Sophie was an architect and had decided to set up her own practice. This was something she had always wanted to do since she started studying and now she had decided to do it. She had always worked for much larger practices and never needed to worry about where the work came from as she was always allocated it. Now, she realised, she had to find her own customers. She had the great idea of attending a conference, where there would be many prospective clients, and hiring a side-room where she could give a talk about her ideas and philosophy. The only problem was this side-room had no audio/visual equipment so Sophie would have to speak in public for the first time. And she dreaded it.

Sophie brought with her to the training a sample of the presentation she was going to give and I have to say, for a beginner it was pretty good. We made a few tweaks and I made a few suggestions for small changes which she took on board, but what I was really worried about was her nervousness damaging her good preparation. But what to do? We looked at nerves and examples of where they come from and many real life examples of what people had done to mitigate them. We looked at what the possible ‘fear’ could be and I highlighted that a certain amount of nerves are actually useful as they give energy and focus. The problem only occurs when nerves pass a certain point and they start to get in the way. At the end of the training Sophie thanked me and said she felt much better about the upcoming event. As I watched her leaving the training room I did hope for the best while wondering what would actually happen. I needn't had worried. As it turned out, Sophie used every tip and trick she picked up during the training which, as she said, helped her find the one thing which made all the difference.

It turns out that Sophie had the wonderful idea of greeting every audience member at the door to her side-room and getting their name. This had the effect of making her feel she was no longer presenting to strangers and the nerves diminished to the point where no one could see them. Sophie is still running her successful architecture business to this day.