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When I was a student at Penn State, a public speaking course was required for all business students. I was terrified of taking this course. I had done some group presentations in classes before, but this was going to be different.

In my first speech for the class, I recall walking up to the podium and placing my notes on it. So far, so good. Then I looked up at the class and I was terrified!

Immediately I grabbed onto that podium and held on to it so hard you’d think I was hanging on for dear life!

Then my right knee started to shake uncontrollably. To make it less obvious, I shifted all my weight to my left leg which was luckily pretty stable and didn’t shake. With my body somewhat under control, I read my speech directly off my notes, occasionally looking up at the class. Finally, it was all over. I let go of the podium and picked up my notes with my sweaty hands and walked slowly back to my desk. This public speaking experience was easily one of the most terrifying moments of my life.

For my second speech in class, I had to prepare and deliver a talk on any product of my choice.

I’m not sure why, but I chose to talk about breakthroughs in DVD technology – yes, at some point, this was cutting edge. I’m not sure why I chose this since I didn’t know much about the technology behind the DVD. Again, I dreaded having to perform this speech. Nevertheless, I started to prepare my notes for the talk. I found facts, figures, and pictures and started to prepare slides and notes. In fact, it was all pretty interesting since I had never bothered to understand how CDs and DVDs worked.

Breakthrough Advice from a Speaker Mentor

But then a mentor offered me some of the most impactful public speaking advice I have ever received. Twenty years later, this advice still serves me.

He said, “Study up on the DVD, go down the rabbit hole of information, and learn so much that you could never share it all in the time you’ve been given to speak. Then, prepare your comments as if you needed to explain it to one person.”

At first this sounded strange because my task was to present to a group of people, not explain it to one person. But he said, “presenting to an audience isn’t so different than explaining it to one person. People are still people, there’s just more of them.”

He added, “and just like you would do for a friend, keep it simple so your audience can understand the concept. Don’t try to sound overly technical or expert.”

This helped me feel calmer about presenting because it made speaking about helping someone understand a particular idea that might be new to them.

By making it about serving someone, I got out of my own head and into my heart, where I can be passionate and enthusiastic.

At its core, public speaking is communication. If you can communicate with one person, you can communicate with 100 people or 10,000 people!

Good things take time, including public speaking

When I delivered that speech, I was still nervous and my leg shook a little, however, it all flowed more naturally than my first speech. I remembered more of the experience and even enjoyed it a little. This was the very beginning of my journey into public speaking.

I was still scared to deliver speeches and it would be another year or so before I started to feel more comfortable presenting group projects and speaking in my marketing club meetings.

It took another 12 years of deliberate practice before I started getting paid to speak regularly.

More than 20 years and 600+ talks later, I’m still learning and developing as a paid public speaker.

5 Lessons from My Journey as a Public Speaker

Here are some lessons I’d like to share that have helped me along my public speaking journey. Perhaps these will help you along yours too.

1. Never accept to speak about a topic you don’t know well. You don’t have to be an expert, but you have to know your topic. Ultimately, your mission is to add value to your audience. To do that, you have to know what you are talking about.
2. Prepare for your talk as if you were going to teach it to a class. The reason for this is because in many ways, you are going to be teaching. This means you have to find out what your audience already knows and what they want to know about your topic. Meet your audience where they are and take them where they want to go.
3. Keep the scope of your talk as narrow as possible. My favorite strategy is to only talk about 3 things. Each thing might have 3 things of its own but the point is to keep the scope narrow. In one hour, you’ll be lucky if the audience even remembers three things, so don’t make the scope broader than that. Less is more. I still fall into this trap because I get so excited to share everything I know about a topic!
4. Review your speaking notes and cut out anything that doesn’t add value to your key points. Warning: this is easier said than done because of our desire to give lots of value. Just remember that anything outside of the scope of your topic will only distract your audience.
5. Lastly, review your notes again and cut out some more. Even when you think you’ve removed everything unnecessary, there is always a little left.