you, and they’re more than you, simultaneously.
That combination — relatable humanity plus elevated ability — is the sweet spot. And most performers miss it by falling too far to one side.
The Two Extremes
The first extreme is the ordinary performer. This was me. He’s self-deprecating to a fault. He emphasizes that he’s “just” a hobbyist, or “just” doing this for fun, or “just” learning. He makes mistakes and draws attention to them. He treats his own material casually, as if it’s not a big deal. The audience responds accordingly — with polite interest and forgettable applause. They enjoyed it fine. They won’t remember it in a week.
The second extreme is the arrogant performer. He struts. He demands attention rather than earning it. He treats the audience as lucky to be in his presence. He name-drops, he oversells, he behaves as though his powers are beyond question. The audience responds with resistance. They become adversarial. They start watching for mistakes, hoping to catch him out, because his arrogance has turned the performance into a competition.
Neither extreme works. The ordinary performer fails because the audience has no reason to be amazed by someone who’s told them not to be amazed. The arrogant performer fails because the audience has been put on the defensive.
The sweet spot is what I’d call aspirational relatability. You’re clearly one of them — you speak their language, you share their sense of humor, you acknowledge the absurdity of what you’re about to do. But you do it with a confidence and a polish that suggests you’ve been somewhere they haven’t been. You’ve walked a path they haven’t walked. And you’re going to show them what you found there.
What Changed for Me
The shift happened gradually, over the course of maybe six months, and it was one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn as a performer. Because my instinct — bred by years of consulting where collaboration and humility are valued — was always to level down. To meet the audience where they are by presenting myself as their equal.
What I had to learn was that meeting the audience where they are and presenting myself as their equal are two different things. I can meet them where they are in terms of language, energy, warmth, and human connection. But the moment I present myself as their equal in terms of ability, I’ve undermined the reason they’re watching.
The first concrete thing I changed was how I talked about what I do. I stopped saying “I’m going to show you some tricks.” I stopped using minimizing language. I didn’t replace it with grandiose language — I didn’t start calling myself a master or a wizard. I just started talking about what I do as though it matters. Because it does. Not in a save-the-world way, but in the way that any craft pursued with dedication and passion matters to the person who pursues it.
The second thing I changed was my physical bearing. I’d been standing like a consultant at a casual meeting — slightly slouched, weight on one hip, hands in pockets or clasped in front of me. I started standing like someone who deserved to be watched. Shoulders back, weight centered, hands at my sides or purposefully engaged. Not stiff. Not military. Just… present. Taking up the space I was entitled to take up.
The third thing — and this was the hardest — was eliminating the preemptive apologies. Every time I felt the urge to say “this might not work” or “I’m still working on this one” or “bear with me,” I said nothing. I just did the thing. And the absence of the apology, it turned out, made the thing land harder. Because the audience wasn’t processing it through a filter of low expectations. They were taking it at face value — as something done with confidence and skill by someone who clearly knew what they were doing.
The Paradox of Humility
Here’s the paradox I had to work through, and I suspect other adult learners will relate to this. True humility isn’t telling the audience you’re ordinary. True humility is doing the work — the unglamorous, solitary, often tedious work of practice and preparation — and then presenting the results without commentary.
The performer who walks on stage and immediately positions himself as ordinary hasn’t done the hard thing. The hard thing is walking on stage and letting the work speak for itself. That requires a much deeper kind of confidence. It means trusting that the hours you’ve invested are enough. That the preparation you’ve done will hold. That you deserve to be watched.
For someone who came to magic as an adult professional with no performance background, that trust didn’t come naturally. I’d built my career on a certain kind of intellectual humility — the consultant who asks good questions rather than pronouncing answers. That served me well in boardrooms. It was death on stage.
The audience in a boardroom is paying for your questions. The audience at a performance is paying for your answers. They want to see someone who has figured something out and can demonstrate it with grace and assurance. Not someone who’s still figuring it out and wants company on the journey.
There’s a place for the “still figuring it out” narrative — it’s this blog. It’s the conversations I have with other performers. It’s the honest self-assessment that drives improvement. But on stage, in the moment of performance, the audience needs to see the finished product. They need to see someone who is, for this brief window of time, better than ordinary.
What the Audience Actually Wants
I’ve had the privilege of performing at enough corporate events and private gatherings now to have a reasonable sample size of audience reactions. And what I’ve observed is this: the moments that generate the strongest responses are not the moments when I’m at my most relatable. They’re the moments when the relatable person they’ve been connecting with suddenly does something that makes no sense. When the regular guy reveals that he’s not entirely regular.
That’s the magic of the Superman dynamic applied to real performance. The audience connects with Clark Kent — the warm-up, the banter, the shared laughter, the acknowledgment of the weirdness of the situation. But they remember Superman — the moment when something impossible happened and the person doing it didn’t flinch, didn’t apologize, didn’t break character to check if it worked.
People don’t want to see ordinary versions of themselves on stage because ordinary is what they have at home. They have ordinary in their offices, in their commutes, in their daily routines. When they give someone their attention for twenty or thirty minutes, they want to be transported. Not to a different universe — just to a slightly elevated plane where things work a little differently and the person guiding them seems to know the way.
You give them that not by pretending to be something you’re not, but by having the courage to show them the best version of what you actually are. The version that emerges after all those hours alone in hotel rooms, after all those repetitions, after all that study and refinement.
That version isn’t ordinary. You made sure of that a long time ago. All that’s left is to stop hiding it behind a mask of false modesty and let the audience see what they came to see.