the bossbabe podcast - 222. BBS: How To Look & Sound More Confident (Even When You're Nervous)

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

A new bossbabe episode on a Friday? Your eyes and ears do not deceive you. This is the very first in a new series of mini episodes where Danielle will be leading the bossbabe community through extra actionable, no BS business tips to help you grow — fast! But business advice is everywhere, right? Vague sweeping advice is easily accessible, yes. But these deep dive episodes are meant to provide listeners with behind-the-scenes expert advice, real processes and business techniques that we have used + proven to be effective. ...and now, we're passing them on to you. Today, we’re learning to sound, look and pitch our business with more confidence. No, we’re not on about pantsuits and presentations – Danielle covers real life examples, detailing the nuance in every moment – seen and unseen.  It takes practice, but remember – confidence breeds competence. Even the slightest of details can make a huge difference in a first impression. Ready to dive in? Listen now.   Highlights: Welcome to the new bossbabe business school! What’s on the agenda? How to control your breathing and eliminate filler words. What your facial expressions and non-verbal communication is saying about you (and about your business). Why selling is a service + how to pitch with confidence. Follow: bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty: @daniellecanty Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

You should be so proud when you have a business. Selling is actually service. If you have a business that you believe in, do not be afraid to pitch it. If you have a business that you know is going to help people and make their lives better, tell that to the world. And if you cannot stand behind your business and think this is a really great business and it's a really great product and it's going to make the world a better place, then you should really question the business that you are building and it might not be right for you. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just

believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Hey, and welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, but to our very first Boss Babe Business School episode. So moving forward, I just want to explain to you what I'm going to be doing in these. Every week, I will be giving you no fluff, no BS tips on how to actually grow your business. It's not going to be an hour-long episode. These are going to be a mini-series to give you direct information that you can apply to your business straight away. So if you haven't already hit subscribe, do that now because I don't want you to miss any of these episodes. I also want to preface this series by sharing that I'm starting this mini-series because

I feel so much advice out there just isn't actually detail-orientated. It's very fluffy and very high level. And I know personally from my experience what you actually need to move the needle in your business. And that is people cutting straight to the points, cutting through the noise, and actually allowing you to understand what you need to change, what you need to do to make things move in your business. So it's going to be quicker. These episodes are going to be easier to digest and less daunting for you guys. So each week, I'm going to pick a subject that either I've had a message from you in the DMs, someone in the society, our membership for female entrepreneurs

has asked me, or if we've done polls on Boss Babe, things that I know you guys want to know. And then I'm going to be deep diving into the latest and most current strategies. I'll be sharing tips from experts, and I'll also be sharing methods that we've personally tested and found to be true here at Boss Babe. So wherever possible, we'll also be giving you free templates and resources to make your journey quicker and faster to grow your business. So if you didn't before, click to subscribe. You're going to want to now because you're not going to want to miss these templates either. And I just want to say, if those of you are new to Boss Babe or you don't already know, Boss Babe really is the brand behind women's success. We want to make sure more women get to the top. So we're committed to giving you

the best resources to help you create that we're committed to giving you the best resources to help you create that financial freedom, help you have the support that you do need to follow your purpose and find that alignment or create the flexibility in your life that you need and you want. And that's why we're here. That's why we exist. So I want to kick off this series by talking about how to sound and look more confident. And the reason I'm picking this is because, yes, building your business takes skill, right? It absolutely does. But also, when you are speaking things, whether you're being a leader, whether you are selling to someone, you have to come across confident.

And that is really important. And you know what? A lot of the time, we are nervous behind the scenes, but we need to learn how to disguise that at certain times. So this episode is going to give you some really actionable takeaways to look and sound more confident, even when you're nervous, because these situations are going to come up. Your leadership is going to be challenged. You're going to be asked to speak on stages. You're going to be asked to give presentations. You're going to ask to be able to sell. So all of these things are really, really important skill sets to how you become the business person and the leader that you ask to be able to sell. So all of these things are really, really important skill

sets to how you become the business person and the leader that you want to be. So in this episode, like I said, we're going to give three key learnings, how to sound more confident, how to look more confident and how to pitch your business with more confidence as well. So let's get right down into it. Like I said, no fluff, no BS here. Whether you want to pay rise or whether you want to be pitching to investors or selling your own product, like I said, no fluff, no BS here. Whether you want to pay rise or whether you want to be pitching to investors or selling your own product, like I said, these things are going to come into play. So let's talk first of all about sounding confident. You guys know I was a nervous wreck when it first came to showing up on social media. I would speak so quickly. I would be on and off before someone even came on. Also, one thing that I found was we went to speak at Tony Voman's event.

