Speaking Confidence 'Without' Talent

Hey guys, welcome back to The Speaker’s Edge podcast. The podcast dedicated to helping you to learn from some of the world’s very best speakers and communicators so you can master your message and inspire your audience every single time you speak. I’m your host for this podcast, Roddy Galbraith. I’m thrilled you’ve chosen to join us in this episode.

And I want to say, you know, if you want to be a better communicator, then you are in the right place. You found your people. You really have. Because on pretty much every episode, we’re talking about building on one simple idea: communication is a learnable skill. It’s a learnable skill and it’s worth learning because it will do so much for you. It will do more for you than any other skill you can develop, frankly. More for your business, more for your career, more for your self-confidence than any other skill you can develop. So, it really is worth working on.

And if you think about it, we all pretty much every day we interact with other people, don’t we? We’re always communicating, whether it’s on stage or in a meeting or a podcast like this or just across the kitchen table with our family. We’re all communicating all the time. And if we can get better at that, if we can express ourselves clearly, articulately, confidently, then it changes everything in our life.

So, if you’re committed to growing, to mastering your message, inspiring your audience every single time you speak, then you are in the right place. You’re going to love this episode.

But before we kick off, let me say Happy New Year. It’s the beginning of a new year, 2026. 2025 was a great year, I think, wasn’t it? But I’ve got a feeling that 2026 is going to be a wonderful year for you. I really do. So, I’m really looking forward to this journey together and seeing where it takes us.

Now, before we dive into the episode, if you haven’t downloaded the companion resources for the show, you can go to maxwellleadership.com/thespeakersedge, download the companion guide, and if you enjoy the show, then we would love it if you rate and review.

Now, as I said on last week’s episode, I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the world’s very best speakers. And so, we started a mini-series last week looking at the best speaking advice I’ve ever got from some of these great speakers.

And in episode one of the mini-series last week, we talked about the power of connecting. How it’s not just what you want to say, but who you’re saying it to that’s more important actually, so that you can think about who that is and how you’re going to help them and how you’re going to connect with them, how you’re going to build that relationship with them. And so we drew on the expertise from John Maxwell, Paralympian Bonnie St. John, Les Brown, Seth Godin, and all looked at how they talked about connecting being vitally important. So the best speaking advice I’ve ever gotten from these four greats on connecting was in last week’s episode.

In this week’s episode, we’re going to learn from two more world-class speakers, Simon Sinek and Miss America 2011, Teresa Scanlan, and we’re going to talk about the reps that no one sees. Because one of the biggest myths in speaking—and I think actually in success generally—is the myth of natural talent. It’s all about natural talent. And with speaking, it’s this myth of the natural speaker. You’re naturally gifted as a speaker. You’re naturally talented as a speaker. You’re a natural speaker. And so speaking comes easily to you.

And it’s easy to see how we end up with this myth firmly implanted in our minds because we look at someone that seems like they speak very naturally. They speak effortlessly and they’re confident and they’re clear and they’re very compelling in their message and we assume that it must just come naturally to them. But it doesn’t.

And what do we mean by natural anyway? If you think about that, when we say somebody is natural at something, what does it mean? I think it means that it looks like they do it without thinking. So it looks like it’s very natural to them, like it’s a part of them. Well, it is a part of them, but it’s a part of them that they’ve internalized. It’s something that they’ve created. They’ve delegated those activities to habit.

And so, it looks like it’s natural to them, but it really just means that they’re in the habit of doing those things. So, a simple example is if you pick up your pen and sign your name with a pen or a pencil, you do it very naturally. But when you first picked up a pen, you couldn’t do it like that at all, could you? And if you need proof of that, put the pen in your other hand and try and sign it and see if you’re a natural signer with your non-dominant hand. And you’re not at all.

We look at somebody that signs their name very effortlessly and we say, “You’re lucky—you’re a natural signer.” But actually, we’re forgetting all of the work that went into that end result. And it is very definitely true for speaking as well.

After working with 10, 12, 15,000 people one-to-one on their individual stories and keynotes and signature stories, I’ve seen over and over and over again how people can gradually come to look like they’re naturals when the evidence is that they very definitely did not start out like that.

And also from learning from some of the world’s best speakers, the same thing that we see over and over again. They look very natural, but when we see somebody that looks very natural like that, it’s almost never accidental and it’s almost always habitual. So, this is good news because it’s something that we can learn to do.

So, in this episode, I want to share powerful lessons that I learned from, as I said, Miss America 2011, Teresa Scanlan and Simon Sinek. Both of which are saying the same thing really. Mastery is built long before the moment where we see them and they look natural to us, long before that, through repetitions. The reps that no one sees. And the reps that no one sees are far more important than the performance that we do see, far more important than the performance that we applaud.

