You Crushed the Talk... So Why Do You Feel Like Crap?

Ever given a talk, walked off the stage, felt the rush of "HECK YES I nailed that!"—and then bam, hours later, you’re deep in the land of second-guessing and spiraling, you start replaying everything that went wrong? 

In this episode of The Ramble Refinery, we’re talking about that weird emotional dip that hits right after a big visibility moment—the one no one warns you about. It’s more common than you think, especially when you’re pushing your edge and stepping into bigger rooms.

You’ll hear:

• Why this spiral shows up (even when the talk goes great)
• The real reason high-achievers beat themselves up after visibility
• 5 things to do right after a talk to move through the spiral
• How to make each speaking moment build momentum (instead of just moving on)

If you’ve ever done something brave—only to pick it apart later—this quickie is your reminder: self-critique isn’t the problem. Getting stuck there is. Let’s fix that.

EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇
https://heathersager.com/episode236

Transcript

0:11  
Well, hey friend and welcome back to another episode of The ramble Refinery. We're gonna make today's episode a quickie, but a much needed conversation. Okay, picture this. You deliver a presentation, right? You guest speak in a group, you you do a podcast interview, or maybe you book a big stage, and you give like 100% on the stage, and people are clapping, people are excited, and you get off stage, and you feel great, and you feel this sense of doubt creep in, and you start second guessing the crap out of yourself. You're like, I should be celebrating, because, holy shit, I just did that. But yet, you cannot shake this feeling, and for the hours, days, weeks, potentially, after that talk or performance, you go into a little bit of a spiral. You dip. You have this like hangover from the talk. One, you're probably super freaking exhausted because you practiced your ass off and you gave it everything that you had in you, but you also have this, like looming, weird cloud over you. Maybe this hasn't happened to you before, maybe you're like, I don't even know what the hell you're talking about, maybe this episode isn't for you. But if you've ever given a presentation and had this after effect where you know you should be celebrating because you freaking did it, but still, you're in a little bit of a downward spiral, and you can't help but shake the feeling of WTF just happened. And you start nitpicking the crap out of yourself, or you start questioning the decisions you made, you start going to all the things that you missed, the lines you forgot, the connections you you made or didn't make, you just start critiquing the crap out of yourself. If you've been in this position before, or you have a speaking event coming up, I want you to be aware of this. This post speaking spiral that happens, and it happens to the best of us. It happens to the big names. I've heard many people talk about this publicly around after their talks, they're like, well, I don't know what just happened. So if, again, if this doesn't relate with you, skip today's episode. But if you've ever had this moment where you've seriously questioned yourself after a big moment, let's talk about it. 

2:38  
I wanted to bring this up because I've been working a lot with private coaching clients and inside the Speaker Society here over the last year, where some of my clients have booked some really large stages. And it's something that we haven't really talked about until it happens. And It is that moment of like, oh my gosh, I did it, paired with this secret feeling of like, oh, and what usually comes with it when I'm talking to my clients after their event, there's a little bit of an embarrassment or a shame about it, where they're almost afraid to tell me, because they're like, should be celebrating. They work their asses off to get on that stage. They work their asses off to to like, present, right? It wasn't for a lack of preparation, but still, after I hear in their voices, they're hesitating. They're trying not to overly critique, because they know that I don't let them talk crap about themselves. So they're like, I can hear it censoring. And anyways, I wanted to record this podcast episode because I don't, I don't think my clients are alone in this. I think this is a very normal thing, especially when you enter kind of a new era of speaking, and what I mean by that is like a new level of visibility. So you might not have this issue come up at all when you're talking to your audience or your community. You might not even have this issue when you do podcast interviews within your own peer network. Think about like, if you think about like, these comfort zones, right? You've probably seen the image before. Think about your comfort zone, like a what's that thing, like a bullseye dartboard, right? With this like circle in the middle, and then there's these bands, like circles outside of it, right in the very inner circle is you are absolute most comfortable. That's you with your ass on the couch like yours, totally in your element. You're totally comfortable here, and I'm thinking business wise, right, You're probably comfortable in your wheelhouse, comfortable in your area of expertise, talking about your shit, right? But then you you expand a little bit further, and maybe you're comfortable. You've built that comfort of you talking to your audience. Maybe you've built that comfort of you talking to with inside, like your peers groups. But as we start expanding our visibility, our discomfort starts creeping in, simply because it's new, simply because it's we're unfamiliar, we're not quite sure about the audience, what, quote, unquote, strangers might think about our weird quirks or weird stories. We start questioning whether or not things are really valuable. We start really getting more interested around what people think about us. The more we expand our comfort zone, aka into our discomfort zone, we start getting a little second guessing, and that's totally normal. The beautiful thing is, the more that you stretch those bands, the more that you play in those we'll just go with this analogy here. Those like outer rings, the more comfortable you get. It stretches your comfort zone out. 

