When it comes to being on camera, striving for peak performance is akin to delivering your best possible performance. Rather than fixating on the final outcome, it’s about embracing the entire experience.
This entails fully putting yourself in the task at hand when presenting something to your audience.
To have a peak performance mindset, you need to train your mind just like athletes train their bodies. This involves learning to concentrate, visualize success, and manage your emotions effectively. When you can do this, you’ll be in the best possible position to showcase your talents whenever you’re on camera.
For a deeper exploration of developing a peak performance mindset, don’t miss our latest episode.
Kerry:
Welcome to the Kari Barrett Show, the go to podcast for leaders. Are you a founder, executive, or part of a dynamic team? Then you’re in the right place. I’m Keri Barrett, your on camera confidence, public speaking, and delivery coach. Each week, we dive into practical tips, insightful interviews, and engaging stories to help you communicate with confidence and lead with impact. Whether you’re in the boardroom or on the physical or digital stage, this podcast will help you elevate your presence. Let’s get started. So the thing we’re talking about today is the performance mindset. We’ll get into a little bit about what that is, why it’s important.
Kerry:
But at the end of the day, when you think about getting up in front of an audience on a stage or in front of a lens, how do you go from boring to bold? You’ve got butts in seats. Now how do you keep them there? And the real switch for most people who, you know, speak in a professional way or have to give a presentation to their boss or their team, they think of speaking as simply being an opportunity to deliver information, and it definitely is. But you need to move, I would suggest, moving beyond simply being a deliverer of information to someone who is performing that information. And when I say performing, I don’t mean that you are trying to be goofy or you are an actor or an actress, although bringing in some of those characteristics is certainly not a bad thing. But what I mean about moving from the mindset of somebody who’s simply delivering information to someone who is performing it is speaking with conviction. And even if you are delivering a presentation to your boss or your team, there is some inspiration that needs to come along with it. You may think you’re talking simply about the sales numbers or your q three goals or whatever it is, but you are also looking to inspire and speak with conviction. Same thing goes if you’re giving a client pitch or if you are in front of the camera or on a stage for a media opportunity.
Kerry:
So we’re going to talk about performance mindset, you know, what it is, why it’s important, and how to cultivate it. So if you’re ready, we are going to dive in. So the first thing that we’re gonna talk about is and don’t forget, if you have questions or comments, go ahead and put them in the chat. I’ll answer them at the end. So why is a performance mindset important? And I touched on that a little bit at the beginning of the show, but it is the difference between simply spitting out data and statistics and here’s our goal and here’s what we’re gonna do to get there, and being inspiring. And, again, speaking with conviction and speaking with energy and understanding that at our age, despite the fact that you may be playing with the stage, there’s a real good chance, especially if they’re remote, that they are going to tune out. Now when I say performance, I don’t mean that you’re putting on some sort of fake personality or that you are wearing the characteristics of somebody who is a performer. And I’m actually going to do a post probably tomorrow on someone who just recently wore the characteristics of a performer, but wasn’t speaking with any real conviction, and that is the Republican rebuttal to the state of the union by Katie Britt.
Kerry:
Matt, jumping into politics, if you’ve heard Katie Britt speak in the past, well, she can actually sound human, but in that particular situation, high stakes situation and in that environment, she took on the role of performer without having any conviction behind it. She just incorporated a series of tactics without really understanding why she was doing it or how to do it or where it was appropriate. So that’s what performance looks like when it’s gone sideways, when it’s gone awry. Performance mindset is basically a series of attributes or, I guess, attitudes, maybe beliefs, and a mental framework is what a mindset is that plays a role in your effectiveness as a speaker. What I’m talking about today applies whether you are on a stage, whether you are in front of a media camera in the news, whether you are in front of your webcam or a live stream or a client pitch or a webinar for that matter. In fact, 63% of people say they tune webinars and they’re not speaking with. They don’t understand the power of storytelling. For example, I read a statistic on a friend of mine who delivered a storytelling workshop, Patrice Polser.
Kerry:
If you haven’t followed her, she’s on LinkedIn. She’s on Instagram. She’s fantastic. She also has a news background, but she mentioned in one of her recent workshops that data and statistics, your audience only retains about 5% of it. If you incorporate storytelling and you incorporate inspiration and conviction, that number, that 5% jumps up a little bit closer to 67, which is a huge influence. I’m gonna write about understanding. Excuse me. My nose is running.
