How to go from speaking to 1 person to speaking to 1000

You have heard me say ‘public speaking is just a conversation’ hundreds of times, but how does that scale? How does speaking to one person translate over to speaking to thousands?

Afterall, a conversation and delivering a speech are two very different mediums.

So how can you make every day conversations relevant for speaking in a pressure cooker environment?

Structure

In Effortless Public Speaking we talk about the only structure you ever need to speak in public. That structure is the simple, open-body-close.

This works for a conversation, just as it does for delivering a speech. How can you capture attention in the opening, deliver what you promised in the middle, and end on a call to action?

At a conversational level what does this look like?

• Open: I am reading [insert book]
• Body: [something great I have learned from this book]
• Close: What are you reading?

This is basic, but getting into the habit of intentionally structuring your conversation makes it easier to deliver in this way when you next have a presentation.

I am not suggesting every conversation should become public speaking practice — just one or two reps a day is all you need to start laying the foundations of becoming a great speaker.

Nano speeches