Performance Anxiety is Normal, You are Normal

Performance Anxiety is Normal, You are Normal

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to the Business Development Podcast. On today's episode, we are chatting about performance, anxiety and stagefright. Yep, you bet. We're gonna address this because it happens to most of us, and in business development and entrepreneurship, it happens more often than you'd like to admit. So today we're gonna normalize it a little bit.

We're gonna have some discussions around it, and hopefully come up with some coping strategies to make you more effective. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with Business Owners, CEOs and Business Development Reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business. Brought to you by Capital Business Development Capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the The Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host. Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello everyone. Welcome back to episode 13 of the Business Development Podcast. It's an absolute pleasure to be on here with you today. I just wanted to reach out and say thank you. Thank you to everybody who's been reaching out and sending thank you messages, telling me your stories, sending, sending ratings and reviews.

My way, guys, I appreciate it so much. My guys and gals, my business development and entrepreneurs of the future. I appreciate each and every one of you, and I appreciate all the kind words that have been coming my way with regards to, with regards to my podcast and frankly what it's been doing for your yourselves and your businesses.

I I've had so many great messages, thank yous reviews sent. I just wanted to reach out before this episode starts today, and just give another thanks because the reality is I couldn't do this without the support. It would be very hard to continue to do this week over week and put myself out.

Out there in this way, which is frankly for me, quite vulnerable and, and be able to provide this information if I didn't know that it was helping people. So I just wanted to say thank you to all of you who have reached out, left me a rating and review shot me just a quick email and just let me know your story or a LinkedIn message to those of you that have.

Thank you. It means the world to me and it truly allows me to continue to do this and feel great about it. So thanks for all the support. I appreciate it. We hit a huge milestone yesterday. We have now crossed the 1000 downloads mark. Guys, that's huge. We're on episode 13 and we have now, I believe, close to 1100 downloads.

So for those of you who have listened to the show and who continue to show up week over week, I appreciate you. I love you. I appreciate all the support and I hope that I can continue to drive value for both yourself and your business. Okay, let's let's move forward. I wanted to address my last week's guest, Justin LaRocque.

Justin, I just wanted to shout out and say thank you so much for your support of the Business Development Podcast. Justin has been advocating for this podcast. Basically since my first couple weeks. He kind of reached out and said, Hey, I see what you're doing here. I see that you're an entrepreneur and you've been trying to use this this outlet.

To, to get your word out. And he just wanted to say that it was great and that he was inspired by it. And he's looking to do kind of the same thing with video over time and potentially do a podcast of his own. So just wanted to say thank you Justin. Thank you for coming on. You were an inspiration to everybody who listened to that episode.

It was huge. And your discussion on working capital and what people can do with regards to their receivables and hopefully getting paid on time was highly, highly beneficial. And I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for putting yourself out there and you're killing it.

And guys, if you guys need any financial advice, if you are if you're within Canada, I wouldn't hesitate to reach out to Justin LaRocque of ROC Advisors. Okay, well today, today is an interesting episode. It is an episode that is timely for me. Because I have told you plenty of times, I, I am a bit of an introvert, right?

We've had this conversation, we have had this conversation. Well, and I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so let's put those two things together, bit of a perfectionist. Bit of an introvert, what do you get? You get somebody who struggles at times with stage fright and performance anxiety. I know it's kind of hard to believe because I run a business development firm, now I operate a podcast and I go to plenty of meetings with incredibly high level people and sit and have normal everyday discussions with multimillionaires, with incredibly successful entrepreneurs, and it's awesome , and it's incredibly nerve-wracking and I would be lying if I said that I did not get performance anxiety and stage fright sometimes when I was going into these meetings, I actually had a meeting just this week where I hadn't experienced it in quite some time, and it was with somebody who I look up to immensely, who frankly is incredibly accomplished a thousand times more accomplished than I am. And sometimes being in a room with somebody like that can make you feel a little bit small.

