The executive presence definition everyone uses IS wrong
Executive presence isn’t something you have. It’s something you do.
Permission to be yourself
Success without permission to be yourself is just sophisticated suffering.
Stop performing confidence
Because when you stop performing confidence and start embodying authentic power, everything changes.
Be you, unapologetically
Your job is to be you, unapologetically, and accept the consequences.
I realized that trying to be confident is the perfect way to feel insecure. True confidence comes from showing up as yourself. Being willing to be vulnerable instead of hiding. Jumping head first into conflict instead of avoiding it.
Someone told you to work on your presence and gave you nothing to work with
People are asking you to have a stronger presence because there’s something changing. Either the company’s growing, you are pitching for a new round of funding or you’re hiring, you’re expanding, you’re communicating beyond your comfort zone. Maybe it’s the first time that you have to be on the national stage. Maybe you’re about to go on television.
Yet you still can’t think clearly under pressure. You still can’t explain what matters in the moment that matters.
Organizations do not lose their edge just because of bad strategy. They lose it because their leaders are performing confidence they do not feel, telling stories they do not believe, and navigating disruption with maps that stopped working years ago. Most organizations can’t tell the difference between vulnerable, confident, and overconfident leaders. They end up promoting the wrong ones and creating a toxic culture.
The answer to imposter syndrome is not more knowledge. Stop piling knowledge in the hopes that more facts will turn you into a more confident person. It’s not a technical problem. It’s a problem of meaning.
Trying to be confident is the fastest way to feel insecure
For most of my life, I believed that I was my performance. I measured myself by my output, like a machine. I did everything right, climbing the corporate ladder at Warner Bros, then consulting for Netflix & Sony. From the outside, it looked perfect. Inside, I was exhausted. Always not good enough.
I spent a years doing forgettable work and I got a burnout out of that. All because I wasn’t confident in myself, so I needed to be confident in what I was doing. That was the big mistake.
It took me 34 years to give myself permission to start inventing my job. Even as I left corporate and started my own business, the old habit of asking for permission followed me. I had to burn this business to the ground twice to unlearn it. I stopped putting my confidence in outcomes. Started betting on myself instead.
I used to believe my insecurity made me better, that doubt would push me to work harder. So I kept my scope small, told clients to come back when they were ready, and asked permission to be on stages. I was always selling, always convincing, always apologizing for taking up space. Now I show up completely. Clients come to me with nothing. No clear vision, no pitch, no confidence. And I’m fine with that. I do the whole work. I don’t hide behind narrow services or wait for perfect conditions. I bring my full self to every engagement.
I stopped asking for permission to speak on stages. I stopped selling on the stage. I just exist in front of my clients and do the work. Same work, same uncertainty. But I’m no longer performing or proving. I’m just here.
You can’t fake it. The whole world will tune out if they think you’re a phony.
Presence in the room is clarity of thought, not delivery tricks
The story you prepared is a map. The room is the territory. The territory always wins.
How you communicate as a CEO determines how everyone in the company communicates. You are the benchmark. Your audience is not dumb. They don’t need you to state the obvious.
You build executive presence by settling what you stand for, then how you say it
Settle what you stand for
I teach confidence first and storytelling second. Because I know a fundamental truth: if you are not ready to deal with your own vulnerability, you will never benefit from any knowledge imparted from the outside. Theory is useless without the courage to act.
Be confident in yourself. Have confidence in the mission. Have confidence in the vision. Have confidence in the team.
Say it with clarity of thought
The problem isn’t presentation skills. It’s clarity of thought. Because clarity isn’t a gift. It’s a practice.
One minute of clarity beats a hundred pages of brilliance. If you cannot say it in plain language, you do not yet understand it well enough. Quantity is not thoroughness. It is a defense mechanism.
The room reads you
Do not have confidence in the final artifact until you get feedback from actual audiences. Assume that the room is smarter than you.
Content is nothing without the right delivery. We will work tirelessly until you are the message and the message is you.
What changed for the founders who stopped performing
Some of my clients’ stories
Sophie: “A PARTNER THAT HELPS AMPLIFY MY WORK”
“He’s my coach, but he feels like a friend. A partner that helps amplify my work. He understands things I’m doing but don’t even know I’m doing.”
Before: Sophie left corporate and built two companies. But they felt like jobs. She’d assigned herself a job description. She hadn’t detoxed from corporate.
The shift: She learned entrepreneurship isn’t following VC rules or someone else’s playbook. It’s doing what you love. Clearing doubts. Focusing on who you are.
After: In less than a year she is running leadership retreats & masterminds in two continents.
