I have rewritten my opening line dozens of times. I have changed the words, restructured the syntax, swapped stories, tried questions, tried statements, tried humor, tried sincerity. But the thing that made the biggest difference to how my show lands was not changing what I say first. It was changing how I say it.
There is a concept that both Ken Weber and the Story to Stage communication framework emphasize from different angles, but with identical urgency: the first moments of any performance are disproportionately important. Weber talks about the smile before you walk on stage — literally engineering your facial expression before the audience sees you. The Story to Stage framework calls it the Hook, the first thirty to sixty seconds that grab attention and set the frame. Both are pointing at the same truth.
The audience does not wait five minutes to decide what kind of experience they are having. They decide in seconds. And they decide based on signals that have almost nothing to do with content. They decide based on how you look, how you stand, and — more than anything else — how you sound.
The Calibration Effect
Here is what I mean by calibration. When the audience hears your first words, their brains perform an unconscious assessment. They are not analyzing your sentence structure or evaluating your word choice. They are reading your voice for signals.
Confidence or uncertainty? Authority or apology? Energy or fatigue? Warmth or distance? Presence or distraction?
Whatever signals they read in those first few seconds become the baseline against which they measure everything that follows. If your first words are tentative and quiet, the audience calibrates to “tentative and quiet” and spends the next ten minutes deciding whether to upgrade their assessment. If your first words are clear, warm, and delivered with conviction, the audience calibrates to “someone worth listening to” and gives you the benefit of the doubt for the entire performance.
This is not fair. A brilliant performer could have a weak opening line and deliver an extraordinary show. But they would be fighting uphill for the first several minutes, overcoming the initial calibration rather than building on it.
I learned this the hard way. At a corporate function in Vienna, I walked on stage and said my opening line — a line I had written carefully and was proud of — while looking down at the table where my props were set up. I was arranging something. My attention was split. The words came out flat, directed at the table rather than the audience.
The first five minutes of that show felt like pushing a boulder uphill. The audience was polite but not engaged. They were waiting. Waiting for me to give them a reason to lean in. By the middle of the show I had them, but those first five minutes were unnecessarily hard. I had set the wrong tone by delivering a great line with bad energy, and it took real work to override that initial impression.
The Physical Preparation
I became slightly obsessed with the moments before the first words. Not the content preparation — the physical preparation. What my body is doing in the thirty seconds before I speak.
Weber describes a specific pre-show routine: stand against a wall for posture alignment, stretch your neck muscles, take deep breaths, drink water, and do the smile trick — say something funny to someone backstage so the first face the audience sees is a genuine smile.
I adapted this into my own routine, which I now do before every performance without exception.
Three to five minutes before I walk out, I find a private space. A hallway. A backstage area. A bathroom, if nothing else is available. I stand with my back against the wall — shoulders, back of head, and heels touching the surface. This resets my posture. After hours of travel, setup, and pre-show nerves, my shoulders creep up toward my ears and my posture collapses inward. The wall fix takes ten seconds and makes me two inches taller.
Then I do a quick vocal warm-up. Not a full warm-up — I will write about that in detail — but enough to wake up the vocal cords. Humming. A few lip trills. Speaking my opening line at full performance volume two or three times, to make sure my voice is placed where I want it, not trapped in my throat.
Then I take three deep breaths. Slow inhale through the nose, slow exhale through the mouth. This is not meditation. This is biology. The deep exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system and brings the heart rate down. You cannot deliver a confident opening line if your heart is pounding at a hundred and forty beats per minute and your voice is strangled by a tight throat.
Finally, I smile. Not a forced grin. Just a slight upward turn of the mouth. I hold it for a few seconds. I think of something genuinely amusing — a text from Adam, a video I watched, something funny my dog did. The smile has to be real, or at least started from something real, because audiences can detect a fake smile with uncanny accuracy.
Then I walk out. And my first words are not the first thing the audience encounters. My posture, my face, and my energy are.
The Delivery of the Opening Line
I have workshopped the delivery of my opening line more than any other moment in my act. Not the words. The sound.
Here is what I know about how it needs to work. The first sentence must be delivered with three qualities: clarity, warmth, and confidence.