Kerry:
Apology. Simply by understanding the power of being an effective speaker. Again, not just a deliverer of information, that word up, but somebody who is actually inspiring the audience and bringing them in. So what are the goals or what are the characteristics, I guess, is probably a better word or a better description of that performance mindset? First of all, it sets the foundation for growth and it sets the foundation for your learning, which I know sounds kind of basic. We’re all essentially looking to do that in one way or another. However, when we are and I’m just gonna keep going back to the idea of delivering a webinar because I did actually post on that yesterday, and it’s something that we want. Not just small business owners but also executives, law firms, and corporate types used to educate clients, potential clients, etcetera. If you are viewing those opportunities, and, again, applicable everywhere, but for the sake of this conversation and keeping it concise, I’ll talk about webinars.
Kerry:
If you are using those webinar opportunities as just a way to spit out information and you don’t recognize that there is an art or a skill to it, you’ve eliminated the ability for you to learn and grow. And trust me, there’s always room to learn and grow. So that is, 1st and foremost, the characteristic of a performance mindset is that you give yourself permission to recognize, I’m gonna need some feedback here. And I probably don’t know everything there is to know about this particular element. And if I wanna get better, if I wanna grow, if I wanna learn, if I want to drive more clients, if I want to establish my leadership or create more visibility, I’m going to have to learn how to do this. This is not a static skill. This is not a static mindset. It’s a growth mindset is really what it comes down to.
Kerry:
Also, preparation and resilience. If you’ve heard me talk about being on camera or being on the stage before, giving a speech or presentation or whatever, you know that I talk about practice all the time, and that’s because this is not something that you can intellectualize your way into. It’s not a theory. You could read a book about it, but you’re not going to actually know where you struggle and what you need to improve on unless you practice. And that doesn’t mean just looking over your slides. It means actually getting your sound bites, knowing what your stories are, understanding the technical aspects of delivering with conviction. Certainly, it’s about being authentic. It’s about understanding your audience, knowing your venue, knowing what you’re trying to get them to do, but it is also about the technical aspects of speaking with conviction as well.
Kerry:
All of that is the preparation part. The resilience part is learning to overcome the things that are going to inevitably happen as you, a, practice, and b, perform whatever it is in real life, post the webinar. If you have a positive performance oriented mindset, It will, a, drive you to actually and thoroughly prepare. It will drive you to actually and thoroughly practice. It will also drive you to understand more thoroughly, and perhaps anticipate is a better word, your audience reactions, different audience reactions, technical issues that you have. And all of that prep not only builds the skills, but it also builds the confidence. And then when you are faced with unexpected challenges, things go wrong, you’re asked a question that you can’t quite answer. By the way, that’s okay.
Kerry:
I know especially lawyers and executives put a lot of pressure on themselves to know every single answer to every single question in the moment, which is beyond stressful because quite frankly, nobody knows the answer to every single question perfectly then you’re better able to cope when those things happen. You can handle those unexpected challenges, technical difficulties, an audience perhaps that is not engaged as you would like it to be. It helps you adapt, it helps you remain composed, and it helps you make sure that your message still resonates. Moving out of that webinar scenario, I have a client who actually spoke to her corporation about public speaking and media training, and I was prepping her for the speech that she was giving in person. This is not virtual. And she mentioned that one of the biggest challenges was the audience in person was just not as engaged as she hoped it would be. She was, like, looking out, and there’s a couple of people who were paying attention, an audience of about 150, but there were lots of people that she could see were on their phones or just tuned out. And that was a challenge that she had trouble handling.
Kerry:
We hadn’t done a lot of practice at that point, but it’s understanding. Right? You have to be resilient in those moments and push on through because you are a performer. Handling anxiety, handling performance pressure, if you will. We talked a little bit about feeling like you have to get everything right all the time, and, yes, you don’t wanna ramble. You do wanna deliver compellingly and concisely, but nobody expects, especially in a live performance speaking or through the lens, that things are going to be absolutely perfect, and it’s fine if they are not. And by the way, this applies everywhere. Live streams, radio interviews. You got a high stakes interview on the day show.