And I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're a millionaire and a room of billionaires. The reality is there's always somebody out there who can, who , who is more accomplished than you, who frankly you look up to that. You know, maybe it's a mentor, maybe it's just an acquaintance or, or maybe it's a client, but there are always people out there who can sometimes make you feel a little bit small.

And I just wanted to, I wanted to make this a bit normal, okay? Because we don't talk about this, we don't talk about this in university and college. We don't talk about how nerve wracking and scary it can be sometimes to be in a room or have to pitch a product to a bunch of people who, frankly, you feel are more accomplished than you, who you look up to.

And with that can bring a sense of anxiety, specifically stagefright or performance anxiety. And I wanted to talk to it today because I want you to know that if you experience this, if you experience stagefright nervousness, whether it be in an interview, whether it be in, in a meeting with a client, whether it be any type of situation, public speaking.

You are normal, okay? I want you to know this. You are normal. I experience this too many, many, many entrepreneurs and business owners and business development people, we all experience anxiety. We all experience nervousness, and you are not alone. Okay? I, I want that to be the number one message you take out of this today.

If you experience anxiety, performance, anxiety, or stage fright, or a fear of public speaking or a fear of meetings or just, you know, maybe a fear sometimes of like even events, like maybe you're in a chamber ball or something and it's like there's a lot of people and you start to feel a little bit overwhelmed.

I want you to know that you are normal, okay? You are not abnormal, you are normal. And I think by the end of today's episode, you're going to realize that and hopefully the next time that you were in this situation, you don't work yourself up over it quite as much. So let's talk today about what is performance anxiety and stagefright.

The definition I went with today is from better, better help. So I don't know if you're familiar with it, but better help had a really good definition on this, so I just want to go with that today. Performance anxiety is a fear about one's ability to perform a specific task. People experiencing performance anxiety may worry about failing a task before it's even begun.

They might believe failure res will result in humiliation or rejection. Performance anxiety can vary between individuals. Many people experience a mild nervousness before giving a speech or doing a recital, but for some individuals, the thought of performing can cause panic attacks. While performance anxiety can occur with any.

Anxiety around a public presentation or show is actually called stagefright. This is the more common one, guys. This is truly the more common one in the entrepreneurship and business development realm. Most of the stuff that we're gonna experience is called, technically called stagefright, and that's where we are essentially gonna come go up in front of a group of people and maybe do a presentation.

We're going to have a meeting with somebody who's incredibly accomplished, who maybe freaks us out a little bit, or we're just gonna be put in a situation where we have to be uncomfortable a, and speak to a crowd. And this is definitely called stagefright. And here are some of the symptoms that we get in this situation.

So common symptoms of stagefright include excessive sweating, heart palpitation, chills, and elevated blood pressure, a feeling of a knot in your stomach, increased errors in the performance (this was me), shaking and nausea. Backing out of our performance due to just inability, like you just feel unable to even do it.

So I want to talk to this a little bit and my experience. Okay, so. I would get stagefright early. So if I knew that I had like a, a meeting that day, that was really important. Let's say that I had a, in my younger days, an interview for a job that I really wanted, or I knew that I had to do a public speech.

Heck, before I was even rolling for that day, I would already start, I would be going over it, back and forth in my head, and what would be happening is I'd be failing in my head before it's even happened. So kind of talking to that first part where it talks about you're essentially, you're essentially like failing in your mind before you even start.

And so that would happen with me and, and I would just work myself up and to a point where like, frankly, I would, I would start to get like a fear, almost like, almost like a, a crazy tightness in my chest, right? Like at the time I didn't really understand what anxiety is, frankly, I haven't, I haven't really experienced anxiety in my life.

Not truly. I had panic attacks when I was younger, but they were like kind of one of things, but I didn't really experience anxiety. In my life until my mid thirties. So it was a later thing that kind of came on for me. So at the time, I didn't even understand what I was experiencing, but at the time, what I was experiencing was anxiety and it would be like a tightness in my chest.

