568 – Own the Spotlight with Linda Ugelow
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Welcome to The How of Business with your host, Henry Lopez. The podcast that helps you start, run, and grow your small business. And now, here is your host. Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. This is Henry Lopez, and my special guest today is Linda Ugalo. Linda, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Henry.

This is an important topic, because if you've thought of public speaking and the thought of that, or any kind of speaking or communicating that's critical or important, and that makes you cringe, of course, you're not alone, but that doesn't make it any less difficult. But what if you could actually learn to enjoy it?

And so Linda Ugalo, who's a speaking confidence coach and author of her book, Delight in the Limelight, is with me today. And she's going to share insights and techniques to help people overcome the fear and self-doubt

and communicate with clarity and confidence. And so that's what we're going to get into. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about her in a moment, but to find all of the Howa Business resources, including the show notes page for this episode, and that's where we're going to have some links to some downloads and other information. So the show notes page, as well as information on my one-on-one and group coaching programs, just go to thehowabusiness.com. I also invite you to please consider supporting this show on Patreon.com

and subscribe wherever you might be listening so you don't miss any new episodes. Let me tell you a little bit more about Linda, then we'll get into the conversation. Linda Ugalo is a speaking confidence and vocal coach, a podcast host. She has a podcast of her own, and the author of the book that I mentioned, Delight in the Limelight. Formerly stricken with public speaking fear herself, so we'll explore that, she now helps entrepreneurs and professionals transform their experience of speaking from dread to

to delight, whether they're online or on stage or in the media or in a meeting room. She lives in Bedford, Massachusetts. And so once again, Linda Ugalo, welcome to the show. I'm very glad to get into our conversation. Absolutely. Yeah. So let's start. I usually like to start, though, as to how you got here today. Tell us briefly, because you have a very varied and interesting background. How did you, what was your early career and what did you do back then?

Well, my early wannabe career was teaching dance, primarily dance movement therapy for regular people, meaning dance for self-discovery and personal development.

And it turned out that I had no idea what I was doing business-wise, and after a certain amount of time, I decided I was going to put it to the side because it just wasn't working, and it was making me unhappy because I felt like I couldn't support myself that way.

And I really was at a loss of what I would go into next. And that was right out of university? Because that's kind of what you studied? It was after graduate school. So I did a master's degree in expressive arts therapy, specializing in movement studies. I was teaching like four days a week. But my idea of marketing was putting up posters around town, period. Period.

And I really didn't know how to go beyond that. And I didn't know how to draw a larger audience. And I also had no idea how to articulate what I was offering, the benefits. There was no such thing in my mind as business coaching at that time. It was 1993 when I stopped. So...

I also concurrently was part of a Women's World music group, and we performed across the country and later on around the world, too. So I did have this side gig, but it wasn't a financial one. I had hoped it would be, but it never turned out to be. But I did perform with them for 40 years, and it gave me a lot of stage experience. Mm-hmm.

I explored different things. I explored natural vision improvement because that's something that I wanted for myself to get rid of my reading glasses. Natural vision improvement. So improving your eyesight. That's right. Natural methods. Yes. And then I was very much interested in organic gardening and I attended the Northeast Organic Farmers Conference every summer and winter. And I...

sort of like looked up to all these cool organic farmers. I felt like they were on the cutting edge politically and health-wise.

And I was learning a lot about growing food. And when the opportunity came, when someone said, hey, do you want to co-farm with me, create a CSA? I said, yeah, I'd love to do that. A CSA means community supported agriculture. Maybe some people know that you will pay like a farm. I don't know how much it costs these days, but at the time it was about $600 for the season. And then whatever we grew, you got a package every week.

of that food. And we tried to grow as much as we could for you. Interesting. So I was doing that. And then I had an opportunity to go into my own farm business where I started to grow specialty vegetables for local restaurants. But at that time, I learned that there was such thing as a business coach. And I joined an online course called B-School by Marie Forleo. I don't know if you ever heard of Marie. I have not.

It was back in 2013, I believe. And one of her modules was called Start the Right Business. So the first year, I applied everything to my farm business. Second year, I thought, you know what? I'm going to go back through the course. I'm going to listen to it again. And I listened to that module, which I probably had skipped over because I was already in a business. Mm-hmm.