Kerry:
Yeah. You do wanna be as perfect as you can, but that’s something we can talk about another day. Speaking for most of us, camera, in person, whatever it is, induces a massive amount of anxiety, a massive amount of stress even in experienced speakers, and I know I was one of them. Many moons ago, I was terrible, and I was terrified. It was really exposure therapy and training. Exposure therapy being in the news industry and having to do it every day in little bits, but also developing my own skills, using the coaches, and practice every single day, actually implementing or executing. Again, not theory, actually doing the thing. So if you have a constructive performance mindset, you are hopefully going to be able to focus a little more easily anyway on the message of what you’re saying and your audience rather than yourself.
Kerry:
When you’re able to get out of your own way and get out of your head, all of the other elements of speaking with conviction and engaging the audience and just the skills, the technical skills that go along with speaking effectively, all of that sort of goes on autopilot, and it elevates itself organically because you’re thinking now more about the audience. Right? I’m hoping that you and I could see some of you watching. Thank you. I’m hoping that you are getting something out of this, and I’m thinking about rather than how I’m using my facial expressions or how I’m using my pitch or my pacing or my hand gestures. I’m thinking more about how I can deliver this in a way that makes you realize that you have the ability to do this because you do. I promise you do. So handling anxiety and performance pressure is another way that developing that performance mindset can help you. Engagement and persuasion.
Kerry:
And there’s a few more ways that having this can help you, but I’m really diving into the things that I think are most applicable to this audience. But if you’re not sure, go ahead and ask a question about how this applies to you or how you can incorporate it. And I am more than happy. If I can’t answer it during this livestream because we’re out of time, let’s set up a time to chat, and I will make sure that you get your questions answered. So engagement and persuasion. The mindset that you use to the mindset that you bring perhaps to your webinar. I’m gonna keep going back to that example. That approach or that rather influences the way that you talk, the way that you connect with your audience, whether it’s a potential client, whether it is somebody who you are looking to get in front of or other speaking opportunities, whatever it is.
Kerry:
If you see the value in your message and that you or you believe rather that you have the ability to create this change or inspire whomever is watching to take some sort of action, you are naturally going to be more effective. You are naturally going to be more engaging, and you are naturally going to be more persuasive. All of those things are important. So that conviction, and I’ve said I’ve used that word a couple of times now, that conviction helps you bring in some things that you may not normally be comfortable with, storytelling, humor, emotional intelligence. Those are not normally things that we hear about executives or lawyers or founders necessarily bringing into a client pitch or a webinar. But if you understand how to connect with the audience, no matter how intellectual they are, no matter how high level they are, We all appreciate that storytelling goes back to our ancestry, back when we lived in a cave. Like, it is built into our brains. And if you’re able to incorporate some of those because you understand that you are a performer to some degree and not just a, again, deliverer of information.
Kerry:
All of that comes together to make you more effective. It makes you more memorable. It makes you more impactful. Okay? So speaking of impact, the last real goal of creating this performance mindset is to create influence and to create impact. And those two elements may be a little bit different depending on who you’re talking to, depending on what stage you are in your career or business growth, but you can always create influence and impact, like, especially designed for the audience that you’re in front of. So, ultimately, it makes sense. The goal of getting in front of an audience, whether you are in person or whether you’re in a lens, whether you’re doing a webinar or you are appearing on the Today Show or Fox Business, your goal is to make an impact. You can’t really make an impact if you’re not memorable or you’re not relatable or people don’t like you.
Kerry:
Right? You wanna make an impact. You definitely want to inform me. You are delivering information, but you’re persuading. You’re inspiring. You may in fact be entertaining. Entertaining circles back to that humor and the storytelling that we were talking about before. It doesn’t mean that you have to be a stand up comic. It doesn’t mean that you have to be goofy again.
Kerry:
But it is about bringing people in and keeping them there. So your mindset as a speaker’s mindset slash performance mindset influences the ability that you have to actually achieve that impact and achieve that influence. And if you are able to incorporate that so that you are you can approach these things, right, now that you understand some of the skills that are involved and and how high stakes they can be, you might you’re going to get a little more nervous, especially the bigger and the more high ticket your audience is. Right? If you’re looking to bring someone in for a $97 purchase versus something that could cost them 6 digits, that’s a higher stakes audience. No less important, but still higher stakes and the goals and probably the way in which you speak, definitely the way in which you speak, is perhaps a little bit different. Doesn’t mean that you can’t incorporate all of those things, though, humor, storytelling, entertainment, etcetera, etcetera, emotion. So if you can bring all of those in, you’ve practiced, you’re resilient, you understand what you’re doing, you’re not just delivering statistics, you’ve got your stories, You can approach speaking feeling a little more optimistic, feeling a little more enthusiastic, feeling, definitely more excited about it. You’re, oh, perhaps a little more open to it.
