Jeff Dudan reframes public speaking anxiety: mistakes aren't fatal, the audience won't notice what you forget, and confidence comes from practice. He uses football metaphors to explain how focused attention and discipline build consistent performance, arguing that athletes often make good entrepreneurs because training teaches you to do hard things.
Chapters
One thing, whether it's public speaking or which a lot of people have problems with or doing this podcast, you just have to realize it's not fatal. It's just not fatal. It's not. If you die during this podcast, it's from other life choices. It's not due to the podcast. It's not due to what people think about you. So, you know, and that's. So when people mean anybody out there that is uncomfortable speaking in front of people, here's the reason why. It's because the eyes so tribally and, you know, fight orf flight chemically at, at our core, if all the eyes are on you, then you're outside of the group. And if you're outside of the group, that means you're unprotected. You're going to get eaten by a tiger, you're going to get stoned, you're going to get beat with something, right? So you want to be in the group, you want to be in the tribe. And, you know, so when people see everybody looking at them, they start thinking, oh, man. Like, you know, it's just this, this, this reaction that you get, this fight or flight thing. And you really, you know, just remember when you're speaking or when you're doing something like this, people don't know what they didn't get. If you forgot to say something, if I botched an answer, I mean, there's like 10 things I, I wish I would have already said, but I'm not going to go back and try to trip over myself to get those things in because nobody knows that I meant to say that. So, you know, people get what they get. The show goes on, you just keep rolling forward, and none of it's fatal. And if it's not great, then at least you got a rep on it. Which, this is an athlete show, right? So, like, get reps, you know, you got to get as many reps as you can. I was, dude, I'm an introvert. Like, left to my own self, I'm sitting on the corner of my couch. Maybe Netflix is on, you know, step into the fridge. Like, I'm, I'm a total introvert, but yet I speak. I do 10 things like this a week when I do keynotes, you know, like, all of that stuff, it's totally against my nature. So, you know, part of it is, and this is kind of gets to the athlete thing. How big is your battery to do things that are against your nature? Like the things that athletes get trained is they, they develop a bigger battery and it, you know, because will is an exhaustible resource. So the moment you wake up in the morning and you start giving attention to something, this is why you got to keep you. You can't get dirty eyes. Like it's a football thing, right? Like, you can't get dirty eyes because if you spend too much time giving attention to the wrong things, you run your battery down. Now you've got nothing less for the things that matter. And in football, like if you're a defensive back or safety or a linebacker, like if you're playing man to man, like, you know where your eyes are, they're on the man. You're in phase, you're on the man. Their eyes go up, your eyes go up, their hands go up, you play through them. If you're in zone, you get. You drop back into your zone, you make your pass read, drop back into your zone, and then you look for work, and you're watching the quarterback. So in football, if you get dirty eyes, you know, if your eyes are in the right place. If you're a linebacker, you're reading through the guards to the. To the near back. If your eyes are in the right place, your feet will be in the right place. You'll maintain your angles, alignment, responsibility, your technique, and you'll be where you're supposed to be on time. So it's the same thing for business owners. Like, if you get dirty eyes and you're spending 50% of your attention on things that are not contributing to where you want to go, you're burning your battery during the day. And that's the discipline. I think that's why athletes oftentimes make really, really good entrepreneurs or employees or they're good at what they do just because they can be somebody that is against their nature longer.
