Once Upon a Time in Small Business by Lee McCaffrey Krupa

Author:Lee McCaffrey Krupa [Jack Webb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2018-05-06T16:00:00+00:00

THE DOWNWARD CONFIDENCE SPIRAL

I’d stood up confident and ready to own the room. But it didn’t take long for my first stumble to send me spiralling into panic mode.

This wasn’t my pitch. I wasn’t speaking on behalf of me. Instead of taking a breath and continuing on, my eyes dropped straight to the script, frantically searching for the spot I’d gone wrong.

Knees shaking and heart pounding, it felt like an eternity before I finally located the line I’d stuffed up. Deep breath. Off I went again. But I’d recovered from one stumble only to head straight into another. The further I got into the pitch, the more mistakes I made and the worse my confidence became. Instead of smiling, projecting confidence and delivering my message, I was head down. Eyes on the script. Pitching directly to my iPhone.

By the time I got to the end, my body language said it all. Arms crossed over my chest, I’d retreated, and was presenting completely closed off. During the pitch I hadn’t made eye contact with anyone in the room. The volume of my voice was so low I even heard someone say, “I’m trying to listen … I can’t hear what she’s saying.” I fell back into my seat with a huge sigh of relief.

The next week I had to do it all again, except this time it was vastly different. This time I was ready with “my why”. I didn’t rush into the pitch, I took a moment to settle in, and when the first stumble came I was ready. I paused, took a breath, and refocused my attention to why I was there. The stumble went unnoticed. Pretty soon I began gaining momentum again, and before I knew it I had connected with every person in the room.

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