I would start to get kind of sweaty and I would start to go over it in my head over and over and over again, and unfortunately the, it would just, it would just feed the beast, right? Every time that I did that, it would get worse and worse until I would show up for that interview or that meeting, and I would literally be shaking.

And when I would be having that conversation, sometimes I couldn't even talk like, I know this sounds crazy. It sounds a little bit hard to believe coming from somebody who's now my job is talking, it's business development. Heck, I have a podcast, right? But there was a time, let me tell you when this would not have been possible for me.

It took a lot of practice and repetition for me to get good at public speaking. It took a lot of practice and repetition to meet with people over and over and over again until I lost that fear, which frankly, let me tell you, I just said it at the beginning of this episode. , it still exists. Okay. What I want you to know is everybody experiences this and it never truly goes away.

What happens is you get better at handling the situation. So over time, after you meet with people over and over and over and over again, and hopefully most of the time, let's say like 95% of the time, those meetings go very well for you, you start to desensitize and step away from the anxiety response that was so automatic for you before, which is why I was kind of talking to you guys about confidence and just working your way through things, because truly showing up and just doing your best, whether that be showing up to do the meeting, give your pitch, even if you're scared.

Even if it's hard at first, you are only gonna get better at it with repetition, which is why consistency in repetition in business development is critical to you getting better at it and having more success as you move forward. So I want you to know that even career performers have pre-show stress. So civil rights activist, Mahatma Gandhi, struggled with public speaking for years, guys, Gandhi.

Gandhi struggled with public speaking. Okay. Singer Barbara Streisand experienced severe stage fright at the height of her career. So like, imagine that guys, like, not even at the beginning of her career, which I imagine she had then too. So I think this is kind of like just a weird thing from the internet, but ultimately, People who experience stage fright, we always experience a certain level of stage fright.

Even at our most successful, even when we've done it a thousand times, there are still circumstances, and I wanna put it this way, there are still circumstances which will trigger a stage fright response in you. Okay. I wanted to talk to this because I literally had one of those this week. So guys, I have had probably in my business development career at this point.

I wanna say thousands. I think that that's a fair statement. Probably thousands of meetings in my business development and sales career, and I still, at times, in the right circumstances with people that I either look up to or that I find incredibly accomplished when I go to have that meeting. I can experience stage fright.

I still have those moments. Why? Because I'm a perfectionist and I wanna look good. And even though I can't control that, like I can control what, what I say, I can control how I show up to that meeting. I can't control how I'm perceived. No, but none of us can, we can't. We can't control that. Okay. And unfortunately, we're, as business owners, entrepreneurs, business development people, we try our best.

To control a situation to the best of our ability, right? We try to give ourselves the best possible odds of showing up smart, concise, like we know what we're talking about respectable, right? We do our best at that. But the reality is we, we actually don't control the situation, and I think most of us do end up experiencing a stage fright or some type of just, just, just a feeling of lack at times. Okay. And I want you to know that that is incredibly normal. You do not lack anything. You are probably amazing. You are probably showing up as best as you could given this situation, okay? And I want you to know that it's okay. I truly want you to know that it is okay.

It is okay to be scared. It is okay to have stage fright. It is okay to experience anxiety. You are a normal human being. Heck, you're doing it anyway. Okay? And that's all I can say. The best thing that you can do is just try to do it anyway, because if you get through it, if you get out the other end, The next time is just going to be a little bit easier, and you are amazing and I believe in you and you can do it.

You can work your way through the scared, you can work your way through the stage fright, and you can overcome performance anxiety. Okay? I, yeah, it was, it was a tough one today. I wasn't sure whether or not to do this, to be honest with you. This wasn't planned. This, this episode was not planned. I did not plan to do this.

