How to Improve Your Public Speaking and Pitching Skills: The A-Ha! Method

You can tell I enjoy this speaking thing, can’t you?

I’ve been a paid, public speaker for nearly 20 years, and a frequent get-up-and-talk-it-out kinda guy for as long as I can remember.

n.b. My first grade teacher sent back the following note to my parents on my initial report card (my childhood nickname was Gaby): “Never have I met a more aptly named pupil.” The Gift of the Gab, indeed.

Since beginning my professional career, I’ve also started, invested in and coached hundreds of startups and founders.

Through this process, I’ve learned that most people — unfortunately — are terrible at public speaking, pitching and leading meetings.

This of course, isn’t surprising. Public speaking has always been one of humanity’s greatest fears. Despite this, its importance to a career in industry, academia or non-profits has only grown. And with the rise of distracting technologies, and the radical transformation of work due to the COVID pandemic, things have really changed.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that old-school public speaking education is irretrievably broken. From an over-emphasis on on being funny or correcting for filler words (like “umm” or “ahh”), the ways we teach this critical skill are just wrong.