If you're going to bomb, bomb spectacularly.

They say there’s nothing more painful to watch than a comedian bombing.

Now, I’ve never done stand up comedy, but I’ve performed a set at a very poorly promoted gig to about 8 people at The Tote. And 7 of those people were probably just the other guys who were on next, and the other, my girlfriend. What a flex that is.

Presenting to a lifeless room is one of the hardest things you have to do in this job. Especially when you’re putting your absolute everything into something you’ve already poured your absolute everything into. But it’s something you’re unfortunately going to have to get familiar with.

Many years ago, an especially fun (and great) client told me that earlier in her career she’d had a boss that trained their staff ‘to never give them anything’. No matter if the presentation and the work was good or bad, ‘you always just sit there emotionless’. Don’t smile, don’t laugh, don’t react. Make them sweat. Keep them guessing. Now, I never went to a fancy business school so I’m not quite sure as to whether there’s some galaxy brain business genius going on here that I’m too stupid to understand, but to me that just sounds like psychopathy. (And, thankfully, she thought the same.)

The thing is though, you will come across this in this business. A lot. The feeling that you’re not, in fact, presenting to a team of eager marketers ready to hear your amazing ideas, but a room full of expressionless giant stone heads from Easter Island. The joy of working through the night and the weekend just to end up presenting to a guy who decides now is the perfect time to open his laptop and go through his e-mails. Enthusiastically perform a script to someone who’d rather twiddle away on her phone. Work up the strength to deliver ‘concept 3’ to a room so quiet that a bee farting could’ve broken the sound barrier at any moment during the prior two concepts. I’m still unsure as to whether any of this is consciously performative or socially obtuse behaviour, but regardless, you’re likely to come across people with an incredible ability to suck the life and motivation out of a room.

Stay the course. Keep the energy up. Don’t defeat yourself in your own mind. Push through the sick feeling in your stomach. Tell yourself you’re crushing it. Because you actually fucking might be. You just never know.

One of the best clients I ever worked for was actually quite intimidating to present to. He’d sit there with a furrowed brow, looking either angry, confused, concerned, or all three, for an entire presentation. But then at the end, after a long pause, would usually say, “I fucking love it”. Despite this, it still terrified me every single time. I could never tell. It would still take the eventual “You’ve bloody nailed it again” for me to exhale and start breathing again. The repeated loss of oxygen to the brain probably caused long term damage.

Because the thing is, you just never know. You don’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives. You don’t know what’s going on back at the office. Or at home. You don’t know what meeting they just left, or have right after. You don’t know if budgets have been cut. A friend has been made redundant. Rumours of a takeover or merger.

And you don’t know, yet, that the reason they always looked angry, confused, and concerned, is because they always forgot their glasses and were simply straining to see the slides whilst attentively focusing on the work. (As was the case in my prior example.)

We’re a small part of many things that orbit the lives of the people we work with. And you can’t always judge others’ intentions.

But you can control your own. So always keep swinging for the fence. Even if it feels like you’re going down in a ball of flames. Make it a blaze of glory. Give them the fireworks.

Because, who knows, maybe they just forgot their glasses and actually fucking love it.

(And, who care, even if you are dying a horrible death, might as well make your last words famous.)