Kerry:
You are intending to make a difference, if you bring all of those things together, you can significantly uplevel the way that you interact and engage your audience, the impact that you have on your audience. So that mindset, at the end of the day, determines not just the content of your speech, the informational elements as well, and the storytelling and the humor, but also the energy and the passion with which you deliver it because you need to have both of those things if you’re going to have a lasting impression. If you’re going to expect to keep people on the edge of their seats, not just during your appearance, but also intrigued and inspired and interested after as well. Because even if they don’t take action in the moment, they buy your thing, they go to your website, whatever it is, if you create impact and you’re memorable, your opportunity for influence grows, you know, tenfold. It expands. K. So I hope all of that makes sense. Now the pillars of a performance mindset, we just went into why it’s important, are pretty basic.
Kerry:
And I’m gonna run through these fairly quickly because I don’t want to belabor what the pillars of this mindset are to be redundant. So it’s self awareness. Certainly, understanding your strengths, it’s understanding your weaknesses, the areas in which you need to improve. Right? That goes back to that first characteristic, having a growth mindset versus a sort of a stagnant mindset. It is preparation practice. Right? That’s part of a pillar of having a performance mindset and a speaker’s mindset because I’m using performance mindset and speaker’s mindset interchangeably, interchangeably, but you may not be a professional speaker. You may not be someone who is hired by an organization to go and give a keynote for $25,000. However, anytime you are in front of an audience, you need to have the same mindset as someone who is charging 25 or $50 for a keynote.
Kerry:
That’s a speaker’s mindset. That is a performer’s mindset, and they can charge that amount because they know what they’re doing and they can inspire the audience. So you may not be paid to be in front of the camera or up on the stage, but you still need to have those 2 elements if you expect to inspire your audience and create change within them. So again, not just a deliverer of information, but somebody who is inspiring and somebody who has both a speaker and a performance mindset. I’m bringing them both together. If you have questions about specifically what the difference is and how you can use both in your business, in your law firm, in your corporation, shoot me a DM or drop me a question here in the chat, and we can talk. So prepare and practice. Right? Meticulous preparation, consistent practice, doing this every day, recognizing that if you’re not an expert media person or if you have not hosted a dozen webinars in the past and had an engaged audience with a high conversion rate, there may be something for you to learn a little bit.
Kerry:
I actually did a post yesterday about a webinar, some webinar issues that people have, and a webinar experience I had as an attendee a couple of weeks ago. And some of the issues that the hosts had with the co host had come from them not understanding that they should have a performance or speaker’s mindset. They weren’t thinking about it from the audience’s point of view and how their lack of coordination and their sort of long, awkward pauses made them sound like they didn’t have their ish together, and they were timid and unsure. And that’s the last thing you want to appear to be when you are, a, looking to inspire someone, and, b, hoping they’re going to buy something from you or engage with you in some way, or you’re going to bring them in as a client. So preparation practice. Resilience. Handling fear, handling nerves, getting over that fear of failure as much as you can or at least being able to compartmentalize it, how to bounce back from those setbacks, not only when they occur in the moment, but afterward when you walk away from the podium or you walk away from the lens and you start to pick yourself apart. I know that when I never really developed the thick skin that a person in the news needs to have.
Kerry:
It took me sometimes a couple of days to recover from a particularly mean tweet or a particularly rude email or a particularly bad show for whatever reason, even if it wasn’t necessarily my fault. I struggled with the resilience element until I realized that I have to put it aside. I have to be able to compartmentalize it. And even if I was going to ruminate on it for a day or 2, it couldn’t affect the newscast I had to do the next day. I had to have the performance mindset. I had to be able to get back in front of the lens and deliver as if my confidence had not been crushed to smithereens just a few short hours ago. Next is adaptability. Right? So learning how to adjust on the fly, learning how to tailor your message to your audience, recognizing how to handle those glitches that happen in the moment.