5:36  
So I want to really emphasize here that, if you have these moments, I would imagine that the spiral happens when you are operating just on the edge of your comfort zone, even to the discomfort zone. And the beautiful thing is, the more that you do it, the more comfortable you will get. Said differently, the less that nagging A-hole voice in your head will be all consuming. You might notice that the first time you book a bigger speaking opportunity, you're sweating balls, preparing for it, right? You're being really like, oh, I have to get everything right. You're really putting a lot of time and energy into it. And then after the talk, you're like, high five, I did it, but also that was freaking terrible, or whatever other things you say about yourself that might go on for quite a while. You might have a little post traumatic connections with the experience, right? It was awesome, but you're like, holy crap. Well, here's the thing is, if you only do one of those and then wait months or years to do it again, you're only going to remember the stress about it, not like the joy around it, or, I don't know, maybe it's kind of like childbirth, where you have the moment of amnesia and you totally forget about the stresses and be like, that was awesome. I don't know, right? It just really depends on the scenario here. 

6:53  
But where I want to get you to is realizing that if you have these moments of discomfort, we start really questioning ourselves and questioning all these things when we are uncomfortable, and if you have big ass goals, this year's buckle up babe, you are going to be uncomfortable, or you should be uncomfortable because realizing your goals, it requires you operating on the edge of the comfort zone. I know you know this, right? This is like personal development one on one, but we need to talk about it in relation to speaking. 

7:27  
So here's the deal if you struggle in that post speaking spiral, right? You, you, you do the gig, you do the podcast interview, whatever, quote, unquote stage. Remember, a stage is simply a platform to share your message. So it can be any kind of stage for your audience, other people's audiences could be warm, people that you know, it could be totally strangers. I don't really care what the context is, but if you find yourself in a post speaking spiral, let's talk about it. I have five things that I would be looking at if I were you, if I were your coach, to walk you through it. These are the conversations that I have on Voxer with my private clients when they are in the spiral. 

8:04  
So number one, I want you to allow that inner critic to bitch for a minute. Because here's the thing, if you try to ra-ra personal development yourself and being like but I'm gonna focus on gratitude. I did it. Here's all the things I did well, and you're just faking that, that voice isn't there. We're gonna have, like, a delusional moment and yourself knows yourself. It knows you're being inauthentic. So give yourself the two minutes to word vomit out all the shit talk you need to do. Get it out. And I would recommend you might want to write it down. Write it down, just whatever comes to mind, but put a time limit on it. I love me, like a two minute timer. If you are speaking it out loud, give yourself like a five minute, right, because there's the ramble where it's going to maybe go on and on, but give yourself a time frame and let it end. Get it all out like a big vomit, like, boom. That was, sorry. That was really gross, but whatever, here we are. So number one, get it out, and now we need to turn that critique into the coach. We have inner critic into inner coach. I think this is really, really important that we we recognize is there's a difference between a critic and a coach. And even like if you think about the word critique, a critique isn't rooted in a critic, which essentially just pointing out what went wrong in the past. A critique moves into coaching, which is more forward focused. So when I say move from critic to coach, what I want you to do is in that two minutes that you're like, ba, I can't believe I did that. I totally missed that part, or I was talking too fast, or, man, I just jam too many things. Why do I always put so much shit into my talks? Like it's way too much. Their eyes was glazing over, like, ah, also, why did I wear that top that button kept copying open. I probably slipped him a nip. Like, what is going on here? Whatever your critic ramble is, get it out, and now what we need to do is shift into coach. What that sounds like is okay. I hear you. That was a lot of shit that went south. But let me ask you a question, what can I do to improve for next time? What can I do better on the next talk? And what we do is we give our critic a job, and that job is forward thinking. That job is, how do I elevate the experience? How do I show up more confident? How do I create better material? How can I have better engagement with the audience? So if our critic, right, our critic is maybe talking about what we look like, or how we spoke, or, I don't know, but a bunch of random things, and it's usually either uber specific on things we can't change, like the fact that when you were talking you accidentally, like, drooled on yourself, that may or may not have happened to me a lot, uber freaking specific, like you nitpick over this one thing that most likely is just it was just a fluke that happened, and it's unchangeable, right? It's in the past, or our critic really loves to make these grandiose, so general statements, right? You talk too fast. Oh, you're way over their head. Your story sucked ass. You forgot all your lines like general things that are really not helpful. So if we want to direct the critic into the coach, we need to give it a job. So okay, critique, tell me, what can I do differently next time? What can I do to make my next talk even better? So then what we start doing is we become productive in our critique. It's forward focused. So maybe we take from that and say, okay, you know what next time we really need to get clear on what our core points are. We were shoving a lot at that audience. Next time, let's focus on just three main talking points and work them a little deeper. Great, good feedback. Okay, what else can we do differently? Okay, next time, it would be really great if we had more intentional engagement questions for the audience, right? So instead of just coming up with hoping for a hand raise on the fly, we actually knew when we were engaging our audience, so that they could actually integrate what we were talking about. Okay, critic, great. What else you got? Okay, next time, have your slide deck done at least a week before, so that you can run through it and practice the clicks out loud and the transitions of what you're going to say, so that you're not caught fumbling or looking up at the screen around what comes next. Okay. Harsh, true. Okay. Thank you. What else? 

