Apple Podcasts
SpotifyScwair One presents Speaking of Success (SÖS) – episode nine with public speaking coach, copywriter and comedian Alex Beeching, on why everybody is already a public speaker, and what to do instead of building a personal brand.
Alex Beeching wears a lot of hats. Coach, writer, ghostwriter, stand-up, illustrator, ex-adman. He’s about to do a TEDx. He got into RADA at 18 and turned it down.
He describes it as different doors, same room.
We’d only spoken once before this. What struck me then was how easily he does the thing I find hardest – and how much I suspected he was holding back while doing it.
So I asked.
Somewhere in this he tells me I don’t actually have a problem. That I’ve been playing someone else’s game. I’m still deciding whether to believe him.
He also gave me a set of tactics for a Toastmasters table topic I was walking into that same night. One of them involves walnuts. One of them involves deliberately being bad at it.
And right at the end, when I asked what to tell anyone doubtful they’ve got a voice worth hearing, he said something about cereal that I haven’t stopped thinking about since.
The line that stayed with me: ‘The door may be different, but the room is the same.’
In this episode you’ll learn…
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Why Alex believes everybody is already a public speaker – including, he insists, people who can’t speak at all. The reframe is not what you’d expect.
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Knowing your why, and using it as a magic carpet to get you past the fear – and what he thinks that fear actually is underneath.
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The feedback loop problem: why so many people say ‘I can do a panel, I can do a podcast, but not a stage’ – and how to manufacture the thing that’s missing.
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Why 90% of speakers are, in Alex’s words, a bit boring – and the unglamorous thing the successful ones do instead.
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In media res – the ancient storytelling technique behind the opening line of Alex’s TEDx talk, and why you should never begin with ‘hello, I’m…’
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Writing in pictures – why visual thinkers have an advantage in speaking that most of them never use, and what a camera has to do with it.
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Practical table topics tactics for anyone about to be put on the spot: rhetorical questions, the rule of three (and what to do when you’ve only got two), and how to turn your own worst habit into a running gag.
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The ‘raise your hand’ trick every big-stage speaker uses – how it works psychologically, and how to use it without becoming one of those people.
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Deliberately being bad – why sucking on purpose, and drawing attention to it, can be the most disarming thing in the room.
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And the personal branding advice Alex gives when someone doubts they have a voice worth hearing. It starts with a box of cereal, and it isn’t what most people on LinkedIn will tell you.