And I'm listening to this, her speak about our dreams and our aspirations and, you know, the vision that we have for the impact we want to make in the world. And all of a sudden it hit me that I had always had a dream to make a big impact. And here I was hiding behind the kale.

But you were having an impact on at least at a more micro level in your community. On a micro level, but it's absolutely true. But it wasn't enough for you. It wasn't the vision that I had in my mind. I wasn't even sure what kind of impact I wanted to make, but it was more like changing people's beliefs.

So I had no idea what it meant, but I knew and I felt inside if I didn't try to discover what that could be, I would get to the end of my life feeling regret.

So it was this huge motivation. I didn't give up my farm business right away. I had my accounts. I had my responsibilities. And I thought, well, I try to investigate what this new thing might be. And what you were doing with the farming, that was also generating your income at that point in time? That was generating income, yeah. And there were things that I loved about it and things that I didn't. It was hard on my body.

My business, I'll just say it was based on a lot of microgreens, like these salad mixes that you can get these days, but it was before you could get it in the stores. So I was making new beautiful salad mixes every week, selling them like 50 pounds to here and there and then other specialty things. But I really didn't like picking through lettuce and pulling out the debris. I hated that. So there were things about my job that I did not like and

but it's, you know, it was really good timing actually for me to get out because then now we do have different color carrots. Now we do have different kinds of peppers and we have those salad mixes and the baby greens. So I'm glad I didn't have to compete against those because I was charging a lot more than what you can pay in Whole Foods these days. But I did get like, look around the female entrepreneurial world at the time. And I decided I was going to

take a course in becoming a coach. So I became a coach and while I was trying to bring attention to myself because, you know, you start a business, then you got to let people know that you're in business. I decided to... And the posters are not going to cut it for the coaches. Right, exactly. And it's all online. So you had to talk to people online. I took some video classes, very awkward for me. I took them again and again. I probably, I think I took like 12 video courses online.

Some after I got over my fear of speaking, but this is the interesting part for your listeners. So...

I learned that there was this new live streaming app called Periscope. And this was a totally new technology. I mean, we're doing a Zoom recording now, but Zoom you could live stream as well. It's everywhere. It's on Facebook, Instagram. But then it was novel. And my video mentor said, you've got to get on daily to build your following. And so that's what I thought I'm going to do.

And I got on and it was terrifying. People were coming in on your screen from all over the world to listen to you. I felt like I was disassociating from my body. I was hyperventilating. My heart was racing. And I thought, oh, wow, this is... And I knew I had a fear of speaking because even in my music group, when it was my turn to introduce a song, my heart was racing. My mouth got dry. Even though, I mean, it was...

We performed more than 500 times and it was still very hard for me. I never felt relaxed introducing a song, never. So it wasn't a total surprise to me, but I figured...

Since I'm doing this every day, that's going to be the trick to get me over the hump. And in the meantime, I'll manage the fear. I googled how to get over the fear. Deep breathing, power poses, affirmations, meditation. I did kicks and punches. I danced. I held crystals. I did anything I could.

Anything that I read that I thought, oh yeah, I can do that, I tried. Reframing my fear is excitement. Not thinking of yourself, think of your audience. Or what I ended up doing, feel the fear and do it anyway. After a few weeks, I got into this routine. I kind of forgot about, oh yeah, after a few weeks I should be over this. I got to week 10. I'm about to press record. And all of a sudden I'm wondering, why is my heart still racing? I've been doing this

I counted up 75 days in a row. And it's not getting any easier. And it's not getting any easier. And I was showing up. I give myself credit for that. But I wondered how many times do I need to show up for this to go away? It didn't even feel like it had diminished much at all.

And that's when I decided I didn't want to manage my fear anymore. I didn't want to have the fear to have to manage. I just wanted to be rid of it. And I decided I was going to figure out a way. I happened to be pretty self-determined. I have found that what happens to people sometimes is then they've been doing it, and then all of a sudden they can't press record anymore. They hit a wall.

Have you seen that happen to people as well who are just working through the fear? Yes, because it's not sustainable. You run out of steam. You know, you go with a certain momentum of motivation and pushing through and getting it done. And you, you know, listen to a lot of uplifting motivational speakers and you just push through it. But at some point you say, this sucks. And since...

