Want to speak publically? What's your angle?

It was my first ‘proper’ speaking gig. I was on third and last that day, and the second speaker was on. There I was, sat at the back of the room, my heart pounding as the clock counted down to my talk.

Was I absolutely clear what my first line will be? Would I remember my content? Would the audience like what I had to say? Would they clap at the end? Would I trip over? Would I walk off at the end and realise my flies had been undone throughout my talk?

All these questions and many more were spinning round my mind as I tried to relax and keep my breathing steady. I was too paranoid to take a swig of water in case I spilled it down my shirt, so I decided to tune into what the speaker was saying.

But that made things even worse! He was talking about some of the same concepts that I had in my talk. With hindsight – that made sense: it was a networking event, and all three speakers on that day were all talking about networking in some form.

But in the moment, when I was already feeling nervous and worried – the panic that began to rise was a nightmare.

What was I going to do?

I considered hurriedly changing what I was going to say – but no, my slides were already pre-loaded. I thought about not using the slides, but that would have meant getting instructions to the AV team and the MC for the event, which would have meant being very obvious moving round the room. I wondered whether I could just adapt what I was going to say – but then I realised I had literally three minutes to get everything clear in my mind.

This wasn’t going to happen, and as the speaker wrapped up his talk, I resolved what I was going to do. I would go ahead with my talk as planned – but as it was me delivering the content, it would come over in my style, the way I wanted it to. There was just one part that I needed to reference.

Suddenly, I was up on stage, delivering my talk. You’ll doubtless be relieved to learn that I did remember my lines, I didn’t trip over, and my flies were safely done up. And, when within what seemed like a flash, it was over, the audience gave me a round of applause at the end.

But it was the comments I got afterwards that really cemented the learning from my first proper speaking gig.

Having been worried that my talk was going to be too similar to the previous speaker, the reaction couldn’t have been more positive. Sharing my take on networking meant that while the contents of our respective talks were similar, my perspective was totally different to his.

I’d referenced his talk once. The other speaker had shared a story about how he’d make a networking faux pas at an event he was at, and interrupted two people that were in a close conversation. My take on that was that while I recognised why he’d thought it was a faux pas – I wouldn’t have been brave enough to approach the two people in the first place.

The vast majority of the comments came from people referencing that exchange, saying things like how pleased they were to be able to relate to what I was saying. As such, the Unnatural Networker was born – and the results can be seen in my first book, The Unnatural Networker.

I learned three things from my first ‘proper’ speaking gig.

Firstly – it will always be better than your pre-talk nerves suggest it will be. Since then, I’ve realised that nerves will always be a part of speaking, whatever the talk and however experienced you are.

Secondly, the ability to react and think on the fly is vital as a speaker. I could have ploughed on regardless with my talk as originally planned, but it was the off the cuff comment in connection with the previous speaker’s story that made my talk what it was.

But lastly and most importantly, that talk taught me that we all have something to say. I sort of knew this before that talk – I was a networking specialist, so I talked about networking. But did I really have any true conviction? Did I truly ever have the passion required to get myself and my point across?

Ever since that talk, my take on networking has been from the angle of someone that doesn’t really like networking and would rather avoid it wherever possible. That’s great, because it means I can just be myself!