What does it really take to back yourself when nothing is certain and the stakes are personal? We sit down with Adam Wright, who took his savings at 26 and opened a gym in a farm barn between two villages—then faced COVID closures, delayed launches, and the kind of pressure that tests your resolve. Five years later he’s running five gyms across Cambridge and Ireland, not because he waited to feel ready, but because he built confidence through action, focus, and evidence.

Adam breaks down the moments that shaped him: risking everything he’d saved, hearing well‑meaning voices say “don’t do it,” and choosing to move anyway. He explains how pressure can be healthy when it sits on what you can control, and why stress balloons when direction is unclear. We unpack his decision to strip the business to one core product, align the entire team behind it, and make scale repeatable. The result is a masterclass in simplicity over complexity, process over bravado, and culture over heroics.

We also explore the softer edges that matter just as much: patience as a strategic tool, expectation management for clients who crave instant perfection, and the practical steps that turn early‑stage nerves into earned confidence. Adam shares how trust in people powers expansion, including the leap to Ireland with a long‑time friend and operator. Along the way, we chart how his confidence matured from narrow professional drive to a balanced, holistic steadiness—where cancelled memberships don’t derail him and rough nights are part of the game, not signs to quit.

If you’re building a business, leading a team, or starting your first fitness journey, you’ll find concrete tactics: embrace pressure without tipping into burnout, choose focus over feature creep, and let repetition build proof. Hit follow, share this with someone stuck waiting for perfect, and leave a review telling us the one imperfect action you’ll take today.

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Never miss an episode - subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

💬 CONNECT WITH JOHN
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/johnmwalshbreakthroughchange

Website: www.breakthroughchange.com

📣 SHARE YOUR STORY
Building confidence? Share your progress using #ConfidenceUnlocked or email info@breakthroughchange.com

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Individual confidence is challenging enough. But what happens when you need an entire team to have confidence? When it's collective execution under pressure, not just individual performance?

In this episode, I share what we've learned from measuring 650+ teams with our High Performance Team Questionnaire—why only 26% reach high performance, and how team confidence is the difference between the 74% who plateau and the 26% who excel.

You'll learn:

• Why team confidence is more complex than individual confidence (6 key differences)

• What the HPTQ data reveals about the 74% who plateau at 61%

• The four levels that must develop together to build team confidence

• Why psychological safety is necessary but not sufficient

• How to build collective evidence as a team

• What team confidence under pressure actually looks like

This episode shows you how to build the collective confidence that enables high-performing teams.

#confidence #teamperformance #leadership #highperformanceteams #podcast

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🎧 SUBSCRIBE & FOLLOW
Never miss an episode - subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

💬 CONNECT WITH JOHN
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/johnmwalshbreakthroughchange

Website: www.breakthroughchange.com

📣 SHARE YOUR STORY
Building confidence? Share your progress using #ConfidenceUnlocked or email info@breakthroughchange.com

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The moments that matter most rarely feel calm. When the room is watching, consequences are real, and your heart is thumping in your ears, practice confidence often falls apart. We dig into that performance gap and share a practical, science-backed path to make your skills travel from safe rooms to high-stakes arenas.

We start with Sarah’s journey from silent manager to someone who can speak up in senior meetings, revealing how solid habits still crumble when visibility, hierarchy, and uncertainty spike. I share my first board presentation and the reframe that stripped away mystique: they weren’t dissecting my every word, they were moving through an agenda. From there we map the biology of pressure. The amygdala flags social threat, the sympathetic system floods you with adrenaline, the prefrontal cortex goes dim, working memory shrinks, and attention tunnels. That’s not weakness; it’s human.

Then we get specific. You’ll learn the five mechanisms that derail performance and a framework to train pressure tolerance: gradual exposure across rising stakes, simulating pressure with audience, time limits, evaluation, artificial consequences, and elevated heart rate. We show why performance dips at first and why that’s the point. We practise recovery lines so stumbles don’t end the attempt. We reframe threat to challenge using real evidence rather than wishful thinking, and we separate skill learning from pressure training so your brain isn’t overloaded.

Finally, we share six execution strategies for the moment itself: accept the physical response, use micro actions, externalise attention, recall your evidence, commit to imperfection, and have a recovery plan if you freeze. High-stakes confidence isn’t the absence of anxiety; it’s the ability to act while anxious. Each imperfect rep becomes proof you can perform under load, and that evidence compounds into durable confidence when the stakes are real.

If this helped, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s training for a big moment, and leave a quick review telling us the one pressure element you’ll add this week.

Support the show

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🎧 SUBSCRIBE & FOLLOW
Never miss an episode - subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

💬 CONNECT WITH JOHN
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/johnmwalshbreakthroughchange

Website: www.breakthroughchange.com

📣 SHARE YOUR STORY
Building confidence? Share your progress using #ConfidenceUnlocked or email info@breakthroughchange.com

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