I saw Rick Lozano speak recently, and I’ll say this plainly: he was incredible. If you get the chance to see him, take it. At one point in his program, Rick shared a story about someone once telling him they wanted to be him, and Rick had turned it into a parody song about the whole idea. It was funny. It also made a serious point.

Rick’s entire program was about authenticity; being original, being yourself, refusing to become a copy of someone else, no matter how much you admire them.

I have a confession here. Early in my speaking career, there was a colleague I deeply admired. I liked her pacing, her stories, the way she held a room. So I started, without fully realizing it, sounding a little like her. Same pauses. Similar phrasing. I thought I was learning. What I was actually doing was becoming a slightly worse version of somebody else, instead of a good version of myself, and of course it didn’t work.

While it’s great to admire and in some cases emulate those you respect, you still need to be you. Admiring someone is different than imitating someone.

Whose style have you been “borrowing” and what would it look like to trade it in for your own?