The magic of showing up authentically
In December, I did an experiment: I hosted a speaking retreat at my house in Houston.
I didn’t talk much about it publicly beforehand. It was something I created after being asked again and again if I had any coaching or resources available to guide those building speaking businesses. I didn’t, and each time someone asked me, I felt like it was the universe nudging me to figure out a solution. It also sounded like something that would be really fun to dedicate my time to . . . and so, I did!
Four speakers—all newly embarking on their speaking journeys—flew to Houston and joined me for a week. They knew they would be there with other speakers, but they didn’t know who exactly would be part of the group. (Can we talk about the amount of courage it took for them to sign up to spend a week with people they didn’t know?!)
Our goals for the week centered on a few things: 1) getting clear on their messaging, 2) elevating their stage presence, and 3) understanding how to build a thought-leadership business.
I designed the retreat based on what the speakers wanted to get out of it and also what I wish I had learned at the beginning of my own speaking journey.
One of my favorite days of the retreat was the day we rented a theater so that each speaker could practice delivering their content on a real stage. The theater was absolutely breathtaking, and we had the whole place to ourselves, which was key to creating a low-stakes, supportive environment.
We began the day by having each speaker deliver the opening of their keynote from the stage. Every time, I noticed the same thing: The moment the speakers stepped onstage, they became someone else. They weren’t the same people they’d been in my living room while we were workshopping content. In my living room, they were working from their hearts. The stories they shared were magnetic, and telling them felt natural. Onstage, I could tell that the speakers were working from their heads. Some seemed robotic. Some of the messaging seemed forced. Some seemed disconnected.
I immediately knew what was happening because the same thing happened to me when I started speaking professionally.
Let’s go back to that time . . .
Early in my career, I gave a talk to a group of leaders. Going into it, I felt so insecure because I knew I was the youngest and most inexperienced person in the room. I felt the need to prove that I was credible, so I opened my keynote by citing all of this research that was meant to back up the stories I would share later. I thought I did a great job—until someone in the audience came up to me afterwards and gave me some feedback.
This person happened to also be a speaker, and he started our conversation by saying, “I have some thoughts for you about your speech, if you’d like to hear them.” I was all ears.
He then went on to tell me to ditch the entire first half of my talk—the research-heavy part—and open with a story that I had shared somewhere in the middle: the one about 45 people quitting on me after I’d secured my first big cleaning contract. “That’s the story you open with,” he said. He helped me see that when I was sharing all the research, not only was it boring, but it didn’t come across as authentic. When I shared the story that was personal to me and showed that vulnerability, it felt like I was speaking from my heart.
To this day, I often open my speeches with that story. And if it’s not that story, it’s another vulnerable one. And actually, my whole keynote—no matter what I’m talking about—is made up of stories like that. Because that’s me. I’ve learned that telling personal stories and being vulnerable is how I show up as my authentic self, and when I do that, I do a better job of connecting with and relating to my audiences.
So when I saw these four speakers become different people as they practiced their talks, I knew what was happening. My challenge was to do for them what that speaker had done for me: I needed to help each of them find the thing that would allow them to connect with their authentic selves.
Over the course of that day together, we went person by person and worked to pinpoint the one major shift they could each make to unlock their authenticity on stage. And one by one, the magic happened.
For one of the speakers, the shift was physical. I had noticed how uncomfortable she seemed when walking on the stage and delivering her keynote. I remembered that earlier in the week, she had mentioned that she loved one-on-one coaching and workshops because they felt more like conversations. She wants to do keynotes and she has that spark inside of her to do them, but she also expressed worry that a keynote doesn’t necessarily feel like a conversation, especially if there are a lot of people in the audience. I had an idea: What would happen if she walked onstage for her keynote and just . . . sat down? What if she spoke like she was sitting down and having a conversation with a friend? Her face lit up. “Really?” she replied. “I can do that?!”
So she tried it. The next time she practiced her opening story onstage, she walked right up to the edge, sat down, and spoke to us from there. All of a sudden, she was completely herself. The way she told her story was magical.
Two of the other speakers leaned heavily into memorization and referencing their notes. I noticed that when they spoke to us casually from the stage or told a story off the cuff, their stories felt natural and compelling. But when they got up there with their notes and tried to deliver what they had written and memorized, it fell flat. It was clear to me that they were becoming disconnected from their hearts, so I challenged them to put down their notes, forget about what was in their heads, and tell us their stories like they would share them with a friend over coffee. The difference was night and day. They were open, natural, funny. The change was so drastic that it actually brought tears to my eyes.
The final speaker had excellent delivery, but I felt there was a disconnect between the stories he shared and what he was truly passionate about. He’d come to the retreat with a full keynote outlined and ready to go, and when he practiced giving it onstage, he was good, but I felt like we hadn’t tapped into the full potential of his message yet. I noticed that there were a few times in his keynote when he referenced space and space exploration—his biggest passions outside of his work—and his whole demeanor changed. Any time he talked about space, he was more warm and his eyes lit up. That was what I wanted more of, so I encouraged him to talk more about space in his keynote.
The next day, we workshopped his content and connected each of his stories and takeaways to his greatest passion. The next time he practiced his keynote, it was like he’d stepped into a different version of himself as a speaker right before our eyes. His message is so unique and compelling. Again, magical.
One of the coolest parts of all of this for me was watching the moment when each of these speakers said something like, “Wait… I can do that?” It’s how I felt when I got the feedback to open with a personal story. I remember that it felt too good to be true, or too easy. Like . . . you mean I can just be myself?
From the outside, the shifts that each of these speakers needed to make seemed obvious to me. All I was doing was helping them align their stage presence with who they really are. But to them, it was anything but obvious—and at first, they had a hard time accepting that that was “all” they needed to do. How could something that feels so simple and natural be the answer? Surely, it must be more complicated.
I think that many of us have this belief that we need to be someone we aren’t in order to be trusted or seen as capable. We create personas of who we think we need to be and present that version of ourselves. This group of speakers likely came to this retreat thinking that they needed to somehow look, sound, and act like other professional speakers they’d seen in order to be considered speakers of high caliber. But all I saw was that these personas kept their audiences from connecting with the beautiful people they really are.
Imagine how much more magnetic we could be if we trusted ourselves to follow our intuition. Imagine what we could do if we had the courage to be us. Sometimes, it takes an outsider’s perspective to encourage us to go for it. But it can also come from within. Ask yourself, “What feels the most like me? What would be the simplest thing for me to do right now?” Often, that is your answer.
There’s a quote that I cut from a magazine and glued to my 2025 vision board that really sums this up. It says: “Embracing the most you version of you isn’t always easy. It takes wisdom, practice, and above all, courage.” I think it’s simple to figure out what feels the most like “you,” but it can be hard to embrace it. That’s the part that takes courage. It takes courage to be the person who says, “I feel the most comfortable and authentic when I’m seated, so I’m going to go out there and sit on the stage.” Or, in my case, “I feel the most comfortable and authentic when I’m speaking from my heart and telling stories, so I’m not going to use a slide deck.” It takes courage to embrace the person you authentically are, and when you do, you will show up as your most magnetic, inspirational self.
So now, it’s your turn. Have you ever made a shift that helped you show up more authentically? If so, what was it? Is there anywhere in your life where you want to make a shift toward being more authentic? Hit reply and tell me more. My team and I love reading your responses and learning about what resonates with you.
Cheers to the magic of authenticity!
Big hugs,