I’ll give you a simple example of this. A friend of mine attempted to swim the English Channel in England. And for those of you that don’t know, the English Channel is 21 miles across. It’s cold. It’s one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. The weather is often bad, so it’s very wavy. And for it to be an official attempt, you can’t wear a wetsuit. You have to just wear a bathing costume. So, it’s like a big deal to try and do this. She was a good swimmer, but this was a stretch even for her.

Anyway, I saw her in the gym afterwards and I said, “Oh, how did it go?” And she said, “Oh, it was a nightmare.” I said, “Why? What happened?” She said, “Well, everything went wrong that could possibly go wrong.” Right from the very beginning, I started vomiting because the diesel fumes from the support boat were blowing in my face and it made me feel queasy. And then I started wretching. And then every 10 minutes for the next four hours I was bent over double, violently wretching—like everything coming out—while treading water at the same time. It was a nightmare.

But I kept going because I knew people were watching the tracker in the boat and watching the progress. So I couldn’t give up. So I kept swimming. Then I got stung by jellyfish all over my arms and legs, which was really painful. But in a funny way it took my mind off of the vomiting and made me feel a little bit better just concentrating on the pain.

Then I get to the shipping lanes and these giant container ships going by. You have to go across the first one, then into the separation lane and out through across the second lane and then out the other side. But because I’d lost so much time stopping to be sick, now I’d missed the tide that was supposed to be carrying me in. And now it was carrying me away and down the channel.

And that’s the time apparently where most people give up. You can see France but it just seems to be getting further and further away. So it’s heartbreaking. So she said I just put my head down and I started swimming as fast as I could for the next four hours. And then I started making progress. And then before I knew it, I was scrambling up onto the rocks of French soil and I’d made it. I’d done it in a little over 15 hours.

I said, “Oh my goodness, that’s amazing—story of persistence.” And she said, “Well, it’s not really a story of persistence.” I said, “Of course it is.” Like the vomiting and the jellyfish and the shipping lanes and the tide and everything—this is an incredible story of persistence.

She said, “Well, I was always going to give it my best. I wasn’t going to give up. I wasn’t going to say, ‘Oh, this is a little bit more difficult than I thought. You know, maybe I’ll come back next year or the year after.’ I was always going to give it everything I had. But that’s not where you need the persistence. I knew people were watching. Of course, I was going to do my best. But the persistence really comes in when no one’s watching. It’s day after day, week after week, year after year, getting up in the morning when it’s dark, driving to Lake Windermere, getting into Lake Windermere and swimming, watching the sun come up, swimming all day, watching the sun go down and then getting out and drive home when no one is watching and no one cares whether you do it or not. That’s when you need the persistence.”

I thought, “Oh my goodness, she’s right, isn’t she? What a great point that is.” See, the truth is, anyone can do their best when everyone’s watching. We can all do that. We can all dig deep and give it everything we’ve got. We can all do our best, but if we haven’t done the work when no one is watching, then our best just isn’t good enough. Everyone can have heart when it really matters. But heart’s not enough without mastery.

And a great example of this is Teresa Scanlan, Miss America 2011, because she told me that what you don’t realize when you become Miss America is the very next day you are a professional speaker on a professional speaking tour for a year. You get one week off for Christmas and a week off for Easter. And apart from that, you were on the road the whole time going from one event to the next.

She said, “I was in the taxi on the way to my first speaking event the next day after winning Miss America, and my manager said to me, ‘Oh, they want you to speak for like 40 minutes.’” She’s like, “What am I going to speak for 40 minutes on?” She said, “Oh, just talk—talk about your values. You’ll be fine. Just talk about your values.”

And so she went there and she did her best and she said it was awful. Absolutely awful. But I didn’t have any time to worry about it or stress because we were in the taxi on the way to the next event and I didn’t have time to even cringe about how bad it was. I was then doing it again and again and again and this is how it went day after day. But she said after about four, five, six weeks I really started getting the hang of it and then she wasn’t afraid anymore.

So she was really just thrown in at the deep end and through trial and error her confidence was really forged in the furnace of failure. She slowly and painfully discovered actually she could do it by sticking at it. She got better and better and better and she got really, really good and she spoke about 300 times in the first year. Similar number the second and third year. So by the time she’d been speaking for about three years she’d spoken nearly a thousand times. A thousand times. And she got better and better and better.

Now the interesting thing about this was she knew—she said—that she wasn’t a natural speaker. She knew she wasn’t cut out for it. She didn’t want to do it. And the only reason she did it is because she won Miss America and she was forced to do it. It was part of her contract. And then she realized that she could do it and she could do it very well. And now she’s one of the very best communicators that you’ll ever see.

Now most of us don’t really want to go through that. It would be better if we had some training, if we were prepared before being thrown into that situation. But the wonderful thing is whether you want to do it or not, if you stick at it, if you keep doing something, you get better and better and better at it.