I I just happened to have a day where I was experiencing anxiety and it had, it had been a very long time since I've had this type of anxiety for the reasons I have anxiety for, and I, I want you to understand. Business development people, entrepreneurs, we put ourselves in some pretty hairy situations sometimes, right?

Like there's a lot riding on us, or at least we feel that way. Whether or not there really is or not is kind of up to your perception of it. But we definitely put ourselves in situations where we feel like the world is resting on our shoulders, and a lot of times we take on and bite off more responsibility than we frankly deserve probably a lot of the time.

That can cause insane, insane anxiety, I think. I think business owners, entrepreneurs, business development people have a little more than usual because we put so much on ourselves for the success of our business, right? Or the success of the businesses we're working for. I put a lot of effort into being incredibly successful.

I am so driven to win. I love winning. We've talked about this in plenty of podcast episodes before this, I do my best to win, whether that's be on behalf of myself and my company, or whether that's on behalf of my clients. I want us to be successful. I want, I wanna do everything that I can in my power to make us successful.

And I think you probably do too. If you're listening to this podcast, you are probably a bit of a perfectionist. You probably wanna win. You probably are incredibly driven because you are the type of people who listen to this podcast, okay? And I want you to know that if you experience anxiety, if you experience performance anxiety or stage fright, or you've been in meetings where you've felt maybe a little.

Undervalued or underwhelmed as compared to the person you're meeting with? It's okay. We've all been there. We've all felt that way. And I just want you to know that it is normal. You are normal. You're probably doing better than most because I'm sure there's a lot of people who wouldn't have even showed up to that meeting.

They might have walked away, they might have got scared or canceled. And I've sat around some pretty brave people I've been in, you know, I mean, I'm not gonna say who it was, but I've had somebody even on this podcast who frankly I was so proud of them because they overcame a lot of fear to be on this podcast.

There was a lot of fear around talking to me through a podcast. And I know it sounds kind of weird cuz it's like you think about it and it's like the podcast is nothing until I produce it and send it out to the world, right? Like the reality is there are, there is editing that happens behind the scene here.

There are things that are done to try to make this podcast a little bit better, to make the interviews flow a little bit smoother. Usually minor. But there are things that need to. And even with that understanding, there was a lot of fear regarding this conversation, regarding having this conversation with you, my listeners, and and being vulnerable.

And I want you to understand that there's a lot of vulnerability in coming on as a guest. There's a lot of vulnerability in doing a podcast like this and putting yourself out to the world and um, I just want, I just want everybody to understand that I am proud of all of you. I am anybody who go, who gets out there and you put yourself out there and you try business development, or you try to do a podcast or you try to be a guest, even though you're afraid or you do a public speech even though you're afraid.

It's doing it. Bravery isn't, not being afraid. Bravery is being afraid, but doing something anyway. It's being afraid, but taking action despite being afraid. And so every day, every day that you get up and you're brave and you do something that even though it freaks you out, even though you're in a room with a bunch of people that scare the crap outta you, maybe if you do, You were just a little bit braver than you were the day before, and one day you're gonna wake up and you're gonna be so strong and so brave that almost no meetings are gonna scare you.

And I just, I hope that that inspires you today. I hope that there's a little bit of inspiration that you get out of that to just understand that even me, a seasoned business development person, frankly an expert at business development, at this point in my life, I still get afraid. I still have moments that freak the shit outta me.

I still have meetings with people who, frankly, I'm pretty accomplished and I can, I can be sitting in a room and look up and realize that I am nothing compared to the accomplishments of the person sitting across the table from me. And. It's normal. It's normal to feel that way. It's normal to feel anxiety.

It's normal to be afraid. It's normal to be in tough situations or have hard days. And I just wanna speak to it as well from the standpoint of we all live lives outside of our business life, okay? And those things factor into our business life. So if you're struggling with things at home, if you had a hard week, if your kids, man, you know we have, we have kids.

