What do you do when no-one shows up to your event except for your one handful of fabulous family and friends?
You take all of their love and support and envision it filling up that space. You may not physically fill up the venue with bodies, but it is filled with something even better, …LOVE.
You take a deep breath, you close your eyes, and you f*ing jump! Give them all of yourself! They will catch you and send all the love right back at you.
I learned a lot this past Saturday night at the ARTIST TALK. The room was moved last minute to another venue, as they had double booked. (Their new computer system will help them with this for future events 🙂 ) Only one staff member was on site and she was only 1 month into her position. Emily was fabulous! She did the very best that she could, with what she was given to deal with. She even called her Dad at home to bring in table cloths and try and make up a last minute change of venue signage. She also engage us speakers to make us feel like we were in front of a larger group with attentive questions about our work and it’s process. Give that young lady a raise! please.
The front row was filled with love for me with my husband, my mom, my daughter and my very lovely friend Margaret. The second row had a fabulous lady who is a fan of my work and her friend (who just so happens to have known me 20 years ago).
Derek and I both arrived before the time of the scheduled 6pm talk to set up and make sure that we were prepared, as one should do. The 3rd speaker showed up at 6:30, banging doors and then setting up beside me during my portion. Doing absolutely nothing to be discreet and respectful. She even jumped in a few time to talk (One time I referred to her as a way of discreetly showing her that she was distracting…lol) and then tried to tell me and the audience that I had published my books incorrectly, as she could not locate an ISBN number. UGH! Deep breath Nicci….. keep going…..lol.
I was often distracted and thrown off my talk a few times by my fellow speakers, but I tried to focus on the love in the room keep going for them.
If I was to have a re-do of last Saturday night, I would:
- Speak up and ask the late lady to kindly just sit and wait until it is her turn, as she was distracting myself as much as she was distracting the audience.
- I would try even harder to ignore what is going on around me and go ahead with my loosely planned talk, even though the audience already knew my work.
- I would show the planned 6 minute video.
- I would hold up the visual samples and discuss them with the audience, as I had spent a couple days getting them all prepared and in order for this event.
I tried to take example from one of my best friends. He is a musician, and on occasion, depending on the venue/location, only 3-5 of us show up. He still puts on a great show, but then ad-libs a bit by letting us put in song requests. We all sing along from the audience, with our ‘best’ voices…lol… and sometimes get up and dance like no one is watching. In all truth, some of those are our best nights out!!
Here is the video that my husband graciously filmed for me at the event: (lol, I even ended the video early, as she started talking right beside my very visible camera 🙂 😉 …..lol)
Keep smiling and creating my friends!
Onward and upward, Nicci
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