Simon Sinek is another great example of this. I interviewed Simon about five years ago, and he’s a fascinating thinker and a wonderful author. But what really intrigued me was the TED talk that he did, which was I think at the time it was like third or fourth most popular TED talk ever.

But the thing was, he said, look, I didn’t know what a TED talk was in those days. It wasn’t a career maker like it is today. None of us really knew what it was. I was just going to an event and I got there and it was, you know, like a home studio really. I’m in front of a group of entrepreneurs and sharing this message. I had a flip chart and some pens.

And if you watch it, I highly recommend you watch it because it’s really good. The microphone goes halfway through and they have to come and change the microphones and he’s just standing there speaking with a microphone and a flip chart and a pen talking about the importance of why. Start with why.

And it’s a really, really great message, but it looks like he’s kind of making it up as he goes along. And it ends up being one of the most successful TED talks ever. And it was taken from the small TED and put on the big TED stage, the main TED stage, and now so many people have seen it.

But I asked him, you know, when you went there to talk about it, I’m guessing that wasn’t the first time you’d shared that message. And he said, “Oh, no, no, no. Far from it.” He said, “I’d shared that message hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. I’d been talking on the book for like three years before I got there. I’d been asked every possible question you can imagine and I’d answer them and thought about it from so many different perspectives that I knew it inside out.”

So when you watch him, it looks like he’s just making it up as he goes along because it’s so kind of informal, but actually he taught that material over and over and over again. And so it was a mastery that came from the reps that no one sees.

And so Teresa and Simon and my friend who swam the English Channel, they all arrived at their mastery. They all arrived at that excellence through the reps that no one sees. Quietly doing them day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

And then they end up in the same place. The truth is confidence is built through repetition. Confidence is built through repetition. The clarity that you have around your message is earned through trying to share it over and over and over again.

The best way to get clear on your ideas is to try and say them out loud. Share them with other people and see what they think. You get better at the ideas the more you do that and you get better at the delivery of the ideas at the same time. So actually doing what it is that you want to do is the best way to get good at what you want to do.

You don’t become great by preparing once. You become great by showing up again and again and again and giving it everything you’ve got week in and week out. It’s the reps that nobody sees that make the moment look effortless. It’s got nothing to do with being natural. It’s got nothing to do with your genes. It’s the effort that you put in over and over again.

Now, here’s some practical things that you can do before you get in front of an audience that really make this easier because it doesn’t have to be stressful. Practice saying your message out loud. Practice sharing it with one person or two people, with a small group of your friends. Share it to them and ask for their feedback. Explain it without slides. Answer questions about it. And you’ll gradually refine it the more you share it. You don’t need to do it perfectly, but just think about it from more and more different perspectives, sharing it with different people, and you’ll find that you have a very kind of rounded understanding of the points that you’re explaining.

This is one of the things I’ve always loved about martial arts, studying martial arts for many years. You train with many different people, and you have a real understanding of the different techniques and how they work because of the repetition in lots of different situations and scenarios with lots of different people. And you can do the same with your speaking. That’s how you become bulletproof when you stand up and speak in front of an audience.

All right, then. So, we’re going to need to wrap up this episode, but before we do, let me just tell you a little bit about the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team because if you’re a regular listener of the show, you’ve heard me talk about it before. It’s something that I just want to quickly mention here because I’m so passionate about it.

I’ve been a proud member of the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team since before it started in 2010. It’s been one of the most meaningful ways for me to grow and not just for me but the countless numbers of people, tens and tens of thousands of people that I’ve seen and helped grow as well.

So, if you feel like you’re called to develop as a leader, you want to develop your communication, develop your ability to influence other people at a high level, then this could be a good fit for you. It’s definitely worth checking it out. So, just go to maxwellleadership.com/speak and jump on a call with a program advisor and find out if it’s a fit for you. I think you’ll be very pleased you did.

All right, so don’t forget to download the companion resources that I said at the beginning. Simply go to maxwellleadership.com/thespeakersedge. And remember, communication is a learnable skill. It’s one of the most valuable skills you can develop. And you can develop it. You can learn to master your message and inspire your audience every time you speak with a little bit of effort. A little bit of effort as we’ve seen.

Thanks for listening today. I’ll look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Take care. Lots of love. Bye-bye. God bless.

Ep. 045 — How to Build Speaking Confidence (No Natural Talent Needed)

Hosted by Roddy Galbraith

A Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production

Weekly highlights from The Speaker’s Edge — a Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production hosted by Roddy Galbraith. Learn how to communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact — in business, on stage, and in life.

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The Speakers Edge

Weekly highlights from The Speaker’s Edge, a Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production hosted by Roddy Galbraith. Learn how to communiate with clarity, confidence, and impact — in business, on stage, and in life.

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Full Transcript (Ep. 045 — How to Build Speaking Confidence (No Natural Talent Needed))
Released: January 5, 2025