In the process she doubled her revenue.
From “How am I going to make it?” to “I know exactly what to do: get out of my way.”
She stopped worrying. Started feeling serene. Confident. Focused.
JEN: “He spotted what everyone else missed”
“He was the only one who could spot the root cause and say: ‘Let’s follow this thread and unlock it.’”
Before: Jen ran a B2B marketing agency. She was working hard but her business wasn’t growing. Multiple coaches told her: “It’s your mindset. Fix that.” Years of coaches & masterminds, but nobody could actually help her.
The shift: They did deep work. Not just talking about feelings. Actually unlocking the block.
After: Within one month: her biggest client ever. Within one year: pivoting from marketing to M&A. Working with businesses far larger than her previous experience. Her 5-10 year dream? She’s doing it now.
“It’s like healing a broken leg you’ve been limping on your whole life. Now I can actually run.
If you’re a high-performance decision-maker and you’re not integrated, you will always be struggling.”
Mario: €5M in funding by telling the right story
“Working with Matteo was a game-changer. He helped me shape my pitch like a compelling story. I learned to direct listeners’ attention exactly where I wanted it and I closed a €5 million funding round with European investors.”
Before: Mario had a brilliant business. Solid technology. A winning idea. But his pitch was too technical. He had all the ingredients. He just didn’t know how to make them appealing to investors.
The shift: Three months of work together. Taking the technical pieces and building a narrative around them. Not changing what he had. Translating it into something investors could understand and feel.
After: €5M Series A funding.
The lesson:
To create a winning pitch, you need to be vulnerable, believe in yourself, find your confidence, tailor a story for your audience, and then have the guts to go out there and change the world.
And that’s exactly what Mario did.
Executive presence coaching, one to one
I don’t take your brief and deliver assets. I sit with you, challenge you, think with you, build with you. I’m your sounding board. Your support. Your partner and your coach. Not a mentor on a mountain who tells you how it is done.
That’s why I only work with 5 leaders at a time. Not because I want to be exclusive. Because this level of transformation requires my full attention.
How we can work together
All prices excluding VAT
€1290 €490
One hour to start your transformation
No more over-analyzing, no more indecision. Book an online session, discover what holds you back.
Full refund if it wasn’t up to your expectations.
€3590
2 Session Deep Dive
Two 90-minutes session to emerge with a solution that can’t wait. Online.
€5990
In-person Day
We meet at the myth maker farm to solve something important.
€6990
Monthly coaching
Online coaching tailored to your needs. Weekly 90-minute sessions.
Custom
Long-term work
Online, In-Person or Hybrid approaches for you and your team.
Questions founders ask about executive presence
It’s not for people looking for a ready-made plan. I don’t do playbooks. If you need someone to tell you what to do, we’re not a fit.
What is executive presence?
Executive presence is your ability to express yourself and project trustworthy confidence. It’s what’s left when you stop performing. For many moments, it doesn’t matter what you say but how you say it. It doesn’t matter what you talk about, but who you are. You can’t fake it. The whole world will tune out if they think you’re a phony.
Can executive presence be learned?
The leaders you admire make it look totally effortless. They are just having a conversation with you. But they study it. I study it, so you can study it. You can get there, there’s no doubt there. It’s going to be very revealing if you haven’t done the internal work but you just do the power posing. True confidence comes from showing up as yourself.
What are the components of executive presence?
The assertive voice doesn’t come from you changing your voice artificially and becoming more assertive. It comes from you feeling that, oh, I’ve got this. It’s really a switch that happens in your mindset. There’s nothing else. There’s nothing mystical. The problem isn’t presentation skills. It’s clarity of thought.
How do you develop executive presence?
The path to that kind of mastery is not I get more patterns. The path to mastery is I do more introspection. If you are not ready to deal with your own vulnerability, you will never benefit from any knowledge imparted from the outside. It’s a little bit to be done, millimeter by millimeter, every day.
Why do I keep being told I lack executive presence?
People are asking you to have a stronger presence because there’s something changing. The company’s growing, you are pitching for a new round of funding, you’re communicating beyond your comfort zone. It’s what I call the elevator: the more people in the meeting are at a higher level, the more your confidence goes down. Once you get into a more senior position, you yourself become the presentation. Everything is you.
Does executive presence differ by personality?
I am a deep introvert and a stage animal. I can switch it on and make magic happen. Don’t mirror the overconfident. Real confidence is in the middle. You matter, and the world matters. I know who I am, therefore I know what to do. Not “I know what the market wants, therefore I know who to pretend to be.” Stop forcing yourself into containers that don’t fit.