Event: Adequate to Excellent Public Speaking | London Day
LOCATION: Central London (venue confirmed nearer the date)
NEXT DATE: To be announced
This day is open to individuals.
For corporate enquiries please get in touch directly.
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One day. Twelve people. In person.
Adequate is good enough. And good enough is good enough. Excellent is even better.
The London Day is the intensive, in-person version of my public speaking teaching. Twelve people in a room, working together for a full day. Improvisation, classical rhetoric, and live practice with real feedback.
It’s best preceded by my 30-day online course, but that isn’t required.
What Happened Last Time
The most recent London Day went well. I was happy, and it seemed participants were happy too.
Three of them were kind enough to post about it.
Isabel Berwick of The Financial Times posted this on LinkedIn:
Then came this, from another author who was there:
And later, this from Philippa Perry, who has tons of experience as a speaker (she’s also presented TV shows). She joined my speaking course as a refresher before embarking on a HUGE book tour. I’d messaged her on Instagram, where she uses the alias KevinKittyCat, to ask how it was going:
By the way, if you’re thinking, “Gosh, those look like rather high-powered and intimidatingly brilliant people, I couldn’t possibly go on a day with the likes of them,” I say PISH.
We all deserve to speak, and be heard.
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Who this is for
Experts about to give a first big talk to an unfamiliar audience. Writers facing book tours. Professionals who keep getting asked to present and want to stop dreading it.
If you’re already accomplished at something and need to add public speaking to your toolkit, this day is for you.
I have a particular talent for teaching people who are really good at one thing to become really good at something related. For example: when I posted on LinkedIn about what speechwriters can learn by delivering a speech, Barack Obama’s speechwriter Terry Szuplat shared it with the words: “Learn, as I have, from John-Paul Flintoff. Highly recommend.”
I still feel dazed.
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What the day looks like
A full day, 10am to 5pm, with a proper lunch break.
We work through the principles of classical rhetoric, then break those principles deliberately to see what happens. We do improvisation exercises from my own training with the late Keith Johnstone. We record videos on phones, watch them back, do it again. By the end of the day, everyone has stood up and spoken multiple times, in different ways, with feedback.
You leave with a much clearer sense of what works for you – not a template, but the beginnings of a style.
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The Price
£1,200
One price. No early-bird mechanics. Lunch and materials included.
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The next London Day will be announced in the coming weeks. If you’d like to be on the list of people I notify first, please email me or subscribe to my newsletter.
This page is being rebuilt over the coming days.