It was a Tuesday night in Klagenfurt. A corporate dinner for about twenty-five people. The kind of event that feels small and routine — no big stage, no elaborate sound system, just a few tables in a restaurant and a slot after dessert where I would do a short set of close-up magic and a brief mentalism piece.
I almost phoned it in.
I had a bigger event the following weekend — a keynote for three hundred people in Vienna — and mentally, I was already there. The Klagenfurt dinner felt like a warmup. A minor engagement. The kind of thing where eighty percent effort would be indistinguishable from one hundred percent effort, at least to an audience of twenty-five who were primarily there for the schnitzel and the wine.
But something — habit, maybe, or a whisper of professionalism that I am glad I listened to — made me prepare and perform at full effort. I arrived early. I checked the space. I adjusted my approach for the intimate setting. I gave the performance everything I had, even though a part of me was already thinking about the Vienna keynote.
One of the twenty-five people at that dinner was a managing director of a company that runs conferences across Central Europe. She had not been on the guest list as someone I needed to impress. She was there as the spouse of one of the executives. She was not even sitting at the table where I performed my first piece.
But she watched. And she was impressed. Not because the magic was spectacular — at close-up scale, the effects are necessarily intimate. Because she saw someone who was fully present, fully invested, and treating a Tuesday dinner for twenty-five people with the same care and energy that most performers reserve for the big stage.
Three weeks later, I got an email from her office. They wanted to discuss keynote bookings for the following year’s conference series. Six events. Across three countries.
That opportunity did not come from the Vienna keynote. It came from the Klagenfurt dinner. The one I almost phoned in.
The Randomness of Opportunity
I tell that story not because it is unusual but because it is typical. Opportunities in the performing world are stochastic — they arrive from unexpected directions, at unexpected times, triggered by encounters you could not have planned for.
The person who books you for your biggest engagement might be the waiter who saw you perform at a corporate lunch. The conference organizer who changes your career might be someone’s partner who attended a private party. The review that gets you noticed might come from a blogger who happened to be in the audience at a show you considered unimportant.
You cannot predict which show will matter. You cannot know which audience member will have the connection, the authority, the inclination to create an opportunity that transforms your trajectory. The only rational response to this uncertainty is to treat every show as if it might be the most important show you ever do.
Not because it will be. Statistically, most shows will be routine events that lead to nothing beyond the engagement itself. But because the cost of phoning in the wrong show — the show that happened to have the right person in the audience — is catastrophically high. One missed opportunity, one subpar performance witnessed by the wrong person, and a door closes that you never even knew existed.
The Professional Standard
There is a deeper principle here that goes beyond strategic opportunism. The principle is this: the quality of your performance should not depend on the size or perceived importance of your audience.
This sounds obvious when stated directly. Of course you should give your best effort regardless of audience size. But in practice, it is surprisingly difficult to maintain. The energy you bring to a keynote for three hundred people is fueled by adrenaline, by the scale of the event, by the visible significance of the occasion. That natural fuel is missing at a dinner for twenty-five. You have to manufacture the energy internally rather than drawing it from the environment.
And the temptation to conserve — to save your best for the big show, to coast at the small one, to calibrate your effort to the perceived stakes — is real and persistent. I have felt it at every minor engagement I have ever done. The voice that says: this one does not matter as much. Give eighty percent. Save the rest.
That voice is lying. Not about the stakes — a dinner for twenty-five genuinely has lower immediate stakes than a keynote for three hundred. But about what the appropriate response to lower stakes should be. The voice says lower stakes justify lower effort. The professional standard says the effort is constant regardless of stakes.
The Audience Deserves It
The strategic argument — you never know who is watching — is compelling. But there is a more fundamental argument that I find even more motivating: the audience deserves your best regardless of who they are.
The twenty-five people at that Klagenfurt dinner paid for an evening of entertainment. They set aside their Tuesday night. They showed up expecting something worth showing up for. They were not a lesser audience because there were fewer of them. They were people, giving me their time and attention, and they deserved the same quality of experience that a room of three hundred would receive.
