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The emotional stages every speaker goes through don't disappear with experience. In fact, one of the most reassuring patterns I’ve seen after coaching thousands of speakers is that the emotional stages tend to remain remarkably consistent. The faces and contexts change, but the internal weather is often the same. The goal, then, isn’t to avoid these feelings or to treat them as proof you shouldn’t be on a stage. The goal is to recognize them, understand what they’re doing, an

If you only remember one thing about the building blocks for keynote speakers, I hope it’s this: every speech is a relationship before it’s a message. You can preach at people, you can lecture to people, or you can build meaning with people. And the more you choose with, the more your ideas stop sounding like something you said and start becoming something they can carry.

Most people assume the purpose of speaking is to convince and persuade. We hear it all around us that the purpose of speaking is to land the point, win the room, and leave with agreement neatly in hand. But the longer I’ve worked with speakers as a speechwriter and speaker coach, the more I’ve watched smart audiences quietly resist well-crafted arguments. This is why the more I write for big stages and seen my clients success, the more I’ve come to believe something radically