I know you won’t believe me, but …

… as a kid I was painfully shy. I didn’t walk beside my mother, I crept along behind her. And if I could have crawled under her skirt, I would happily have done so. Seriously. For that matter I wasn’t a particularly outgoing adult for much of my life either.

Hard to believe when you look at this photo, I know, but it’s true.

I still get clammy palms when I think back to the first time I was part of a major creative presentation, to a major client. Huge client, presenting to the president and CEO and I was new to the account and the agency. Hell, I was new to Toronto.

To make matters worse, I’d had no presentation training,