Play the coffee shop gig like it’s the arena. The arena has a habit of finding people who did.

How you treat small opportunities is how you will treat large ones, because the habit forms at the size you practice it. Nobody switches into a higher standard the moment the stakes rise, they arrive with whatever they have been rehearsing. The small room is also where the people who open doors happen to be sitting, unannounced.

Take the next low-stakes version seriously: the small audience, the unglamorous shift, the early draft. Prepare for it as though it counted. It probably counts more than the size suggests.