In this episode of In-Ear Insights, Christopher Penn and Katie Robbert discuss the journey to becoming public speakers, public speaking tips and tricks for new speakers, and what speakers do most wrong.

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Christopher Penn

In this week’s In-Ear Insights we are talking about public speaking what it takes to become a public speaker. What are some of the best practices? What if things that you wish you’d known before becoming a public speaker and so on and so forth. And today, I want to start actually, Katie, since prior to the founding of trust insights, public speaking was not something that you really entertained as, as something that was going to be a part of your career. But being the CEO of the company, there’s a certain amount of public exposure and things that comes with the job. So share your experiences thus far about becoming a public speaker. Particularly since your first foray was to a sold out room of 1000 people.

Katie Robbert

so far has been positive. I’m fortunate to be in a company with two really seasoned public speaker. So I’ve been able to learn a lot from both you and john. And the thing that I probably naively misunderstood is how much work actually goes into preparing for talking in public even if it’s something that you know really well and can recite in your sleep. So I think that for me, was the biggest lesson learned was the amount of preparation. So for example, you and john pretty much put me on a regimented schedule, almost like a boot camp to prepare me for speaking at inbound last year, where every Friday at 11am I had to run through it with you and I knew for myself I had to have improved from the week before because otherwise I’m just wasting your time. And I think the other really helpful thing was sort of doing that mock roleplaying Have you guys pretended to be audience members asking questions and throwing me curveballs so that I wouldn’t stumble on stage as I’m trying to think through. Okay, what kinds of answers sound intelligent, so it’s public speaking is really difficult. I think the thing for people to keep in mind is that people make a full time job out of it. And it is a lot of work, it is not easy, even if it comes naturally to you. There’s still a lot of work and practice and preparation that goes into it. And, you know, I guess I would pose this question to you, as someone who’s been doing it for a long time, what is your experience when you started versus now when I started, I was terrible.

Christopher Penn