Hey Reader,

Let me introduce you to Phoebe.

Phoebe is really good at her job. She works in publishing. She’s excited to go to work every day (and, let’s be honest, just as excited to finish), and she loves the challenge it gives her. It also means a lot of pitches and presentations.

She’s been given the chance to lead a pitch to a prospective client who could bring in serious revenue for the company. She’s worked hard on it. Her slides are down to a T, with trigger words placed exactly where she’s worried she might forget. She’s rehearsed it over and over, pacing round her living room until her Apple Watch was genuinely impressed with her step count. Ten minutes before the meeting, she ran through it one last time at the water cooler with her work wife, Lauren, who gave her the best pep talk. It went really well.

Now she’s in the meeting room with the big shots. The presentation starts and all eyes turn to her.

Her mouth is completely dry. She takes a gulp of water and is certain everyone can hear her swallow. And the first sentence, the one she knew perfectly at the water cooler ten minutes ago, is just gone.

She stands there, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, turning a slightly flushed shade of pink. Then she just starts talking. Faster. She rambles. She struggles through the first few slides until, eventually, she picks up her thread and finds her rhythm.

But the start was a shambles, and she knows the start was the part that mattered most.

For the rest of the day, people are lovely. “You did really well.” “It was only your first one.” “It gets easier.” All the niceties, with that subtle undertone she can’t unhear: you messed it up.

On the train home, one thought plays on a loop: I knew this yesterday. What is wrong with me? What am I not getting that everyone else seems so good at?

Here’s the thing. Nothing is wrong with Phoebe.

She didn’t forget her point. It was all right there. But her body read “lots of important eyes on me” as a threat, and when that happens, it puts survival ahead of sentences. The words were still there. She just lost access to them for a moment.

Unfortunately, we tend to tell ourselves that moment means we’re not good enough. So Phoebe is about to go home and spend another evening going over her notes, trying to work out what she couldn’t remember.

But the answer isn’t more rehearsal. What she needs is a plan: a solid plan for the moment the words are just out of reach.

Your quick win this week: plan for the blank

If this sounds familiar, decide this now, before you need it, so there’s nothing to think about in the moment except these four steps.

1. Close your mouth. A closed mouth reads to your audience as thinking, not panicking. I realised this a couple of weeks ago, watching my first-year students give their first presentations of the term. Several of them stood there with their mouths open while they searched for their next point. They weren’t panicking, they were thinking, but it didn’t look that way. So I told them: close your mouth.
2. Breathe out slowly through your nose, longer than you breathe in, and let both breaths be a little longer than usual for you. This helps switch on your parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and digest” side of you. You’ve heard me talk about this many times, and I’ll keep saying it.
3. Press your feet into the floor and notice how that feels in your body.
4. Use a bridge, if you want one. You don’t have to say anything. But if it helps, try: “Let me just gather myself.”

People don’t mark you down for being nervous. They tend to warm to that little bit of honesty, and it switches on the rooting-for-you instinct we all seem to have.

The whole thing takes about five seconds. To the room, it looks like a considered pause, someone taking care to do this well. It doesn’t look like you don’t know your stuff.

Try it once this week somewhere low stakes: a team check-in, a Zoom call, ordering a coffee, or calling for a taxi. (That last one still gives me the jitters.) You’re teaching your body that losing your place is something you can come back from.

A little update (and a big thank you)

You helped me choose the name for my new session, and I’m so grateful. It’s called the Presentation Comeback Session. We changed just one word from my original favourite, and I much prefer it. You’re brilliant.

It’s one session focused on exactly this: recovering when things wobble mid-presentation. I’m finishing a few tweaks behind the scenes, getting the tech set up properly and the sales page looking tip top. I’ll share all the details in the coming weeks.

Until then, hit reply and tell me: when do you usually go blank? In the first minute, or when someone asks you a question?

I read every reply, and every reply enters you into a prize draw to win a free Presentation Comeback Session. It doesn’t have to be for you. If you know someone who’d find it useful, you’re welcome to gift it to them.

That’s the spirit I’m bringing to Black Friday this year, too. No discounts, just passing good things forward.

Steady together,
Ellie xx