Clarity means the audience can hear and understand every word without strain. This sounds obvious, but nervous performers do two things that kill clarity. They speak too fast, and they swallow the ends of their sentences. Both are anxiety responses — the brain wants to get through the scary part as quickly as possible, and the voice cooperates by rushing and trailing off.
I rehearse my opening line at deliberate speed. Slower than feels natural. Not dramatically slow — not a parody of deliberation — but at a pace that communicates “I am in no hurry.” When the audience hears someone who is not rushing, they relax. They trust that this person has things under control.
Warmth means the voice has resonance, not edge. A warm delivery invites the audience in. The difference is physical — a warm voice comes from the chest, with relaxed throat muscles and an open jaw. A cold voice comes from the throat, with tension in the neck and a tight jaw.
Confidence means no hesitation, no filler, and no visible second-guessing. The first words come out as if I have said them a thousand times — because I have. There is no “um” before the opening line. There is no throat clearing. There is a beat of silence. Eye contact. And then the line, delivered as if I own every word of it.
What I Learned from Bombing the Opener
I said earlier that I have rewritten my opening line dozens of times. What I did not say is that many of those rewrites were driven by delivery failures, not content failures.
There was a period where my opening line was a question. “Have you ever had a thought that you were absolutely certain nobody else could know?” Good line. Interesting hook. But I could not deliver it consistently well. The question format required a specific vocal inflection — a rising tone at the end — that worked against the authoritative energy I was trying to establish. It sounded like I was asking permission rather than commanding attention.
I switched to a statement. Declarative. Grounded. “Tonight I want to show you something that I have spent the last year trying to understand.” This was easier to deliver with conviction. A statement lands differently than a question. It asserts rather than requests. It sets the frame rather than asking the audience to set it.
But even with the right words, I bombed the delivery multiple times. Once, at an event in Graz, I started speaking before the applause from my introduction had fully died down. The audience was still settling, chairs were still shifting, and my first words disappeared into the ambient noise. Nobody heard them. The calibration moment was wasted.
After that, I added a rule: wait. After the introduction, walk out, reach your position, make eye contact with the room, and wait. Let the silence build. Let the audience finish their settling. Let the room get quiet. Then, and only then, deliver the first line.
This wait feels terrifying the first dozen times you do it. Three or four seconds of silence on stage, with the audience looking at you and you saying nothing, feels like an eternity. But those seconds are working for you, not against you. They establish that you are in control of the timing. That you will not be rushed. That you are comfortable with silence. And they focus the audience’s attention like a lens, so that when you do speak, every ear in the room is pointed at you.
The Compounding Effect
The reason the first words matter so much is not just because of first impressions. It is because of compounding. The tone you set in the first sentence cascades through the entire performance.
If the audience calibrates to “confident and warm,” they interpret ambiguous moments generously. A pause becomes thoughtful. A quiet moment becomes intimate. A joke that is only half funny gets a full laugh because the goodwill is there.
If the audience calibrates to “uncertain and flat,” they interpret ambiguous moments skeptically. A pause becomes hesitation. A quiet moment becomes low energy. A joke that is only half funny gets silence because the audience has not committed to being on your side.
The opening line is not just a line. It is a covenant. You are telling the audience, in the first seconds, what kind of experience they can expect. And then you have to deliver on that promise for the rest of the show.
This is why I rehearse the delivery of my opener more than any other single element. Not the words — I have those locked in. The sound. The energy. The posture. The eye contact. The beat of silence before I speak. The pace of the first sentence. The warmth in the voice. The clarity of each word.
I rehearse it in hotel rooms the night before a show. I rehearse it in the morning of the show day. I rehearse it in the car on the way to the venue. I rehearse it backstage, against the wall, with my posture reset and my voice warmed up and my smile genuine.
By the time I walk out and deliver it, it is not a performance. It is a habit. The most rehearsed, most polished, most intentional habit of my entire act.
Because if the first words land, the audience gives me everything I need to make the rest of the show work. And if they do not, I spend the next ten minutes digging out of a hole I dug with my own voice.
The opening line sets the tone. The delivery of the opening line sets the tone for the tone. Get it right, and the audience is yours before the first effect begins. Get it wrong, and you are already behind.
I choose to walk out prepared. Every single time.