This is an ethical position, not a strategic one. It is about respect. Respect for the audience’s time, for their attention, for their willingness to engage with what you are offering. That respect should not be rationed based on how important you judge the event to be.
I think about this in terms of my consulting work, where the principle is identical. A small client deserves the same quality of strategic thinking as a large client. A routine project deserves the same analytical rigor as a high-profile one. The quality of the work reflects the professional, not the engagement.
In performance, the quality of the show reflects the performer, not the audience. A performer who gives one hundred percent to a room of three hundred and eighty percent to a room of twenty-five is not a strategic thinker. They are an inconsistent professional. And inconsistency, more than any single bad show, is what erodes a reputation over time.
The Muscle of Consistency
Performing at full effort for every audience, regardless of size or perceived importance, is a muscle. Like all muscles, it strengthens with use and atrophies with neglect.
Every time you phone in a small show, you make it slightly easier to phone in the next one. The threshold for what counts as “important enough for full effort” creeps upward. First it is any show under fifty people. Then under a hundred. Then under two hundred. The rationalizations multiply: the venue is not great, the audience is not the right demographic, the fee is not what I usually get.
Conversely, every time you give full effort to a show that does not “require” it, you make that level of effort more automatic. The full-effort mode becomes your default rather than your special occasion. And when the big show comes — the keynote for three hundred, the conference that could change your trajectory — you are not shifting into a higher gear. You are already there.
I have noticed this in my own performing. The shows where I feel most confident, most present, most fully engaged are not the big ones. They are the ones that follow a stretch of consistent, full-effort performances at every level. The small shows prime the big ones. The consistency is the foundation.
Reputation Compounds Quietly
There is something about reputation that performers often misunderstand. Reputation is not built by your best show. It is built by your average show. The audience at your best show sees you once. They tell people about you based on that one experience. The audience at your average show — which, if you perform frequently, is the vast majority of your audiences — also tells people about you based on what they saw.
If your best show is a ten and your average show is a seven, your reputation is a seven. Because most people did not see the ten. Most people saw the seven. And their word-of-mouth reflects what they experienced, not what you are capable of on your best day.
Raising your average is more valuable than raising your peak. And the only way to raise your average is to refuse to perform below your standard, regardless of the circumstances. Every show. Every audience. Full effort.
This is how reputations compound quietly. Not through one spectacular performance that goes viral. Through dozens, hundreds of consistently excellent performances that generate steady, reliable word-of-mouth. “I saw this guy at our company dinner.” “He was at our corporate retreat.” “He did a keynote at our conference.” If all of those experiences are strong, the reputation builds. If some are strong and some are phoned in, the reputation is inconsistent, and inconsistent reputations do not generate referrals.
The Internal Standard
Beyond strategy, beyond ethics, beyond reputation, there is one more reason to treat every show as important: your own self-respect.
I know when I have given less than my best. The audience might not know. The client might not know. But I know. And that knowledge sits in the back of my mind, quietly eroding the confidence and self-regard that I need to walk on stage the next time.
The best feeling in the world is walking off stage knowing that you gave everything you had. Not that the show was perfect — perfection is not achievable. But that the effort was total. That you held nothing back. That you treated the audience and the occasion with full respect.
The worst feeling is knowing you coasted. That you made a calculation about how much effort the show deserved and chose less than your maximum. That the performance was fine but could have been better if you had cared enough to push.
I have felt both. The first fuels the next performance. The second undermines it. And the choice between them is made long before you walk on stage. It is made in the moment when you decide whether this show — this particular show, with this particular audience, at this particular venue — matters enough for your best.
The answer should always be yes. Not because you never know who is watching, though that is true. Not because the audience deserves it, though they do. Not because your reputation depends on it, though it does.
Because you are a performer. And a performer performs. Fully, consistently, at every opportunity. The big shows and the small ones. The glamorous venues and the restaurant back rooms. The audiences of three hundred and the audiences of twenty-five.
Every show is important. Not because of what it might lead to. Because of what it says about who you are while you are doing it.