Welcome to our second article with Jenny Lindblad. In our first article, we talked about Tips on how to make a great pitch, for this article we talked about how people can overcome stage fright.
Pitching involves public speaking but not everyone is comfortable with the idea of speaking in front of an audience. Jenny shares with us her tips and practices on how to feel more relaxed on stage and how to do better while you deliver your pitch.
Some people are afraid of public speaking what’s your advice for people to overcome it?
“The one thing I focus on a lot with start-ups that are really afraid of pitching on a big stage is to practice.”
It might seem mainstream and silly, but Jenny explains that practice can truly help a speaker gain more confidence in themselves. She encourages speakers to practice their pitches and not to memorize them completely. As Jenny mentioned in the previous article speakers shouldn’t memorize their pitches word by word, she explains that if a speaker is nervous and if they forget a word in their pitch, they tend to get stuck.
So, she advised that speakers should know the key parts and keywords of their pitch so that no matter what is thrown at them they can easily adjust their pitch.
“It’s not about them when they’re up on stage it’s about the product.”
Jenny says that one way for speakers to calm themselves is to change how they perceive the situation. Speakers should remember that pitching is not about the speaker, but it is about the product or the idea that they’d like to promote. She says that when speakers start to think about it that way, they end up delivering their pitches more comfortably and passionately.
Do you have any pre-stage practices that you teach your students before they speak in front of people?
She recently practiced her own advice at TEDx Stockholm where she was one of the two hosts. It was the biggest TEDx event in the Nordics with more than 1100 people attending the event. So just minutes before running down the stairs at the Waterfront Congress Center she did the following.
#1 “Visualize the feeling that you will have once you have finished your pitch while you are still on stage.”
Jenny would ask speakers to think about how they would feel once they are done delivering their pitch while remaining on stage. She wants the speaker to focus on that feeling because instead of feeling nervousness the speaker would start to look forward to that feeling.
#2 “I do my own version of Carolina Klüft”
Carolina Klüft was a former Swedish Olympian she competed in different sports such as track and field, heptathlon, triple jump, long jump, and pentathlon. Jenny shares that she is also known for her pre-competition where she would hit her legs 3 times to get her blood flowing. Jenny says that before she goes on stage, she would hit her legs three times and strike a power pose, she would do this set three times. After she does that her mind is still calm, but her body is awake and full of energy.
#3 “Last of all I tell them to just go out there and have some fun”
Jenny would always remind her speakers to have fun. She understands that doing a pitch can be quite overwhelming, but it can also be very fun. Speakers should keep in mind that they should enjoy the opportunity that they have to speak in front of a great audience about the product or ideas that they have worked hard for.
