Stop performing, start working
Hey, Nikki here.
Alex McNamara wanted to be a movie star. But after needing to go to rehab in her early 20s, she ended up becoming a welder, a rigger, a technical director, and a Yale School of Drama MFA graduate.
She has built on Broadway (including the first Hamilton show), led a crew of 600 at Soundstorm in Saudi Arabia, and built a massive following teaching construction to people who never thought the trades were for them.
She’s also the founder of Built Pretty — a social platform she’s using to teach tool history, job site basics, and the language of the trades to anyone willing to learn.
Her path here was not a straight line. That’s exactly what makes this conversation worth your time.
Why this one matters:
Alex spent years on job sites trying to disappear. Wearing clothes that didn’t fit, changing the way she talked, doing everything she could think of to not stand out as the only woman in the room. And her work suffered. Not because of the room. Because she wasn’t being herself.
The moment that changed, and what we can all learn from her, is what this episode is really about.
#1 Stop masking — your work will get better
Alex bought men’s clothes way too big for her, switched cigarette brands, started spitting on job sites to genuinely try to become someone the room would accept. They knew she was a woman the entire time. And she wasn’t getting called back to jobs. Not because of her gender. Because something was off.
When she stopped performing toughness she didn’t feel and started asking for help, her work improved dramatically. The room didn’t change, instead, she stopped hiding from herself.
Takeaway: Performing a version of yourself costs more than it protects you.
Try this: Name one thing you’re doing at work to fit in that isn’t actually you. Then stop doing it for a week and see what changes.
#2 Act as if success was inevitable
Alex moved to New York with $200, a guitar, and a tool bag. Slept on a friend’s couch. Later walked away from a stable Juilliard job, with a pension, benefits, Upper West Side apartment, for a two-month freelance contract and nothing guaranteed after.
She did it because she’d already done the hardest thing she’d ever have to do: getting sober. Having already hit her lowest low, there was nothing left to be afraid of. “Act as if success is inevitable,” she said. Because it is.
Takeaway: The hardest thing you’ve already survived is permission to go after whatever comes next.
Try this: Write down the hardest moment you’ve already gotten through. Then look at whatever is scaring you now and ask honestly, is this actually harder than that?
#3 Kindness is a professional strategy
Leading 600 people at Soundstorm across languages, cultures, and war-torn histories, Alex came back with one lesson above everything else: kindness gets you farther than anything.
Understanding how people work, where they come from, what “yes” actually means in their language. That’s what kept the build moving. Not authority. Not volume. Patience and genuine respect. That’s the lesson from a $300 million festival. It’s also the lesson from every job site she’s ever walked onto.
Takeaway: On any crew, in any country, kindness isn’t soft. It’s how the work gets done.
Try this: Before your next show, take five minutes to learn one thing about the background or working style of someone on your crew you don’t know well.
If you want the full conversation, listen to Episode #63 of The Giggs Podcast with Alex McNamara.
SPOTIFY | APPLE | YOUTUBE
— Nikki
P.S. One line I loved: Alex said, “the trades saved her life,” and she wants to make them as accessible to anyone as possible, because they could save someone else’s too. The work most people in this industry do with their hands every day is just as meaningful as the show it builds.
