How TEDx Speakers Actually Prepare for the Stage

Nobody is ready for the stage.

I'm a director of TEDxNewy, which means I spend a big chunk of my year working with people in the weeks before what is often the most important talk of their careers. It's a privilege. It's also, at times, quietly heartbreaking — because I watch genuinely brilliant people, professionals at the very top of their fields, struggle through their prep as the stakes change.

Confidence Isn't a Personality Trait. It's a Skill.

People often assume confidence is something you either have or you don't. They think the speakers who walk onto a stage and own it were simply built that way. They weren't.

Confident speaking is a skill, and like any skill, it's built through repetition and practice — no matter how long you've been doing it.

Even Practised Speakers Get Nervous

I speak in front of audiences regularly. It's a fluent, comfortable part of my life. And even I have days where a talk gets me nervous — where the stakes, or the weight of the room, surprise me.

Speaking just gets to people. It gets to me. It can get to you too. That's not a flaw in you. It's just the nature of it.

So what actually closes the gap between the version of you that freezes and the version that flows?

The Unglamorous Answer: Reps

Practice. Unglamorous, repeated, low-stakes practice.

The speakers I work with who improve the most aren't the naturally gifted ones. They're the ones who rehearse until they can give their talk in their sleep. (Literally — some do.)

The catch is that most people I meet don't actually practise, they just think about practising. They run their talk silently in their head on the train, in the shower, lying in bed at 11pm. That is the one method guaranteed not to prepare you for saying it out loud.

Honestly, any practice is good practice. But the best practice is in front of others who can give you feedback. A small group of friends, a colleague over coffee, a partner who doesn't mind hearing the same talk seven times — that's gold.

If You Don't Have That Audience

If real people aren't an option for you — which, honestly, is most of us most of the time — that's where a tool like Elqo is genuinely worth your time. It lets you practise speaking in the safety of your own space, with no audience to perform for and no judgement. Just reps.

And reps are what move you.

You don't need to feel ready. You need to feel practised.

If you take one thing from this piece, let it be that.

A Few Invitations From TEDxNewy

While I have you, three things:

1. Go watch some TEDxNewy talks. There's no better teacher than studying speakers who've already done the work. Pay attention to how they pace, how they pause, how they recover when they lose their thread. That's the craft.
2. Come to an event. We've got a full slate across 2026, and our big one is in October. Come on over.
3. Have an idea worth spreading? If you've been quietly sitting on something, consider TEDxNewy as the place to say it out loud. We'd genuinely love to hear it — before we hear it from someone else.