On Monday night I won The Moth’s virtual GrandSLAM championship. My seventh championship so far. My first virtual championship.
Credit Kat Koppett, who doesn’t even realize how she has changed my life.
We all need a Kat Koppett in our lives. Lots of Kat Koppetts if possible.
Back in early April of 2020, as the world shut down in response to the pandemic, my speaking gigs quickly disappeared.
National Book Festival? Gone.
Visiting Professorship at the University of Hartford? Not anymore.
Keynote at NYU? Cancelled.
Workshops. Library appearances. Professional coaching. Standup. The Moth. All gone in the blink of an eye.
Then there was a weekend of teaching and performing at the MOPCO Improv Theater in Schenectady, NY, as part of a family trip to Niagara Falls during April vacation. I assumed it would also be cancelled, but theater owner Kat Koppett contacted me about teaching and performing online instead.
My thought:
Never going to happen. I will never teach or perform online. I refuse to do something as sad and stupid as speaking into a camera to an audience who I can’t see or hear. I’ll ride out the pandemic, I decided. Write books. Bide my time.
Bur Kat persisted, insisting that it could be done well. Promising to support me. Assuring me that it could be great.
I didn’t believe her, but upon hearing about the economic state of theaters across the country, I reconsidered. It would still be sad and stupid, I knew, but perhaps it could also bring some much needed revenue to the theater.
“Fine,” I thought. “I’ll do it. But it will be sad and stupid.”
But Kat pushed me to maintain a positive attitude. Lean into the advantages of online teaching and performing. Advised me on ways to think beyond the traditional approach to performing onstage and make it work for a virtual audience.
I listened. I obeyed. But I still didn’t believe.
When the weekend arrived, I found myself in a Zoom room, teaching nearly 200 people from around the world. Six different countries and at least a dozen different states were represented. With Kat operating the Zoom controls, handling the tech, and encouraging me constantly, I taught and later performed for the camera for the first time.
It wasn’t the same as being live, and it definitely wasn’t as good as being in the same room with other human beings, but it worked. I found joy in teaching and performing that I didn’t think possible. I learned that watching someone react to my words and ideas onscreen was still pretty great, even if I couldn’t hear them.
Best of all, people from all over the world – folks who could’ve never made the trek to Connecticut to spend a day with me – had a chance to attend my workshop and show. Fans who I didn’t even know I had showed up in numbers I never expected.
And they liked it, too. So many of them expressed appreciation for moving my work online.
So Kat and I did it again, and it worked again. I got better. Kat helped me get better. Then we did it again.
A couple months later, as businesses around the world shifted online, corporations began calling, asking to work with me seemingly en masse. Companies large and small – Fortune 500 companies – wanted to hire me to work with their marketing departments, their advertising departments, their salespeople, their CEOs, their training departments, and more.
Had Kat not convinced me to give online teaching a try, my response to these companies would have been no.
I don’t teach online. It’s sad and stupid. Wait for the world to return to normal.
But with Kat still in my ear, telling me to lean into the advantages of online instruction and performance, I said yes.
My business exploded. In the course of a single month, my entire life changed. I began working with clients all over the world in a field that seems to have an endless number of opportunities.
Then came my own online workshops. Four to six week courses with storytellers from around the world. Then virtual Speak Up shows, where Elysha and I met new people and expanded our audience far beyond the borders of New England. Eventually, The Moth joined the virtual world, producing StorySLAMs, so I began competing there, using the tricks that Kat had taught me and some that I discovered for myself to perform and win online.
Monday might’s Moth GrandSLAM championship was in many ways a culmination of this journey. I’ve been fortunate enough to perform in 29 Moth GrandSLAMs over the past decade in New York and Boston, and it is by far my favorite stage to perform. While I can’t wait to get back to New York and Boston and perform live for The Moth again, the Moth’s online slams and GrandSLAM have kept me connected to the community, honing my craft, and performing for audiences of Moth fans.
My favorite kind of people.
It’s not the same, and it’s certainly not as great as a live Moth audience, but Kat was right. It’s good. It works. It even has some advantages that a live performance does not.
I wouldn’t have said yes when The Moth called, asking me to perform in Monday’s championship, had it not been for Kat Koppett’s gentle, supportive, persistent urging for me to expand beyond my comfort zone.
We all need a Kat Koppett in our lives. We all need someone who is willing to tell us that we can do more. Encourage us to do more. Support us as we struggle to do more. We need those people in our lives who can tell us that our vision is far too limited for our potential. That we are being stubborn and foolish. We need to be bold and brave.
I needed someone like Kat Koppett to tell me to put on my big boy pants and try something new.
Oftentimes that person is Elysha Dicks. Many times that person is me.
But sometimes we get lucky enough to have someone like Kat enter our lives, offering us the opportunity to see the world in a new way. Pushing us to change our lives in new and fantastic ways.
I got lucky back in April of 2020 when Kat used her time, energy, and expertise to get my stubborn, narrow-minded ass in gear.
I got really, really lucky. One year later, my life has changed in previously unimaginable ways.
I owe it all to Kat.
May you all be fortunate enough to find your own Kat Koppett someday.
