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Early in my career I once finished a twenty-minute talk in ten. I had learned every word by heart, and nerves did the rest. Another time the technology failed in an auditorium, and people got up and left, one after the other.
That is where this conversation with Rita Ernst started. Her show is about the stories we tell ourselves, and “I’m bad at public speaking” is one of the most common. Yet most people who say it can explain their project to a colleague in the hallway without a second thought. What changes is ten people in a room, and a script they are afraid to lose.
So we talked about dropping the script. Treat each slide as the answer to “what’s next?” rather than a paragraph to recite. Leave pauses. Put a blank slide in the deck if you have to, so you stop rushing. And before any of that, take your audience’s standpoint: open on their situation, so they recognise themselves and lean in. The same goes for networking. “I mow lawns” gets a polite nod. The tired homeowner, ashamed of the yard in front of the neighbours, gets a conversation.
What we covered
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Why memorising makes it worse
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Slides as “what’s next?”
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Pauses and blank slides
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Taking the audience’s standpoint
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The investor over a beer
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Answering “what do you do?”
The commercial point is the one I make to every founder pitching investors. The first thing an investor needs is to walk out and tell a friend about you over a beer. If they cannot tell your story back, they will not repeat it, and you are not in the room when the decision gets made. That does not take charisma. It takes a story built from where they sit.
Moments from the conversation
Take your audience's standpoint to make them lean in
If they can tell the story back, you've won
Use pauses: say less and spark curiosity
Describe your work by showing who you help