12:55  
So you see here where I'm talking to myself, but I'm giving my inner critic a job, and that job is future focused. It's where are we going next time, every single time you speak, I look at a stage, paid or not, as practice. Every time I speak on stage, it's literally me practicing getting better, right? And just because it's quote, unquote practice doesn't mean that it's not a performance. It's not real. But every time I speak, I am getting incrementally getting that was hard to say, getting incrementally better. Why does that word incrementally? Is that incremental? I think that's the right word. I don't know. Words are hard today. We're getting better, right? It's the whole point of this show around the refinery. Refining is a constant state. We are always getting better, right? And the more time that goes between your speaking gigs, the harder this is going to be because of that space between these live moments, right? You can practice all you want, but until you have a mic in your hand and an audience in front of you, lights on on stage, whatever the context is, until you have that real moment pressure that like rehearsal piece, it's not true practice in my experience. When we say putting in the reps, that means actually being on stage. And if you want to get better, you have to put in more reps. You have to put yourself in those situations where you're in front of a real audience, delivering your real message, so that after you can learn from it and continue to grow. The issue with most business owners that I work with is after they step on stage, they berate the crap out of themselves, or maybe they give themselves a high five, but then they move on. They just move on. They forget it. That's done. Shut the door on that. Move on to the next 20 million things we're doing in our business, and we don't carry forward our own inner wisdom, which sounds so cheesy, but we don't carry it forward. Business is about growth, and I don't just mean the numbers, but. I mean, the like skill set. Do not waste this opportunity for you to grow your skill set, right, to expand your comfort zone. Okay? So number one piece, we're gonna fly through the rest of this. Number one, you have to have to have to get better at shifting from the inner critic to the inner coach. 

15:19  
Number two, if you're not doing this, you are leaving shit on the table. Whatever that shit is you need to debrief your talks. That debrief looks like what actually happened. What are you going to take with you next time. You need to write it down. We have a process inside the Speaker Society called the talk debrief, right? Where I have people literally document down. Here's the group I spoke to. This is what I talked about. This was my sticky message, aka core premise of my talk. This was my speaker persona, aka my intentional how I show up on stage. This was what the talk was about. This is how long it was, this is how long it was planned. We go through some very intentional reflection questions, and then we have the carry forward learning. So what lessons did they learn that they're going to carry forward. Our community, we share these debriefs, because not only is that so powerful for you, it's so powerful when you see other business owners walk through their own debriefs, because we learn from them. Not only do we learn and carry forward our own experiences, we learn and carry forward the experiences of others. So justdo a debrief, write shit down, have a historical like, boom, this is what happened, and it's both the your thoughts and feelings around it, but also I want the facts. So what was the presentation? What was the goal? Did you achieve your goal? How many people reach out to you after, did you get leads? Did you get referrals? And some of those things that might take some time to trickle through, but please, please, please document this. Have that stamp of this is the debrief from that talk, so that you can look back years from now and actually see the progress you've made. Because, I mean, in a couple years from now, once you've done a lot more talks, right, and you've really expanded your comfort zone here, I'm going to look back and see just how far you've come. 

17:08  
Okay. Number one, turn the critic to coach. Number two, make sure you completed a brief. Number three, when you're done with your talk, oh my gosh, please follow up with people, with the host, tell them thank you for having you on their stage. If you want to do bonus points, if you're a gift person or a words of affirmation, send them a sweet note. Send them a little gifty gift. Reach out to the people who DM you. People DM you. Oh my gosh, your talk was amazing. I don't want you to, like, dismiss that and be like, Oh no. It was like, it was just a really great audience. Oh, it was just a pleasure to be at the event. Don't you freaking dismiss that compliment. You say, thank you. I worked my ass off to get ready for this event like you can honor it. Say, thanks, right? And but you could also appreciate and be like, yeah, I worked. I work really hard on that talk. Thank you so much for taking the time to reply and then start a conversation with them. That conversation is gonna be like, by the way, you want a bomb on program. No, don't be a schmuck about it, but follow up. 