Kerry:
For example, the audience being disengaged or tuning you out. And maybe that’s your delivery. Maybe it’s just that they have a lot of stuff going on that day that is keeping them mentally and emotionally disengaged from you and is how you don’t let that affect you, how you try and bring them back in. But, ultimately, if for whatever reason you can’t and that happens in every single presentation, it doesn’t affect you. It doesn’t derail you. And then feedback reception. How do you not only ask for the feedback, how you receive it, and how you implement it constructively, so from your coach or from your colleagues or from your audience. Right? I like to do a poll after I give a webinar, something that goes out via email and asks people for their feedback so that I can continue to get better.
Kerry:
Alright. Finally, today, how you can cultivate and develop this performance mindset. So I’m gonna go through a couple of sorts of practical tips, some exercises you can do to begin to cultivate the mindset of somebody who is a speaker and somebody who is a performer. Because, again, even if you’re not a professional speaker, even if you’re not on the speaking circuit, even if you’re not a member of the National Speakers Association, You are still a speaker every time you get up in front of an audience. You are still a performer every time you get up in front of an audience. So how do you cultivate those two mindsets so that you can deliver to your audience, not just with the technical skills, but also with the conviction, also with the energy, also with the impact and the influence. So visualization exercises. I’m gonna get granular with these because sometimes people will say, do a visualization exercise, and I don’t. What exactly should I be visualizing? How should I be doing it? I like the details.
Kerry:
How often should I be doing these things to see the most change in the quickest time possible? So the objective of a visualization exercise is to improve your confidence. Certainly, all of these are about improving your confidence, but it’s also about lessening that anxiety. It’ll never completely go away. That’s fine. You’re always going to experience it a couple of minutes before you get up on the stage, you know, when you go in front of the lens. Usually, it dissipates about 3 minutes in, but that first 3 minutes is so crucial because it’s the first thing your audience is hearing out of your mouth. The first thing you say and the last thing you say. Primacy, recency.
Kerry:
Those are the moments that you need to have down pat. You can dance around a little bit in the middle. But anyway, I got off on a tangent there. So confidence and reducing anxiety by visualizing success before you have a speaking engagement, before you’re talking to a client, before you’re doing a big global town hall, virtual event, webinar, whatever. You get it. So find a quiet space. Here’s the steps. Number 1 is to find a quiet space where you can practice without feeling self conscious, without any sort of interruption.
Kerry:
K? That’s step number 1. Step number 2 is to close your eyes, Take a few deep breaths to center yourself. Another quick tip, breathe in for a count of 4, breathe out for a count of 8. You wanna breathe out for longer than you’re breathing in. Breathing in is what spools your nervous system up. Breathing out is what dials it down. So make sure that you’re breathing in for 4 and breathing out for at least 7, preferably 8. 3rd, imagine the speaking venue.
Kerry:
Right? Whether you’re at home, in your office, in front of your camera, whether you are at work, whether you are hosting a webinar, whatever it is, imagine that environment is maybe a better word to use, and then visualize yourself walking to the stage in front of the camera, whatever it is, with confidence. You’ve got your head up. You’ve got your shoulders back. Your stride is easy and big, for lack of a better word. You’re not taking, like, short, little shuffling steps because you’re nervous. You’re striding onto the stage with purpose. That’s what I was trying to say. Right? You’re walking onto the stage with competence, conviction, and purpose, or you’re getting in front of the lens with competence, conviction, and purpose.
Kerry:
Then you’re going to visualize your audience, attentive, engaged. And, again, in this scenario, I can’t see you. Like, I can see some of you who are here. I know all the numbers don’t show up because YouTube doesn’t show up. I think just LinkedIn does, but Facebook, etcetera. But I can still visualize you out there watching, and thank you. And if you’re on a stage and or you’re in front of a team in your conference room or whatever, certainly, you’re in front of a client, you can see your audience. So you’re imagining them attentively.
Kerry:
You’re imagining them engaged, and you’re going to feel the positive energy that’s in the room. Right? You’re gonna force yourself to feel the positive energy that’s in the room no matter how scared you are. Then you’re going to envision yourself delivering whatever it is that you’re going to deliver, whatever it is that you’re going to say flawlessly. And as you know, you’re articulating your points clearly. You are engaging. You are connecting with the audience. I wanna be clear with you that when I say flawlessly, I don’t mean every word comes out exactly as you had manuscripted it or exactly as you don’t use any filler words or whatever. When I say flawlessly, I mean that you are up there confident.
