Most public speaking advice is either obvious or useless. “Just be yourself.” “Imagine the audience in their underwear.” Thanks for nothing.
What actually moves the needle is a set of specific, repeatable techniques that work whether you’re presenting to three people in a boardroom or three hundred in an auditorium. Here are 30 hacks that do exactly that.
Managing Your Nerves
1. Breathe before you speak. Not a polite suggestion. Slow, deep breathing before you step up genuinely lowers your heart rate and sharpens your focus. Do it for two minutes before you go on.
2. Visualise the win. Athletes do this constantly. Before your talk, close your eyes and picture yourself delivering it well. Not perfectly. Just well. It primes your brain for a positive outcome.
3. Stop fighting the nerves. Anxiety and excitement feel almost identical in your body. The difference is the story you tell yourself. Reframe nerves as readiness and use that energy.
4. Arrive early. Walking into an unfamiliar room cold is a fast track to panic. Get there early, walk the space, adjust the mic, look at where you’ll stand. Familiarity kills uncertainty.
5. Find your friendly faces. Before you start, scan the room and locate two or three people who look engaged or warm. Return to them throughout. It gives you an anchor when the nerves spike.
6. Ground yourself physically. Before you speak, press your feet into the floor. Feel the ground. This sounds like wellness fluff but it genuinely keeps your mind present instead of spiralling.
Building Confidence
7. Know your audience. Confidence drops when your material lands wrong. Research who’s in the room beforehand. What do they care about? What level are they at? Tailor accordingly.
8. Prepare more than you think you need to. Confidence isn’t a personality trait, it’s a byproduct of preparation. The speaker who knows their material cold is always more confident than the one who winged it.
9. Use power poses backstage. Stand tall, shoulders back, chin up for two minutes before you walk on. It’s not magic, but body language shapes how you feel, not just how you look.
10. Dress intentionally. Wear something you feel sharp in. It’s a small thing with a disproportionate effect on how you carry yourself.
11. Celebrate the small wins. After each talk, acknowledge what went well before you tear it apart. Progress builds on itself. Ignoring the wins slows you down.
12. Start small and build up. Don’t jump to keynote stages before you’ve done smaller rooms. Build the muscle gradually. Confidence compounds.
Preparation and Practice
13. Structure around three to five key points. If you can’t summarise your talk in one sentence, your audience won’t follow it either. Pick your core ideas and build everything else around them.
14. Write it out, then throw the script away. Writing forces clarity. But speaking from bullet points keeps you conversational. Do both.
15. Rehearse out loud. Silent run-throughs don’t count. You need to hear yourself say the words to catch the ones that don’t work.
16. Time yourself. Going over time is disrespectful to your audience and makes you look unprepared. Run it with a clock.
17. Record yourself. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s the fastest way to spot your bad habits. Filler words, poor posture, rushed pacing. One recording session is worth ten practice runs.
18. Prepare for what could go wrong. The slide deck fails. Someone’s phone rings. An audience member derails you with a question. Rehearse for chaos, not just ideal conditions.
19. Get a practice audience. One person watching you counts. Ask them to give you honest feedback, not just encouragement.
Remembering Your Content
20. Use a story framework. Narratives are infinitely easier to remember than lists of facts. If you can turn your content into a story, do it. You’ll remember it better and so will your audience.
21. Chunk your content. Break the talk into clear sections with a beginning, middle, and end for each. Your brain stores information in clusters, so build to that.
22. Use mental mapping. Before you speak, visualise the flow of your talk as a map. Move through each section in your mind. It creates a mental GPS you can navigate even under pressure.
23. Connect ideas to emotions. You remember the things that made you feel something. Tie your key points to a story, an image, or a feeling. It sticks better.
24. Know it well enough to improvise. The goal isn’t to memorise your speech word for word. It’s to know your material so well you could explain it to someone in a lift. That fluency is what creates natural delivery.
Delivery
25. Vary your tone and pace. Monotone is the fastest way to lose a room. Speed up for energy, slow down to land a point. Change your pitch. Make it dynamic.
26. Use pauses on purpose. Silence is one of the most powerful tools a speaker has. A two-second pause after a key point does more work than any filler word ever could.
27. Make real eye contact. Not the fake kind where you scan the room like a lighthouse. Genuine, three-second contact with individual people. It builds connection and signals confidence.
28. Move with intention. Walk to a new spot on stage when you shift to a new idea. Stand still when you want emphasis. Movement should mean something.
29. Cut the filler words. “Um,” “uh,” “like,” “you know.” Record yourself, count them, then practice eliminating them. The pause that replaces them always sounds better.
30. Read the room and adjust. The best speakers are responsive, not robotic. If the energy drops, change your pace. If the audience is with you, lean in. A talk that adapts is a talk that connects.
The Speaking Tax Is Real
There’s a cost most people never calculate. Deals that don’t close because the pitch was muddy. Rooms that forget you before you’ve left. Videos you never post because you don’t feel ready. Opportunities that go to someone less qualified, but more visible.
That’s the speaking tax. And most people just keep paying it.
I’m launching Speaker OS on 30 June. A six-month program for professionals who are done being the best-kept secret in the room.
First 10 spots are $79 USD/week. Find out more here.