There was like hundreds of thousands of people subscribed to it. And I was literally terrified. So I actually learned the skill set because I studied it on how I could make it appear that I wasn't nervous, even though I was actually petrified inside. So the first thing that I want to share with you when I learned to speak on events and stages like this was learning to slow my speaking. And how you do this is by something called box breathing. This is how I choose to do it anyway. And so basically when you box breathe, you breathe into the count of four. So you breathe in for four

counts. So breathe in one, two, three, four. At the top, you hold your breath in for four. So one, two, three, four. Then you breathe out for four. One, two, three, four. And you hold out for four. And what this does is it slows your heart rate down. So by controlling your breath, you can actually control your heart rate. And when you control your heart rate, you actually slow your speaking. So we all know when we get nervous, our kind of default is speak at the top of a voice and we're like motor mouse and just getting it all over and we're stumbling over our words. Whereas when you can talk more slowly, you're more articulate, you have time to think, and you actually come off more confident. There's actually something that

is also really relevant. If you have very high pitch voices, sometimes the tonality can come across nervous and maybe that you don't necessarily know what you're talking about. So when you can learn to slow your breath, you actually change the tone of your voice as well. And that also helps with interpretation from the other person who's receiving it. They're like, wow, that slow, steady, more grounded voice sounds a lot more confident. You can even hear it in this podcast, right? You can hear like, oh, when she's speaking slower, it's more grounded and she does sound like she knows what she's talking about. So that's the first one, box breathing to slow our heart rates down, which then in turn slows our speaking, which gives us time to think. Now, the other important

thing to do to sound more confident is to eradicate the ums and ahs. These are actually filler words and they often kind of come into our heads when our brain is trying to catch up with our mouth or the mouth is trying to catch up the brain, right? And we fill by R, like, and like is another one. And so if you are not sure what filler words you are utilizing, record yourself and listen back. And then it's going to be very clear to you whether you're using ums, R's, or whether you are in fact using likes. Or sometimes people have their own little sayings that they will add in. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? That's another one that people use as well. So really make sure that first of all, you're aware of these. The second thing is preparing that helps you with this.

You've probably heard me say competence breeds confidence. So when you are prepared to speak, when you're prepared to pitch, you're going to actually have in your mental awareness, a feeling of being more confident, which then is going to translate. And also you will then use less filler words. The other thing that's really important is practicing pausing. So whereas you might use ums and ahs, actually trying to allow your brain to catch up with where you're at but just pause and when you're in a sentence and you're pausing it actually creates more authority. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the

things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. And it allows you to catch up. So I really want you to give yourself grace in the pause and

don't feel nervous about the pause. Own the pause because again that brings you across as more confident. So we've covered how to sound more confident. The next thing I want you to think about is how to look more confident. So you basically have seven seconds in person to create a positive first impression, right? And most of this is nonverbal. On social media, it's actually a lot less. You have around 0.13 seconds to catch someone's attention. And from there, they'll start processing how confident you sound or not. So how to look more confident is the seven seconds, like I said. The first one is I want you to adjust your attitude.

So people pick up on your attitude instantly. So before you turn to greet someone or go into that boardroom or step on stage, it's really important that you do have some practices which ground you and allow you to feel more confident. Because if you go in telling yourself you're nervous, you are going to come across more nervous than if you went in telling yourself that you were in fact confident. That changes your mannerisms. It also changes your posture. And speaking of posture, the second way to give a good positive first impression of confidence is to straighten your posture because status and power are non-verbally

conveyed by height and by space. So standing tall, pulling your shoulders back and holding your head straight are all signals of confidence and competence. I remember when I was at school, there were a lot of young girls in my age group who grew very quickly and they were very shy about being taller than other girls in the group. And so they would round their shoulders and instantly it gave them appearance of being shy and not confident. And so I really want you to think back of scenarios where you've witnessed people around you who have been hunched over and think about what you've thought about them at the time because it is like say a normal experience for other people to interpret that as being not

confident so be very very aware of that holding that space and making sure your your shoulders are pulled back the next thing is smile a smile is actually an invitation and a sign of welcome it says hey i'm friendly i'm approachable and'm also confident. And it welcomes the other person into that space. So a great hack, whether you are showing up on social media, you are going onto stage, you are starting off a Zoom call, whatever it is that you want to have more confidence in doing, start it with a smile because it also helps people around you feel more settled. The fourth one is make eye contact. So looking at someone's eyes transmits energy and indicates interest and openness.

And you can actually improve your eye contact by noticing what color people make. So some of you who really try and avoid eye contact, build this into your habits by going, oh, I'm really going to pay attention to what color eyes people have around me. And so look at them, register brown, and then actually you'll see that eye contact taking place there in them. One hack that a lot of people don't know about is when you make that eye contact, if you raise your eyebrows, it opens your eyes slightly more than normal and it simulates a universal signal of recognition and acknowledgement. So if you want to build rapport with people very, very quickly, a smile and a widening of the eyes, just a slight raise of your eyebrows is a great way to do that. If you think when I'm saying these things, you're like, no, that's not going to work.