Kids are tough, kids are tough. They put you in tough situations that you never expected to be in and that you don't frankly have a lot of control over sometimes. And life happens. You know, we are humans first, business people. Second, please remember that we are humans first. We experience human emotion.

We experience human challenges, and I want you to know that I am proud of all of you because we get in and we do this day in, day out. And we, we, we run our businesses, we grow other people's businesses. We have meetings and we we're rock stars despite. Dealing with human challenges week after week. And so I want to end this episode today just by chatting a little bit about what performance anxiety does is not okay.

So performance anxiety, it does not indicate a lack of talent. Let me repeat that. Talented people experience performance, anxiety, stage fright, and just anxiety in general. Okay. Incredibly successful. Accomplished people. People you look up to, I guarantee you. Experience performance anxiety, and stage fright.

You are not alone. You are not alone. And there are things that you can do, not a lot, right? Like obviously we have to work through these things because they're human flight or fight or flight emotions. They're human fight or flight emotions, and there are things that we can do to kind of try to get over them, but really the thing that I've found best is to try to push.

Even though it's hard, even though sometimes sitting down and having that meeting with somebody that you were shaking when you're heading into that meeting with is pretty damn hard. Believe me. I understand, cuz I've been there. What I can say is, Most of those situations where I've ended up in that situation where frankly at first I could barely talk.

At first I was shaky or nervous or sweating, or God knows maybe all of those symptoms that by the time I got about midway through that meeting or midway through that interview, I felt a lot better. You start to realize that the person you're sitting across the table, even if they're incredibly accomplished, even if they were billionairs.

They're also humans, guys. They're just humans. They're just people. They experience family challenges. They experience kid challenges or life just life sucks sometimes they are just as normal as you and me. Okay? So what you'll find if you take on that meeting, even though it freaks you out, is that by midway through that meeting, you're gonna feel a lot better.

You're gonna calm down and hopefully you're going to realize, it wasn't worth the workup in the first place, and the next time that you head into a meeting that is similar, the, it may still happen, but it probably won't be as bad. Okay. What are some things that you can potentially do to reduce this anxiety or this stress?

So, If you experience a severe performance anxiety, like I'm talking, like you get so worked up, maybe you have a meltdown, maybe you, you're crying, maybe you're dealing with just insane, insane anxiety. And I just wanna start this out by saying if this is you, Once again, you are normal. This happens to a lot of people and there are ways through this.

If you experience this level of anxiety to the point where you cannot perform, you cannot show up to that meeting or you have to reschedule or cancel. I would suggest potentially looking into some therapy. Therapy can help you work through this. And, and over time, I want you to know that you can recover.

This is something that you can recover from. This does not have to be a death sentence to your career. You can work through this in therapy. So if you experience a, a level of anxiety that does not allow you to continue, please consider that looking into a professional therapist that can help with that level of anxiety for you.

The next thing is, is maintain momentum, even if you make a mistake. So we chatted about this before when I was talking about how you, if you push through, it can help you. So I've had plenty of meetings where I was, I was anxious or I was struggling, and I just kept going and I knew I made a mistake or I knew that I slurred a word and I, heck, you guys have probably heard me slur a word on this.

And no, it's just, it's just because sometimes I talk fast and sometimes the words jumble together, it just happens. And if that happens, don't freak out. Don't necessarily stop or like, or like start to feel bad about yourself. It's best off just to keep going. If you just keep going, I think you'll find that the momentum will carry you through to the next point.

And if, like I said, if you get far enough along in this meeting, it can definitely help you. It can help you perform better the next time. The more meetings you complete, the, the easier it gets over time. The next thing is visualize success. So, heck, you're sitting in your truck before this meeting and you're freaking out a little bit.

In your mind, instead of picturing a horrible outcome, start to picture a good outcome. And I know that this is easier said than done, believe me, I understand this. But just in your head, try to visualize it. Visualize a successful meeting. Visualize what a successful meeting would look like. What happens if you, if you make a really great impression with this customer?

