Before you put your Foot on Stage
Years ago, I had a gig at a restaurant theater—singing musical excerpts for what I thought would be an appreciative audience.
It turned into a nightmare.
The poster had me listed as coming from England. I'm French Canadian. That was only the beginning. The audience sat cold as icebergs, looking at us as if we were an unwelcome interruption to their meal. Not a smile. Not a nod. Just the sound of cutlery scraping plates and the occasional polite cough.
I pushed through the performance. I smiled when I didn't feel like smiling. I hit my notes, more or less. I did everything I thought a performer was supposed to do.
After the show, I went to collect my résumé and headshots—stuffed in a plastic folder with a cigarette butt melted onto it.
I stood there holding that folder, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
The Story I Told Myself
For a long time, I blamed that evening on everything but myself.
The wrong crowd. Bad timing. Poor marketing. An audience that didn't appreciate live music. A venue that never should have booked musical theater in the first place. A poster that couldn't even get my nationality right.
Every one of those things was, to some extent, true. But they were also convenient. They kept me from asking the harder question: What was my role in this?
It took years—and a lot more performances, some brilliant, some humbling—before I could look back honestly at that night and see what I couldn't see then.
I was the problem.
Not because I lacked talent. Not because I didn't care. But because I walked onto that stage completely unprepared in the ways that matter most. I was winging it, hoping that my passion and my voice would be enough to carry the room—that talent alone would build the bridge between me and an audience of strangers eating their pasta.
It doesn't work that way. It never does.
What No One Tells You About Performance
Here's what I've learned since then, through years of performing, coaching, and watching some of the most compelling communicators do what they do:
Before you put your foot on stage, there's a roadmap to follow.
And most performers—singers, actors, speakers, podcasters, pastors, presenters—skip it entirely. Not because they're lazy. But because no one ever showed it to them.
We're taught to rehearse our lines. We're told to practice our songs. We're coached on breathing and posture and projection. All of that matters. But it's only the surface layer of what real preparation looks like.
The deeper layer is this: understanding who you are as a communicator before you ever open your mouth in front of an audience.
How far you need to go on that roadmap depends on where you're headed. A singer performing in a community production has different needs than a keynote speaker addressing ten thousand people. A first-time podcaster needs different tools than a seasoned actor preparing for a difficult role.
But one thing is universal, regardless of medium, regardless of audience size, regardless of whether you're holding a microphone or a script or simply standing at the front of a room:
The best performers are, first and foremost, communicators.
They're not just technically skilled. They're not just talented. They have learned how to be present—genuinely, specifically present—with the people in front of them. They've done the internal work that makes the external performance feel effortless, even when it isn't.
Technique Is Not the Enemy of Authenticity
There's a misconception I hear often, especially among artists: that technique is somehow at odds with authenticity. That if you work too hard on how you say something, you'll lose the truth of what you're saying.
I understand where that fear comes from. We've all seen performers who are technically flawless and utterly lifeless. They hit every note perfectly and make us feel nothing.
But I've come to believe that the problem isn't too much technique. The problem is technique in the absence of self-knowledge.
The performers who move us—the ones we remember long after the curtain falls or the podcast ends or the sermon is over—have mastered technique in service of something. They work on their material—songs, texts, characters, speeches—not to become someone else, but to become more themselves. More specific. More alive. More honest.
Technique, when it's working the way it should, doesn't erase you. It clears the static so the real signal can come through.
That's what I was missing the night of the cigarette butt. I had some technique. I had real passion for what I was doing.
But I hadn't done the deeper work of understanding how I communicate, what I bring to a room, and how to connect that to the specific people sitting in front of me on a Tuesday night in a restaurant that didn't really want us there.
Voice Backstage
The Voice Backstage
This is what I call the backstage of your voice.
Not the performance itself—the messy, necessary, often invisible work that happens before any audience ever sees you.
The preparation that most people skip because it's slow and internal and doesn't feel as exciting as being on stage.
But this is where transformation happens.
I've watched it happen in people I've coached—singers who thought they were just working on breath support and discovered something much deeper about how they inhabit a lyric. Speakers who came in to "fix their nerves" and left with a completely different relationship to their own authority.
Podcasters who started out mimicking their favorite hosts and gradually found their own unmistakable voice.
None of it happened on stage. It happened backstage—in the questions, the exercises, the uncomfortable moments of honest self-assessment, and the gradual, rewarding process of building something real.
Who This Is For
Whether you're stepping on stage for the first time or you've been performing for years but something feels off—like there's a gap between what you're capable of and what's actually landing—this work is for you.
Maybe you're a singer who's technically solid but can't seem to connect with an audience.
Maybe you're a speaker or presenter who knows your material cold but still feels anxious every time you stand up in front of a room.
Maybe you're a podcaster or content creator trying to develop a voice that sounds like you, not like a slightly worse version of someone you admire.
Maybe you're a pastor, a teacher, a coach—someone whose entire job is to communicate, and you've started to feel like you're going through the motions.
Whatever brought you here, the path forward is the same: build a repeatable process. Not a formula. Not a script. A process—one that helps you prepare with confidence, connect authentically, and communicate powerfully every time you show up.
So that the next time you walk off a stage, the only thing you're carrying is the satisfaction of having given everything you had—
and not someone else's cigarette butt melted onto your folder.
Voice Backstage is a coaching program for performers, speakers, and communicators ready to do the deeper work. Learn more about how to work together.
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