Maximize communication confidence with the nano speech

Liam Sandford
4 min readAug 7, 2024
Photo by Centre for Ageing Better on Unsplash

Think back to a time when you sat in the audience waiting for a presentation. The presenter begins with an agenda, rambles for a bit with hundreds of irrelevant tangents, talks for too long and then asks if you have any questions. You are bored, disengaged and would love the presentation to be over.

That speaker had no structure and lacked engagement. They made it all about them as the speaker when they should have made it about you as the audience member. You can avoid this mistake in your conversations and presentations.

A structure automatically makes you a better speaker. You reduce tangents, stay on topic, and deliver value to the audience in an engaging way. This is where the nano speech comes in.

The nano speech: a quick open, body, close structure that can last 10 seconds or 10 minutes.

Due to its application you can use it for conversations, presentations and anything in between. Once your presentation reaches 10 minutes it is time to start stacking nano speeches with a transition between points. But how do you use the nano speech in practice?

Open — Body — Close (the only structure you need)

Most people open using an agenda but this is awful practice — don’t state what you are going…

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Liam Sandford

I help ambitious people scale their impact with quiet communication • Best Selling Author of Effortless Public Speaking • liamsandford.com/subscribe