We have a pause here. This is different than, you know, a lot of people, Dan Sullivan included, talks about that if you wait to have confidence, you're missing the point. You have to have the courage to move forward and then confidence will come. But this is different than what we're talking about here, right? Yes, I'd say this is a different approach. If you tried that approach and that didn't work, listen to this.

Yeah. Okay. That was the approach I had been listening to. Right, right. And I believed in it because everyone was saying, this is what you do. Yeah. So does that then would lead you to decide this? Well, I'm assuming you figured it out for yourself first and then decided this is what I'm going to help people do? Correct. Yeah. How long did it take you to develop the techniques and the approach to overcoming it yourself? I was over it in five days. Wow. Wow.

And what did you tap into at a high level? What did you tap into your knowledge, experiences to put together this technique? Well, I made a list of all the techniques that I knew to throw at it through my experience in psychology and self-help. But before I decided to do all these things, I decided, well, what is this fear about? Yeah. And I closed my eyes to connect with it.

and asked, "If the fear could talk, what would it say?" And what came back was, "You're going to be attacked."

So that was the root cause analysis for yourself. Exactly. Where is this fear coming from? Exactly. You're going to be attacked. And the first thing that came to my mind was, well, is this like cellular memory being chased by the saber-toothed tiger on the Serengeti? Right. Or have you been attacked? And then all of a sudden I had memories come back to me of being attacked by the two saber-toothed tigers that I lived with, my two older sisters. Right.

Every time mom put me in the center of attention, she would say things to my sisters like, why can't you be good like Linda? I see. That was their cue to chase me, kick me in the shin, say shut up, call me stupid. And then it was, duh, of course I'm not comfortable getting on camera, being the center of attention or introducing a song on stage, being the center of attention because I learned it was dangerous. Yeah.

And then suddenly it was like, oh, maybe that's what this fear of speaking is about. It's not about what's going on in the present, but maybe there are things from our past that led us to believe it's not safe. Okay. And so you do believe that, at least for most of us, or in your experience, it's something in our past, typically childhood, that taught us that putting myself out there is dangerous. Right.

That's right. That's right. It doesn't have to be childhood, I'd say for most of us it is. For most of us, it's more than one thing. But I have also worked with people who were very comfortable through most of their life and then something happened, let's say in their work environment, where it was toxic. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So that could have been what kind of reaffirmed it as well. You know, you and I started chatting a little bit, don't want to go off too far on a tangent, but about schooling. And you had mentioned on your website, one of the interesting things about you is you say you spent 10 enchanted years unschooling your daughter, you homeschooled. And you were curious as to why that question I shared with you, because I do believe that the school system in the United States is

It's still designed to create employees, people who follow a certain pattern. And I think it includes in part this part. Well, while some of us might have taken a speech class or maybe hopefully we took a drama class, nonetheless, it's about playing, coloring within the lines is what I have found.

Do you think that that can exacerbate this fear of standing up and being ridiculed? Oh, absolutely. I feel that there are many experiences in school that can impact our speaking confidence. And I go through a lot of them in Chapter 4 of my book. I do it in my work with people in my private coaching and programs to help uncover these things. Just today, one of my clients was...

journaling and sharing about a time in fourth grade, her math class, where her eyes didn't work properly. She copied down the numbers wrong. The teacher yelled at her saying, you know, you're not going to get through life with people helping you out all the time and made her get up to the front of the class and

totally humiliated her. She felt so embarrassed. And even today, even though she's an expert in her field, she's sought out for the work that she does. She was in tears just thinking about these past experiences. But this is where pretty much everybody has school trauma. School is...

designed that we get the highest grades for making no mistakes. Exactly, exactly. And that is why another reason why this whole thing about, you know, fail fast and accept failure, but that's not how we were taught to accept. Failure is bad. That's right. We were conditioned a completely different way. And so even though we might have left school, school hasn't left us.

And so when you tell me, oh, just get up there and talk or break a presentation, well, I'm afraid of failing. I'm afraid of not doing it perfectly because that's what I was taught is that I'm going to get a bad grade. Yes. And you know who suffers a lot from that are people who were at the very top of their class because they conflated everything.

being the smartest, always doing well with their self-worth. That's why they feel people like them or admire them. It became their identity. And so if they stumble over the words or if they forget something that they wanted to say, all of a sudden that feels like failure because even a small mistake

A small mistake is so high stakes. Right, right. And so visible in that situation. So how long have you now been helping people with, as you say, speak without fear to shine in the spotlight? Yeah, 10 years now. 10 years now. 10 years, yeah. And you do that mostly how? How?