Kerry:
Your audience is engaged. And sometimes, I find that even if I have manuscripted something, some inspiration occurs to me in the moment because of a question or because of a connection opportunity I see when I’m there that I didn’t anticipate when I was practicing, and I riff for a little bit. I adlib. I go off of script, if you will. And sometimes that stuff is not flawless, but it’s good. And people like it, and it brings them closer. It creates impact. So when I say flawlessly, I don’t want you to get in your head about being perfect at this moment.
Kerry:
I just mean that, like, you feel good about it and your audience does too. That’s what I consider flawless in these environments. You’re gonna focus on feeling accomplished, the accomplishment. Right? You’re gonna wrap up. You’re gonna see your comments saying thank you. That was awesome, or you’re going to hear the audience applaud, maybe even stand up and applaud. And then you’re gonna end that visualization with a few more deep breaths and closed eyes. Now in terms of how often you’re gonna practice that, you’re gonna practice it daily, especially as you’re leading up to some opportunity where you’re gonna be in front of people, visibility, pitch, whatever.
Kerry:
It doesn’t have to take long. 3, 5 minutes, something like that. The next is a feedback loop exercise, and the goal of this is to develop adaptability, to develop that resilience characteristic because you’re actively looking for and then incorporating feedback. So after any speaking opportunity, I want you to ask for feedback from a couple of different sources. So maybe it’s audience members, peers, mentors. Maybe you record it and you watch it back. Like, I mentioned I haven’t. I try to send out an email to my attendees after a webinar to get their feedback and then incorporate it. Take that feedback that’s given to you and put it in a journal.
Kerry:
Write it down on a document. And, and in that journal, it should not just be the stuff that people said you need to improve on, but it should also be the stuff that they said went well. Because, yes, you should be asking for that feedback too. What went well? And think to yourself, what felt good? What did you know worked in that moment that maybe you hadn’t planned for or you hadn’t anticipated? And then reflect on that feedback. Right? Think about it. Identify. As you’re looking at it, there are usually some common themes that people highlight or that we recognize in ourselves. They fall into a couple of buckets.
Kerry:
Maybe it’s because I have a tendency to speak too quickly, or I have a tendency because I know I speak too quickly to slow it down and I slow it down too much. Then the audience gets bored and they leave. So you’ll see after you do this a little bit, there are some themes or areas where feedback clusters, skills that you need to develop. And then once you figure out what those buckets are, I want you to set specific, actionable goals for each one of them. Right? Improve eye contact maybe 1. Use more relatable examples. And don’t just say, have more energy. Say in 1 week, I wanna have my eye contact down, and I’m gonna do these things to get there.
Kerry:
In 2 or 3 weeks, I want to better understand how to use vocal variety, and I’m going to take these steps to get there. Day 1, I’m gonna work at my own pace. Day 2, I’m gonna work on the pitch. Whatever it is. Okay? So specific actionable things. Because if you just say get better at showing more energy, that’s too vague for us to really do anything with. I want you to break it down for yourself. And work on them each time you practice and then bring them into your next opportunity, speaking, presenting, whatever it is.
Kerry:
Keep repeating that process so that you’re creating a continuous sort of feedback loop where it’s performance, it’s feedback, it’s reflection, it’s improvement. That’s the stage. Performance, feedback, reflection, improvement. K? And you’re gonna do this not every day, but every time that you either practice or you are actually real time delivering in some way, a live stream, a webinar, whatever it is. Number 3 is goal setting and review. So the goal here is to create that growth mindset through very specific, achievable goal setting opportunities and then regular review. So the steps in this particular goal include setting those very clear, very measurable goals for improving your speaking skills. Right? So to engage more with the audience.
Kerry:
I’m gonna ask 3 interactive questions in the first, whatever, 15 minutes, half an hour, etcetera. And then break them down into smaller, actionable steps that you can practice daily or weekly so that you continue to build on that and you don’t just try and deploy them when you’re in a high stakes situation. Then keep a log of your progress on all of these goals. So how are things going? I tried to do this. I recorded myself. Here’s where I had trouble. Record a log and refer to it when you are practicing. Include setbacks in the log, feedback on things you learned from those setbacks as well.
