If you’d told me three months ago that I’d stand on a stage in front of 80 people and talk about AI and business, I would have laughed in your face. Properly laughed. And then gone home and quietly worried about it for a week, because that’s how my brain says thank you.
Because here’s where I actually was in April. At a networking event, in the toilet, having an anxiety attack before the thing had even started.
Not nerves. An actual anxiety attack. Heart going like mad, hands shaking, brain screaming that everyone out there had it together and I was the one imposter in the building. I stood in that cubicle seriously weighing up whether I could get to the fire exit without anyone seeing me. That was the plan forming in my head. The fire exit.
I didn’t, obviously. I made myself walk back in, found one friendly face and clung to her like a life raft. We’re still friends now, which tells you something about how these things actually work.
And here’s the bit I didn’t tell anyone for months. At the time, I was running my entire business out of my own head. Every client, every deadline, every “oh I must remember to”, all of it living in my brain and literally nowhere else. So no, the anxiety wasn’t random. It was maths.
What actually changed
At the end of July I spoke at Business by the Beach in Bournemouth. Eighty people. Me, on a stage, with a clicker, talking about AI for real actual minutes while everyone looked at me on purpose.
I know what the tidy version of this story is supposed to be. I “found my confidence”. Except I didn’t, and you’d smell it if I pretended otherwise. Nothing arrived in the post. Same person, same brain, same nervous system that had me on the floor of a toilet in April.
Two things were different though.
One, I kept making myself go. Not gracefully. I sat in the car park giving myself the little pep talk every single time. But every room was a tiny bit easier than the one before, and tiny bits add up faster than you’d think.
Two, and this is the big one, I stopped carrying my business on my own. Someone finally sat down and looked at it with me. Properly looked. Mapped what was actually going on in there, instead of the vague cloud of dread I’d been calling a to-do list. And once you know what your business is, what it does and why it matters, standing up and talking about it stops being a performance. You’re just telling the truth, but with a microphone.
Funny thing is, that’s now the first thing I do with my own clients. Most of them don’t need more AI. They need their business to stop relying on their memory.
Those twelve weeks, honestly. I rebuilt my offers. Worked out what I actually sell, which took embarrassingly long considering it’s my business. Built the systems I’d been avoiding for years. Wrote a talk I was proud of. And ended up with a business I could explain without apologising for it.
That’s what walked on stage. I just came with it.
The gig itself
What did I talk about? What I always talk about, just louder. What AI is genuinely good at in a small business. Where it makes everything worse. And the deeply unsexy truth in the middle: whatever foundations you’ve got in place before you touch any of it decide which of those two you get.
Was I nervous? God, yes. I rewrote my notes about four times and rehearsed the whole thing out loud in my kitchen to an audience of nobody. The fear didn’t leave just because I’d prepared. It came with me. It just got quieter the longer I talked.
Afterwards people came up to ask questions, and that’s when the thing nobody tells you about speaking finally clicked. The room wants you to do well. Nobody out there is hoping you fall over. They came because something about AI and their business is keeping them up at night, and I could actually help with that.
What I’d tell April Gemma
That anxiety attack was not proof that I couldn’t do this. It was proof that I was doing something brand new with no support underneath me. The problem was never my brain. The problem was that I was carrying everything, alone, from memory.
Twelve weeks is a long time and no time at all. It’s enough time to go from a locked cubicle to a stage. Not because you become someone else. Because you finally get some structure under the person you already are.
If you’re reading this from your own version of the toilet cubicle, whether that’s before a networking event, staring at your laptop, or wondering why your business feels so heavy, here’s what I’d tell you.
Don’t try harder.
Don’t buy another AI tool.
Don’t convince yourself you need more confidence.
Find someone who can see the business you’re too close to see yourself.
That’s what I Can See Clearly Now is. Two hours, me in your business, untangling what’s actually going on. We separate the real problems from the noise, work out what needs structure, what needs simplifying, and where AI actually helps. You leave with clarity instead of another overwhelming list.
Looking back, that was the turning point for me too. Sometimes the biggest change isn’t becoming more confident. It’s finally stopping carrying everything on your own.