Well, some people work with me privately. Like if you're, you have a nine to five and you're really, really busy, you might choose to get private coaching so that it's just like an hour a week. You're done in a month or two, depending on what's going on. And, um,

And you're good to go. Other people, particularly entrepreneurs who have their own time schedules, would choose to join my accelerator program that has three tracks. One where we do the reveal and heal, the clearing away, the past experiences, the messages, the conditioning. Then we practice our speaking skills on camera, comfy on camera. You learn to watch yourself without cringing, make friends with a lens, all that stuff.

And then the third track is our voice because people don't realize that their voice is the instrument of communication. And there is so much that we can do with our voices that we have no idea about. Because we don't pay attention, unless you're in, let's say, in theater or you're in speech therapy.

It was in sales, right, where we we understood and dissected why are we good at it? And voice was part of it. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. And yes, because if you speak too fast, people aren't going to hear you. You're going to lose their attention. We have vocal habits. Our vocal habits are conditioned by our past experiences, just like everything else.

And a lot of this is then based on what you call the freedom framework. Is that correct? The inner freedom framework. Because I want people to feel free inside themselves. I want them to feel like they can delight in all their limelight moments. Mm-hmm.

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let me take a step back uh this is a softball question or a rhetorical question to accept but from your perspective why should a business owner develop this confidence to communicate and it doesn't have to be a stage in front of hundreds of people it could be like you said in a meeting or pitching up a particular idea or seeking investors whatever the scenario or leading my employees and motivating them

from your perspective, as you've seen it, you've worked with small business owners and entrepreneurs. Why can't I just say, you know what, that's just not me. I'll let my partner do that or my HR person do that. I don't need to do that. What am I missing there? Why is it so critical to develop this ability? Your story is where we connect. You know, the story of your business,

your passion, the reason why you're doing what you're doing, these come from, when these come from you authentically, that's how we connect. That's what draws people in. But besides that, speaking is your human design. You were born to speak. There isn't a child on earth, let's say a healthy child on earth, who wasn't born without the

The design to learn how to speak a language and to express themselves. And even if you can't vocally, that's why we learned sign language. The humans must interact and communicate with each other. That's right. And for most of us, it's through spoken language. And I think this gives you that sense of joy and satisfaction that you can communicate comfortably with the people who matter.

Whether it's, I mean, even if it's your relationships, even if it's your family, your friends, telling a story at a party, that we want to be able to belong and participate in.

So, as a business owner, you know, I'm not going to say every single person has to do this. Truthfully, my husband does not. My husband has a company and he lets his brother and other employees be the spokespeople. He has his reasons. He has his reasons and I won't push it. But we do, of course, because he's married to me and I talk about my business too.

He has come a long way in his other relationships around speaking. He just has chosen not to do it as a business owner. So I don't want to say you must, but I also believe that there'll be a time for him that it'll make sense for him to do it. Sure, sure. So you mentioned storytelling. I want to go off on a tangent for a moment because I think that's one of the components of...

how do we overcome this fear? How do we become more effective is including storytelling, right? Well, I would say these are two different directions. Using story to overcome your fear is

is one direction. Using storytelling to draw your audience in is another. Sure. Let's talk about it from the overcoming the fear perspective. How does that, how do you help me through, how do I apply that to help me overcome the fear?

Well, we can't really clear away these past experiences that are getting triggered. So when you start to shake, let's say, you're giving a presentation. I just was talking with a client who was in New York City showing her clothing product to...

to certain store buyers. And she said, "You know, I feel so confident in what I want to say, but I'm shaking with this product in my hand." Interesting. "And I don't know how to get rid of it." And that shaking, that is the unconscious stuff. You can practice all you want. You can have what you're going to say memorized. But if you have a trigger like I had from the past,

where you were ridiculed or shamed or pressured to perform before you were ready or ignored, and you feel like people aren't going to want to hear what you have to say on some subconscious level, that you're afraid of being judged, that you're afraid of being shamed because that's what your father did, criticized you for everything. You were never good enough. If you're carrying that with you, that's going to...

impact your ability to just be present in the moment and just share your pitch. Yeah. And, you know, like for me, when I've had those moments, I've never struggled with this, fortunately. But it's still, for me, it comes from my dad. I had to always be very careful what I said so that I wouldn't get ridiculed, right? Or shot down or whatever the case might be. But there's times when it does come up, I'll start sweating. That's how it manifests for me.