Kerry:
And then review your goals and your progress pretty regularly. I would say every 1 to 2 weeks is a good cadence for reviewing. I know it’s really easy to get overwhelmed with all this stuff. Right? Oh my gosh. I’ve just added an extra 2 hours to my day. Really and truly, this should only add, if you’re doing all of this stuff, 15 minutes maybe to your day. And the other thing I want you to do is celebrate milestones, celebrate little wins. And I’m actually really bad at doing this.
Kerry:
I need to take some of my own advice. I am more than happy to gloss over any wins. I’m more than happy to gloss over any celebrations because I dismiss everything as a fluke. That’s my own head trash. But my coach right now, my business coach, has made it clear to me that I need to take a moment to celebrate that stuff and bake the wins into me as much as I have baked the failures in. Right? I need to start replacing the sort of failure loop that runs constantly in my mind with some new practices and some new habits and some new ways of thinking. And you gotta be intentional about it. Otherwise, it’s never gonna stick.
Kerry:
And I would say that is something that you should do, daily. That’s something that you should take daily action to practice the goals and then take weekly action to make adjustments based on your reviews. I hope all of that made sense. Okay? So the next thing is really combining all of these elements, if you will, to cultivate that performer’s mindset, and it’s not going to come quickly. I would say it was one of the biggest changes that I had to make when I was still in the news industry because I thought of myself as someone who was strictly delivering information. And superficially, that is what a reporter or a news anchor does. They are delivering information. However, it’s also a super competitive industry.
Kerry:
And if I don’t have an impact on my audience, if they don’t remember me, if they don’t like me, if they don’t engage with me, if they aren’t in I don’t wanna say inspired, but, technically, yeah, if they’re not inspired to watch because I’m not delivering with any sort of conviction, then our ratings go down, and they go somewhere else. And there’s a very clear connection about why they’re doing that. And so I could technically read a show or deliver a newscast perfectly. No ums, no ahs, no flubs, no missed cues, none of that. But I wasn’t having an impact because I didn’t view myself as a performer. I didn’t have a performance mindset. I definitely didn’t have a speaker’s mindset. I had a, I’m up here giving, like, an end of the quarter review.
Kerry:
It was boring. And it wasn’t until I understood that I had to engage, connect, inspire, speak with conviction, have the technical skills to bring the audience in and hold them there that I started to develop that performer’s mindset and the speaker’s mindset. And then I understood how I had to practice, and I understood how I had to get better. And that’s when I started watching my newscasts right afterwards so that I could review and critique my performance and set up new goals for myself and get feedback from my consultants and my coach and my boss. So understanding why it’s important, the pillars that go into it, and how to cultivate it using some of the practice methods that I mentioned today are important. As always, if you have any questions about what I do, how I can help you, what we’ve talked about today, you can certainly drop them in the comments. You can shoot me a DM. You can also email me.
Kerry:
All of that information is on my profile, but my email is kerry atkerrybarrett.com. Alright. So next week on the Kari Barrett show live, I’m looking at my notes now. We are talking about the difference between speaking on a stage to a live audience and speaking in front of a camera, whether it’s virtual, whether it’s media, whether it’s social, webinar, whatever. Being good at one doesn’t necessarily mean being good at the other. I’m working with a lawyer right now who is an absolute pitbull in the courtroom. This person can argue a case extremely convincingly. This person can speak on a stage very well. Put this person in front of a camera, and it’s a struggle because you’re expecting the skill sets to be the same.
Kerry:
And, again, while there is some overlap, they are different, and you don’t want to find that out when you are in a high stakes environment. And if you need help with both, I can do that. So that’s coming up on the Kari Barrett show live next Thursday, which is March 21st, 10 AM EST, same time, same place. And by the way, if you are also interested in booking a free competence on camera strategy call, you can do so at calendly.com/karybarrettcompetence on camera strategy call. There’ll be a link in the comments. And if you are listening to this podcast, you will find a link in the show notes. I hope you had a great time. I am glad you joined us.
Kerry:
Hope you have a wonderful week, and I will see you back here at the same time, same place. I’ll see you then.