Do you win a big contract? What do you get from it? I want you to picture the wins in your head. Try to picture the wins. Try, cancel the, the negativity cycle. What we need to do is we need to interrupt the negativity cycle that's going round and round in your head. So I want you to take a minute and try to visualize a success.

Okay? Here's a big one. This one's a big problem for me, and I think was an incredibly huge contributor to my anxiety this week, was I ended up having a lot of caffeine. I love coffee guys. I'm a BD guy. We, we live on coffee and and lunch . We live on coffee and lunch. But the reality is, is that I drink a lot of coffee and I had a really important meeting this week that that freaked me out a little bit.

And I had quite a bit of coffee that morning before I had that meeting, and I know, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was a contributor to the anxiety that I was feeling going into that meeting. And so my tip, okay, and this is a tip to me too, Kelly , if you have an important meeting, Reduce caffeine intake that day.

Maybe don't even have caffeine until after the meeting. Maybe that can be your little reward. If you have a successful meeting, go have a cup of coffee cuz or, or maybe during the meeting, a after you've already calmed down, maybe then have a cup of coffee. But caffeine before your meetings, guys, it can jack up your heart rate, it can jack up or jack up that sweating response.

And the next thing you know, you're feeling, you're feeling anxious. Stay hydrated. So another one. Obviously being dehydrated is never good for our ability to think. If you are hydrated, your brain functions better, everything functions better. So make sure that you're hydrating. If you know you have a meeting that day, maybe instead of having coffee that morning, maybe switch it out for some water.

Have a good sleep. Yes. Good sleep. Okay. We all know if we're tired, if we've been dealing with, with cranky kids or we're just exhausted, our brains are not functioning properly. It makes it incredibly hard. It makes it incredibly hard on a good day, on a day that you don't have a ton of meetings if you're tired.

So make sure that you're getting a good sleep before days that you have critical meetings. Hydrate. Drop the caffeine and I think you're gonna be a little more effective. And then if you can you know what I mean? This, this depends, this depends on the situation, but if you can eating before the performance can help you.

So if you just have a bite to eat, sometimes that can calm your nerves, it can put you in a bit of a relaxed state, and it can help you before you head into that meeting. So, I know a lot of us are typically meeting, especially if you're in business development or an entrepreneur, we have a lot of lunches.

Sometimes we don't have that necessarily opportunity, but maybe what the trick is on that day is that we have breakfast, right? Make sure maybe on the days that you know, you're gonna have a, a, an important business meeting, whether that be a lunch or just something in the afternoon. Make sure that you're having a good breakfast so that you are fueled and ready and everything is firing on all cylinders.

All right. Well, holy cow, that is I did not expect this episode to be to be our episode today, but it is what it is, guys. It is what it is. And sometimes I'm gonna shoot from the hip on these. And this particular one, it fell outta left field. I wasn't expecting to do one on anxiety, but yeah. From time to time in this, in this adult, incredibly busy entrepreneurial life that I live, I experience anxiety and it is normal.

And if you experience anxiety or any other any other challenge, I want you to know that you are normal too. Okay? And just want to thank all of you, all of you who have continued to listen, who continue to tune in week after week, who have liked subscribed, sent me reviews sent me messages on LinkedIn, just letting me know that this is helping you guys.

I appreciate it. Guys and gals, I really, really appreciate your support of the Business Development Podcast, and I do hope that I can continue to pump out information that is valuable and helps you grow in whatever capacity that you were trying to grow. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you've enjoyed the show, please head over to my website.

Please hop, hop onto Spotify, apple Podcasts. And if you could subscribe and leave us a rating, it would be greatly appreciated. It allows us to reach further customers and further further listeners, and hopefully we can benefit a whole bunch of people over time. Once again, this has been Kelly Kennedy.

You're listening to the Business Development Podcast. This has been episode 13. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, we'll see you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you. Capital Business Development, your business development specialists. For more, we invite you to the www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.