Think about the people that you have gone away, you're like, oh, wow, I had an instant connection with them. Or, oh my goodness, they were so friendly. Look out for when you see them next, because it's likely they do this thing subconsciously. They smile, they raise their eyebrows, and they widen their eyes. And it makes the people that they're interacting with instantly feel a little bit more settled in their appearance because they feel seen and they feel like this person is approachable. If you are in person as well, obviously the universal friendly hello is the handshake too. I mean, I think we're going back to the handshake

now. COVID is starting to settle down a little bit. Obviously the elbow doesn't quite have the same ring to it, but the handshake is a really great, great way to establish rapport. No one, as a woman, please don't do these fluffy handshakes. I call them a wet handshake where there's no structure to it. So if you have a bad handshake, make sure that you improve that. It's really important. It is a sign of confidence. It is a sign of competence too. So if you are going into business meetings, if you are going to pitch, make sure that handshake is a good one versus just a limp thing that no one wants to be shaking hands with. And the last thing on this is actually to lean in slightly. So this one can take place if you

want a Zoom call, so virtually, or if you are in person. But as you go in, you're like, hi, you're smiling, your eyes are raised, and you're just leaning in slightly like, hi, nice to meet you. I'm actually doing this now, which is ridiculous because you can't see me. But again, that's a really, really important thing that helps people feel like they are engaged with you and you are entering a conversation with a good amount of confidence. So we've covered how to sound confident by making sure that we are slowing down our speech by working on our heart rate, by making sure we're not utilizing ums and ahs unnecessarily. We've talked about how to look more confident and make that first impression with our body language

and where our shoulders are positioned and how bright our eyes are and that smile. And the next thing I want to do is talk about how to pitch with confidence because quite often, we can be a little bit insecure. We sometimes can feel embarrassed that we're selling, but I really want to say this to you. You should be so proud when you have a business. Selling is actually service. If you have a business that you believe in, do not be afraid to pitch it. If you have a business that you know is going to help people and make their lives better, tell that to the world. And if you cannot stand behind your business and think this is a really great business and it's a really great product and it's going to make the world a better place, then you should really question the business that you are building and it might not be right

for you. So first of all, you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in your product. And then whenever you come to selling a business, what I really, really encourage all of you to do is not to sell the product. You should be solving the problem. So if you are going into a meeting, you don't go, oh my goodness, look at this. Let's say I'm wearing this white t-shirt. I think it's one of my Instagram accounts. It's got these cute puffy sleeves. I wouldn't be like, okay, you just need to buy this white t-shirt. It has these great puffy sleeves. It has a really nice cute knot at the back. It's cut just above the navel. It's really flattering, right? That is selling a product. And that can work at times, but what

works a million times better is actually selling the problem. So if I think a problem that I have is going from work and then straight out to the evening without coming home to get changed. So I'm like, are you looking for the perfect white t-shirt that helps you do that lunch meeting and then still go out for dinner with your friends? That perfect white t-shirt that is not only comfy, but has enough detail in that looks a little bit special and can carry you through the whole day. I mean, I'm just doing this on the spot, but you get the gist, right? Assigning the problem. You want to solve people's problems with your product, not tell them the product. All right. So really just make sure that you are rewiring how you're

thinking about this and ensure that you fully understand the problems that your market have, because when you do understand that, it is much easier to sell on the back of it. So I hope you enjoyed this really, really quick mini episode on how to sound and look more confident even when you're nervous. We're going to do another one next week. We're going to be covering revenue and how to use one spreadsheet that's really going to help grow your business. So like I said, if you haven't already, subscribe to the Boss Bay podcast. We're going to have an interview every single week where we're really talking about behind the scenes of building a business. And then on top of that, you're going to have these mini episodes, which are very short, very to the point, and will help

you create some action points straight after. So thank you for joining me. And I would love to hear what you think of these first episodes. So if you can tag myself at Danielle Canty, and you can also tag up bossbabe.inc. I would absolutely love that. If you enjoyed this episode, we would love it if you subscribed and left us a review. Let us know what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were, and who you'd like to see appear on the show. As a special thanks, we'll send you a copy of our Boss Babe 25. Now, this is an awesome resource. It's the 25 essential things that you need for personal and professional growth. We've included everything from must-have products

to books to rituals. This guide literally covers it all and I know you're going to love it. So if you want your copy, simply leave us a review and then send a screenshot of your review to podcast at bossbabe.com.