Speaking in public

Read time: 5 mins

Hi Reader,

To end this calendar year, I have 11 talks lined up in the next few weeks and will take my total to around 30 in the last 3 years.

The hidden benefits (or superpowers) of public speaking are often misunderstood.

In this issue: three things public speaking did for me (getting noticed, confidence, and better writing), and five ways to give your first talk.

So many people are crippled by fear or use labels like “introvert” as a reason to never talk in public. I get it. I'm not the openly confident type, more the calm type, and I was never the leader of any social group I was a part of.

AI has made reaching an audience online easier than ever, and trusted less than ever. That makes the ability to communicate and give talks a fundamental skill. When you're standing in a room in front of people, nobody wonders whether a machine wrote it. It's you, live, with nowhere to hide.

In every job I had, I was perfectly competent, drama-free, did what was expected of me and a bit more. Did my hours. I never really "stood up for" or defended what my workplace sold with my own name.

Around 3 years ago now, I had my first appearance on stage at a corporate event, my first live radio interview, and started writing online via this newsletter and LinkedIn.

I was forced to improve how I communicate my ideas to others, no matter how good or bad they were.

Nothing much happened in the beginning, apart from "OMG I just heard you on the radio!"

But within 6-12 months, the messages I got changed to

• "We want to know what you think about this"
• "Could you give a presentation on this topic?"
• "I want to talk to you about this project I'm working on..."

I stopped following corporate rules (keeping my head down and my bum up) and staying quiet in meetings.

Things became different.

I wasn't being negative or controversial. I started sharing alternatives to things that were happening in my world. Maybe a voice of common sense became a voice of optimism or possibility, and combined with online writing and public speaking, it helped me get noticed when I needed it most: jobless in another country, with a baby on the way.

My ideas were pretty simple:

• Collaborate more than you compete.
• Create more than you consume.
• Protect your attention.
• Own your audience.

It hardly makes me Che Guevara.

But because most people don't speak up, I discovered that by just sharing the most basic, boring ideas, you still stand out.

After a few years of public speaking, I could tell a CEO why to choose me instead of another freelancer or agency.

I know people have said, "Speak to Has. He understands this stuff," about me without me being in the room.

Here's how public speaking can do the same for you.

Confidence building

I didn't pursue public speaking to build my confidence. It just became a positive side effect. Just like with most things, everyone is terrible when you start. It's live and raw. You can't overthink or edit. Your feedback isn't online metrics but people's reactions. The more you get comfortable with that, naturally, the more confident you become.

Public speaking improves your writing

You can't just get up there and say what you want. You prepare with a structure. You need to get to the point quickly, or you will lose people. A million things are fighting for their attention.

Public speaking is basically writing a speech. That doesn't mean reading from paper on stage. You break down the speech into sections, and retell it in front of the audience. The actual words that come out of your mouth will be different each time.

Therefore, you get better at writing. And you must get better at editing so your talk fits the time you have to give it.

And over time, your writing is the same as your talking, which makes your tone more conversational and interesting to the audience.

Public speaking makes you a better writer because it teaches you what’s boring based on live audience interactions.

Five ways to give your first talk

1. Finding your "why"

Knowing your why is what stops you from losing the push to do it in the first place.

My "why" was to push myself beyond my comfort zone and create paid opportunities for myself.

2. Create a sense of urgency

Being jobless with a baby on the way forced me into urgent action. If you can decide why you must improve your public speaking now, without the need for extreme circumstances, even better.

That does mean giving a talk soon, like weeks, not months. It means doing it without taking courses and convincing yourself you just need that one more thing before you're ready.

Without the urgency, you won't do it. There are no perfect conditions to give a talk in front of strangers. You just get on with it with whatever you have.

3. Pick a topic you know inside out

Scripting your first speech word for word is how you end up overthinking it. Find a topic you can talk about for weeks without running out of ideas. (If I were starting today, my "first" talk would be about how I'd fix Man Utd - no shortage of problems to discuss).

Then give the talk, however terrible it turns out.

4. Create fake rules

Rules give limits, which force focus. It's what makes games so absorbing. My video game playing these days is limited to Football Manager Mobile in the dark whilst I wait for our son to go to sleep, and I still lose track of time. Public speaking can be turned into a game too.

Without rules, you'll just find excuses.

"I don't feel like it today"

"What if I mess up?"

"I ate something funny, and my stomach isn't right" (this one actually happened to me)

Some rules could be like this

• If I forget what I wanted to say, I'll tell a joke.
• One talk a month, no matter what.
• Look at one person in the audience when nervous.

5. Aim to make an impact on just one person

Impostor syndrome is real. We think we know nothing, but the truth is what is obvious to us is non-obvious to so many people. When you can make that difference to just one person, that person will remember you.

They'll remember you because they saw you say it, live, in the room. That's the one thing AI can't fake for you.

This issue is sponsored by Kit, the platform I use to send it. “Own your audience” is one of my four ideas above, and this newsletter is how I practise it. Click the link below and I will thank you very much.

If you got this far,

thank you for your attention, Reader. I know there are so many other things you could be doing right now.

If this was forwarded to you, you can subscribe here.

See you soon.

​Peace,

Has

​​​