I have done a fair amount of speaking in my career. I was president of ACG chapter in Los Angeles and spoke all the time from the podium, I have been asked to do a few conference speeches. One was in Las Vegas originally scheduled as a breakout session and early on 1st day the keynote speaker was sick. I happened to be in the right place at the right time and was asked if I would do the keynote that morning. Of course said yes. I was surprised that many attendees came up to me during the event and complimented me on my speech. I want to become a paid speaker, any suggestions how I get started in that?

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Sometimes it is the person nobody ever imagined anything of. Who ends up doing things nobody ever imagined. — Alan Turing.

No, I do not mean an actual aardvark. When I was in the Army, we did something after every mission. Regardless of if it was a training mission, a combat mission or even organizing something fun for our families to get together, we did this little ritual. It was the AAR or After Action Review. It was a chance for every participant from the lowest greenest private to the commander himself to have their voice heard without judgment or repercussions. It was a chance for us to say what worked and what failed. And high command took these very seriously. I started to adopt this practice in my own life. When I went on sales calls i did an AAR. When I would compete in Martial Arts Tournaments, I did an AAR. When I would teach a workshop I did an AAR. Heck for a time I would do an AAR at the end of my day just to see if it would work...it did. When I started to apply this analysis to every speech that I did, my skill at the lectern grew dramatically. Here is the format that I used every time and in every situation. 1. What was supposed to happen? (Your expectations) 2. What actually did happen? (Just the facts. no commentary or explanation) 3. What are 3 things that went well (things to sustain) 4. What are 3 things that did not go well? (things to improve) 5. What steps can be done to fix everything in Question 4? 6. What was the BIG take away from all of this? (what lesson have you learned) When you do this exercise, take the time to write this out! This will slow you down enough to let your emotions set to the side and you can approach this with a mindset that will truly benefit. Try to grow by at least 1% every time you do this. The compound interest that you will reap for this activity will pay dividends that you cant begin to imagine.

It doesn't matter if you like it or not AI is creeping into every facet of our lives. And the speaking business is no different. Writers have AI program Grammarly to assist in their writing projects. Now we have "Yoodli." The Yoodli program will listen to your speech and give immediate feedback on your phrasing, pace, use of pauses, voice inflection, and repeated and filler words. Its a fantastic tool to polish up your speeches and talks with immediate feedback. However, it is not perfect. It may point out that you are repeating a word in your speech too frequently when perhaps that was your specific intention. So don't expect it to do all the work for you. But it will make the work you do easier and more efficient. The best part is that Yoodli is FREE if you are a current member of Toastmasters. So find a club, and get the benefit of both human AND AI feedback of your presentations.