And I start thinking, you're an imposter. Somebody's going to be in the audience and point out to you how you're a fraud and you don't know what you're talking about. Yes, that's dad. That's sometimes what creeps in. Yeah, that's dad. It's dad out there who's going to say, you don't know what you're talking about. Yes, that's exactly it. So imposter syndrome has particular kinds of stories. One story is a parent that you could never please.

No matter what you did. Just unpleasable. And so you feel like no matter how much you do, you're never going to be good enough. It can also happen from being given special privilege that you feel makes you not real.

I've had spoken to people who had benefited from affirmative action and had people say, well, you only got this job because of affirmative action. Right. Or you only got into that gifted class in fifth grade because your father was on the board. Yeah. Or you only got this because you're very attractive or whatever the case might be. Right. So that's the second one. And a third one can be, and I had a client who highlighted this for me, when

If you've moved around a lot,

In your lifetime. Which I did. And you weren't someone who made friends easily, so you were always on the outside. Or even if you were in the same school, but maybe you had different friends groups. This client had lots of different friends groups, but he was always on the periphery. He never felt on the inside. That gave him this feeling of, oh, those are the people who should be on stage, not me. They're the popular ones. They're the ones that everybody likes to hear from, no one.

is interested in what I have to say. So these are, when we have this fear, anywhere, anytime, there's always a reason. It's never random. And that's why I say the best thing is to own your stories, because when you know your stories, you can heal them.

If you don't know that they're there, they're going to just cling on. They're going to be cling-ons to you. So that's part of what you're talking about is for you and for everybody, we have to find out where is this coming from? What is my story that's leading me to feel this way or to have this imposter syndrome? But I want to go back to leveraging storytelling now.

I don't think I quite got how do I begin to apply that to help me overcome the fear. When we uncover the stories that happen to us,

And especially like with somebody, when you do it with a mentor or coach like myself, or you do it in a group, all of a sudden the shame drops away because you're being held, you're being held in a space where no one is judging you. Right. You're being with, with other people who are on the same journey, who are understanding. And, and also you see them and you say, I wish that they didn't have this. So there's this,

synergistic energy that happens in a group. And also we connect through our stories. Okay, so you're talking about it as it relates to me addressing and sharing where it comes from. I was confused and thinking that it's also, there's two separate things.

Using storytelling in our public speaking as a method to overcome the fear. Am I confusing the two here? Yes, I would say that I wouldn't necessarily be talking about things that were unresolved. Right, exactly. In publicly. That is for a safe.

designated space. Yes. But what does come to mind that has worked for me sometimes wondering what your thoughts are is to, I have found that sometimes if I'll acknowledge or share with the audience that I'm nervous or I'm uncomfortable, that helps put me and everybody at ease. Is that a technique you recommend? Has that worked for you or do you recommend that you follow what I'm saying? Like, I'm not going to go off on it for a long time to say,

Kind of catch my breath and say, you know, I'm a little anxious here. I'm a little nervous. And then kind of that seems to diffuse it sometimes for me. What do you think about that? I've seen it go both ways. I've never done that myself because I was always, I'm going to hide this. I tend to be more that way as well. Trust me. I've seen it go both ways. I've seen someone name it and then it made him more nervous. Yeah.

And afterwards, we were chatting about it. He said, I wish I hadn't done that. All of a sudden, I thought that people see me as a nervous person as opposed to an expert. Yeah, yeah. I've seen someone else do it with great results. He did it differently. He said, I'm feeling really nervous right now, but don't worry because it's just going to go away in five minutes. Love it. Yeah, I see.

Right. I can see where it can further trigger imposter or it can be something that releases. All right. So one technique that you do talk about in overcoming it, and we've touched a little bit on it, but I want to explore it, is revisiting past negative speaking experiences. Now, we talked about it as it relates to formative. You know, it happened to us in childhood or maybe early in our career, right?