18:03  
Being on stage is a start of many beautiful relationships. They could be potential clients. They could be potential champions for your brand, great referral sources. They could be opportunities for you to book more stages, right? You want people to remember you. You want them to refer you. You want to get rebooked, right? That's the point. So follow up with the people reaching out. If you're speaking at an event, at a summit and there were other speakers, follow up with the other speakers. Be kind, be generous. Tell them, oh my gosh, I loved your talk. Hey, I love the activity you did with the audience. Hey, it was great to meet and connect you with this event, or, hey, we both spoke at this event. Didn't get a chance to see or meet you there, but I love the topic that you spoke on. What's the next event you're speaking at? Start conversations, three, follow up. 

18:51  
Four. Number four, if I wanted to get out of the speaking spiral every time that I'm speaking, the one of the things I would do after is I would find ways to amplify that speaking opportunity. What I mean by that is squeeze more juice out of the opportunity. So did I have video of me speaking at the event? Can I use that video on my website? Can I clip it down and create B will roll with my reels? Was it one of those things that I got some great testimonials, great feedback from people? Could I update my speaker page? Could I update my speaker one sheet? Could I add someof that stuff on my social to be like, hello, I'm a speaker. I do speaking. We got to make sure that we're talking about the fact that we're speaking. Are we doing a Facebook post to let our friends and family know? Hey, I just did a really great speaking opportunity. What an honor it is to be able to do the work that I do and speak to audiences who would have thought this little girl from Vancouver, Washington actually gets paid to do this, like, celebrate with me, or, like, reminder, do the scary thing that you have on your heart, like, whatever you want to do, but like, talk about it, amplify it. You never know who's going to see that. One, they're going to cheer you on, which is going to make you feel better. But two, it's going to help more people know that you're. Doing speaking, which leads me to number five, quick recap. Number one, to get out of the speaking spiral, we're turning the critic to the coach. Number two, we're doing a debrief. Number three, we are following up with those people reaching out. Number four, we are amplifying, squeezing more juice. And number five, we are booking our next gig as soon as possible, I want you to get your next speaking opportunity on the books, because again, the more we put in those reps, the more we're going to normalize this fact that we are expanding our comfort zone. It's going to help us get more comfortable faster. So I want you to follow up with those leads, right, or reach out cold, pitch your your friends, your peers, like, raise your hand. Let people know you're speaking, but work your tushy to get that next opportunity booked, because we want to use this momentum to get you on another stage that you can apply that coach critique that you gave yourself around, how you can do better, you can now start testing that out and elevate and refine. 

21:02  
Okay, I told you, this is gonna be a quickie episode, so we're gonna wrap it there. But rapid fire 20 minutes. This is what Heather says. This is how you get out of that speaking spiral and start incrementally. There's that word, nailed it this time, becoming a better speaker. And Hey, friend, if you enjoyed this episode, this like rapid fire, boom, boom, boom, boom, here's exactly what to do. You're gonna love what we do inside the Speaker Society. One of the new parts of my program that I am adding in is literally a step by step of every speaking opportunity that you get. Here is what to do, both from I have to do this like every single time checklist. This is what you do to nail it every step of the process, but also these little refinement enhancements of once you start getting your groove and you're getting comfortable in that baseline, how you start getting even better and adding in like, more fancy elements to start really elevating your reach and your your results in in your business. 

21:59  
So one of the things we're adding into the Speaker Society curriculum is this new speak framework, where it's for every single speaking gig. We're going to talk about five steps, speak as an acronym, secure it, prep for it, engage with the audience, aka, deliver it, amplify. So it's what you do after. And then the K stands for Kaizen, which is a Japanese word for these ongoing state of refinement. Those five elements speak. It's a cycle, and we go through it every time we speak. So that way, we're constantly up leveling our skills, nailing the gig, but we're also creating a better impact every single time. So if you want to learn more about that, head on over to Heather sager.com/society, or just DM me the word society on Instagram. No, I don't have a bot set up to talk with you about that. I'm a real human. I will actually talk to you about that. But if speaking is on your mind for this year, if you want to get on bigger stages, if you want to have a bigger impact with your brand, and really start being seen as that recognized and known expert in your niche, the Speaker Society is the place to do it.

23:03  
All, right, friend, I'm out of breath because that was a speed round. I gotta go, take a pee, get a coffee and get ready for our coaching call inside the speaker society. I will see you next week.