When Should You Give Your Best Material and When Should You Hold Back?

Let’s say you are a speaker, a trainer, a musician, a comedian, a magician or indeed any kind of public performer. You have some great material, some not so great material and some new material that you have not tried out yet. When you should you use each? Furthermore, when you should you try your hardest and when should you ease back and give a somewhat lesser performance? Let’s look at some scenarios:

1. A well-paid gig for a major client or a large important audience.

You should not hesitate here. Use your best material and give your absolutely best performance. They have paid well for it and you owe it to them to give your best. Obviously you will select the material that you consider most relevant and most interesting for this particular audience.

2. A moderately paid gig for a medium-sized client or audience.

Once again you should use your best material that is most relevant for the audience and you should give your top performance. The audience does not know how much you were paid or that they are not the best audience you have ever had. You owe it to them to give your best. If the performance is going well then you might want to introduce a little of your new and untested material so that you can assess audience reaction.

3. A poorly paid or free gig for a relatively unimportant audience.

You should use your best material and give your finest performance. You never know who is in the audience. There could be an important decision maker for a major future event. You want to build your reputation as a top performer so give them your best. Once again, if the performance is going well then you can try some of your new and untested material.

4. A gig where some competitive performers are present.

If you are a professional speaker or comedian then this can present a dilemma. If you use your best ideas, greatest lines and funniest stories then some of the other speakers will quite likely copy them and use them in their future performances. What should you do? The answer lies with the audience. They deserve your best. Ignore your competitors and give your best material and your finest performance. It does not matter that some of your lines may be used by others. What matters is that you impress the audience. (Impressing the other performers will do your reputation no harm either).

So the picture is clear. Always give your best performance; never hold back. Always use your best and most relevant material. But because your best can always get better you should try a little new material on those occasions where you can afford to risk it. Remember that it is better to give the same great performance to 100 audiences than to give them 100 different performances of varying quality. Moreover, the more often you give the same performance the better you get at it.

Whether you are performing in front of Bill Clinton at Carnegie Hall or Bill Smith at Hicksville Parish Hall you should give your top delivery. You will build a reputation as a great performer by always giving your best material in the best way that you possibly can.

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This post was previously published on Destination Innovation.

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