But how else do you teach people to do that so I can look back to? And again, maybe for me it was, boy, I did this presentation a couple of years ago and it was terrible and the audience didn't buy it or whatever the case might be. What is it about revisiting it that can help me from letting that now further fuel my fear?

When we have an experience, a performing experience, a speaking experience that didn't go so well, we tend to fear that it's going to happen again. And so we need to dedicate some time to it to make sure that we understand why it happened, forgive ourselves for the things we can forgive ourselves, use it as a learning experience, and feel like it's not hanging on us as something that is...

going to set us into a panic. So I was working with a client who, oh, and you were talking about someone who, you know, is always formative. This client, she loved to speak, but she had a couple of experiences where she got emotional. Interesting. Because she mentioned her mother who had recently died. It took her by surprise. And all of a sudden she felt out of control.

And the other experience she had was...

She, the person who was in her position before her, did an amazing, amazing talk. And he put a lot of energy and investment in it. He got a lot of help to make it a really good talk. It was going to be his last one. Everyone was talking about this fantastic guy. And she gets up there, taking over the role, and saying, he did such a great job, didn't he? Let's see if I can do better. Yeah.

And I thought she set herself up. Yeah, that's it. She set herself up and that's what happened. All of a sudden she, you know, felt like she couldn't achieve what she set out to do. And she wondered what did other people think? And all of a sudden her confidence went down. What should she have done? What is the technique that she could have leveraged there that she now probably knows?

that might have had a different outcome? I would say simply give love and appreciation for the person who came before and say, I hope I'll be able to

you know, follow his shoes. Follow his shoes. Yeah. What an incredible presentation here. So now I have to follow him. So I've often done that where I kind of not make a joke of it, but make light of it. Like I'm, folks, I'm not even going to be able to match what Linda just did, but I'm here to share my point of view and my perspective. So let's get into it. Yes. It's the worst thing to set. Like if someone comes out to introduce you and say, this is the funniest guy, you're going to be laughing. That's the worst thing.

For someone to say about you, you don't want to over, give over expectations. I see. That you yourself have to live up to or that other people are going to be sitting in the audience thinking, okay, let's see. Yeah.

Immediately what comes to mind is how hard it is what stand-up comedians do, right? And I happen to like stand-up comedy. I don't do it myself, but, you know, often they talk about, oh, so, you know, Eddie Murphy just came in all of a sudden. Now I have to follow him. You know, so that kind of scenario is what we're often faced at at our levels as well, right? Yes. Okay. There's a free download on your website that I'm going to have a link to called the Seven Preparation Rituals to Reduce Anxiety Before You Speak. Okay.

Can you share one of those rituals that comes to mind related to what we've been talking about? Yes, I will share about visualization. So these seven rituals are things beyond practicing what you are going to say. This has nothing to do with your script. This is all about how do you bring your capabilities as a speaker and into your presence so that you...

amplifier you do the best that you can given whatever level of preparation and the level you are in your journey, your speaking journey. So visualization is something that Olympic athletes do, that musicians do, and anyone can use for their speaking. You imagine yourself in that speaking environment, whether it's a meeting, if it's a pitch, if it's on stage.

See yourself speaking just the way you want to be speaking. What's the energy? What's your facial expression? How are you gesturing? Imagine feeling just the way you want to feel. How do you want to feel like? Relaxed, happy, engaged, enthusiastic, whatever it is. Powerful, compelling. You have to visualize that experience so that you can prepave it for when you get there.

What people generally do is also visualization. But what are they visualizing? Oh, my God, I'm going to be exactly the worst. I'm going to I'm going to read through this again. I got to memorize this one more time. OK. And then you just get cut as you get caught up on the what you're going to say as opposed to how you're going to say it. Exactly. And also how you how you're going to feel and what people are and what are people going to think and all these things.

So what do I want to feel? I want to feel like, let's say it's a meeting. It was, and that's why I think it's important when you go into a meeting to visualize what the ideal outcome is. That too. We're going to come to agreement or we're going to agree on the next step and we're going to do this in a harmonious way. And.

and I'm going to make sure to keep it a positive tone and I'm going to communicate with positivity. And so those kinds of things is what I'm telling myself. Yes. And also just, I want to feel relaxed. I want to feel open. I want to feel positive. So when I walk in, I'm going to take off my suit jacket. If I'm wearing one, I'm going to set myself up. All of those kinds of physical choreography components as well. Yes. As much as detail as you want.

You can do it. You can try it out to varying degrees. And the thing is, anytime you think about that upcoming event, do this, even if it's a 15-second visualization. Also think about how do you want to feel afterwards. Feel satisfied.

I want to feel like this kind of camaraderie or whatever it is that you want to feel between you. So, yeah, there may be specific things, but even if you just go with the feeling of what you want, that will guide you. Now, here's the other thing. I think it's also important to visualize what could go wrong and to feel prepared for how you want to feel as you address those. What do you want to do if you forget what you want to say? Mm-hmm.

What are you going to do if you skipped over something? Because if you want to feel poised and composed, you need to visualize addressing those things in a poised and composed way or maybe amused way or maybe just a genuinely wanting to be helpful way. Right. Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Again, the download is the seven preparation rituals to reduce anxiety before you speak.

It's available on Linda's website, and I'll have a link to that on the show notes page of this episode at thehowabusiness.com. We've been mentioning the book, Linda. Again, the book title is Delight in the Limelight, Overcome Your Fear of Being Seen and Realize Your Dreams. Who did you write this book for, ideally?

I wrote it for a person like myself who struggled with a fear of speaking for years, tried so many different things and feels like it's the thing that's getting in the way of their business. And in my experience, you know, I put this into the category of communicating, whether it's speaking publicly or at the chamber or selling or whatever it is.

We must, as the business owner, in one way or another, your husband does it in a different way,

We have to be able to communicate at least what it is that we're proposing, what it is that we're promising, what it is that we want to do collectively as a team. One way or the other, we have to master the art of communicating effectively, whether it's speaking in front of hundreds of people or just in a room full of people or just to your employees at a staff meeting. We must learn how to do that better, yes? Absolutely. Yeah.

there's a free chapter download as well, right? Yes, yes. It's actually more than one chapter. It's probably like two and a half and you can get that on the website as well. What's the website? LindaUgalow.com U-G-E-L-O-W Excellent. All right. We can keep talking about this for hours, but we'll wrap it up here. Well, two questions, two last questions. One is, I have this challenge. I have a fear of speaking. Where do you recommend that I start to overcome that?

Well, truthfully, I recommend getting the book because it is a guide from the dread to feeling delight. You learn how to uncover the fear, how to heal the fear, healing your self-image, changing your mindset, using your voice, feeling more relaxed and present in your body. It's really the handbook that you need to move from where you are right now to where

opening up this world of possibilities that happens when you get on the other side of the fear of speaking. And one of the things that I heard and took away here is that part of it is understanding that story, which was the origin story here of this fear. Where is this coming from? Because what you've absorbed, observed is that for most people, there's somebody who

That made us believe that we should stay quiet and that we're going to get ridiculed or knocked out if we do get up and talk. Right. That's right. And we don't want those things to hang on us throughout our lives. We want to be able to heal them and resolve them, let go of them so we can feel free. Yeah.

All right. Is that, that might be the one thing, but what's the one thing that you want us to take away from this conversation about, as you say, delight in the limelight from the perspective of a small business owner? What's one thing you want us to take away from this conversation? That if you are afraid of speaking in public, you're not stuck with it. There is a reason you can get over it. It doesn't have to take years. It can take, you know, some weeks or months. And then you got the rest of your life before you.

feeling more delight in all your limelight moments. Well said, well said. Tell us where to go again online to get the download, the free chapter, and to learn more about you. Linda Ugelow, U-G-E-L-O-W is my website. And any social media is where you can find me too. Wonderful. Linda, great insightful conversation. Thanks for taking the time to share with me today, share your insights and your experiences. Thanks for being with me today.

Thoroughly. My pleasure. Thanks, Henry. This is Henry Lopez. And thanks for joining us on this episode of The Howa Business. My guest again today is Linda Ugalo. I release new episodes every Monday morning. You can find the show anywhere you listen to podcasts, including at my YouTube channel, The Howa Business YouTube channel and my website, thehowabusiness.com. Thanks for listening.

Thank you for listening to The How of Business. For more information about our coaching programs, online courses, show notes pages, links, and other resources, please visit thehowofbusiness.com.