The Ultimate Guide to Speaking
Turn fear into confidence and words into impact. The complete online course to master the art of speaking powerfully and persuasively.
12.6 million views
Michael helped me to choose the best stories to captivate my audience and convey a powerful, heart wrenching message. That's the reason my speech is the most viewed TEDx talk in New Zealand and one of the top five most viewed TEDx talks on the planet.
When you're serious about speaking
The Ultimate Guide to Speaking gives you the skills to enhance
your leadership presence so you can:
Develop speaking strategies to build your confidence, career and leadership
Master the development and delivery of your most important talks
Apply proven strategies to win the hearts and minds of any audience
What Kind of Speaker Are You?
Take the 60-Second Assessment to Find Out!
Are you unknowingly holding yourself back as a speaker? Take this quick assessment to discover if you're an anxious or avoidant speaker—and how to break free from the cycle that's limiting your success on stage.
Let nothing hold you back
As a speaker, it’s easy to get stuck worrying about what people think of you and what you should be.
You might feel inauthentic and end up misaligned and out of rhythm with yourself.
It can be difficult to break free of the stress, self-doubt and self-limiting beliefs that have been holding you prisoner.
You have all the resources you need to succeed inside you. But it can be challenging to get out of your own way.
Lack of Preparation and Practice:
- Procrastinating on preparation.
- Not scripting talks or timing them.
- Not practicing delivery and not knowing what or how to say things.
Content and Structure Issues:
- Having too much to say in too little time.
- Struggling with structuring content effectively.
- Not knowing how to find the core of the story or narrative.
Communication Challenges:
- Stumbling over words and forgetting points.
- Difficulty regulating the mood of the talk.
- Mono-emotional delivery and lack of engaging body language.
Nervousness and Confidence:
- Feeling anxious, nervous, stressed, or overwhelmed.
- Struggling with imposter syndrome or feeling unprofessional.
- Being shy or bashful, which affects interaction with the audience.
Audience Engagement and Impact:
- Not knowing how to engage or interact with the audience.
- Having a disengaged audience due to boring content or delivery.
- Speaking in circles or going over allotted time.
Technical and Visual Presentation:
- Having bad slide decks or lacking powerful visuals.
- Not knowing how to present effectively to a camera.
- Oversharing or being overconfident without proper preparation.
Michael helped the team at Evnex to develop our story and pitch for a live product launch. Michael was fun to work with, refreshingly direct and helped us to raise our game significantly.
The level of engagement and awareness of both my personal work and my organisation has sky-rocketed since working with him - and the results have been nothing short of amazing!
Michael is more than just a coach. He is a partner in your success, someone who is truly committed to helping you achieve your dreams, and my go-to coach for speaking and facilitation.
He opened my eyes to how much work goes on behind the scenes to deliver a world class talk that brings your listeners on a journey with you.
Success stories
We coach and train CEOs, celebrities, sales executives, tech giants, best-selling authors, professors, PhDs, and start-up founders to achieve outstanding results.
About Michael
Business Storytelling Expert. Keynote Speaker. Executive Speaker Coach. Professor of Practice at the University of Canterbury, Communications & Training Specialist.
Having spent over two and half decades working within leadership development, Michael is the sought after high-performance coach to thousands of executives and leaders.
An expert in storytelling, stage craft, charismatic leadership, and business storyselling. He is renowned for helping people achieve powerful results from their keynotes, sales pitches, capital raises, and formal presentations.
Michael has a resolute belief that mastery of ourselves is forged in the fiery crucible of practical application, self-analysis, self-discovery, and self-management.
No other coach offers his credentials, experience, and singleness of purpose.
I've worked with:
Here's what you'll learn.
Michael will make sure you’re set up for success by asking the right questions of the event hosts who have asked you to speak at their event, ensuring you are going in the right direction from the start with clarity.
He will explain how to construct your script and get your ideas out of your head and onto paper. He will show you how to use a variety of models to craft your talk and engage your audience.
He will demonstrate body language, vocal techniques, and stage presence to ensure you have a positive and effective impact on your audience and yourself.
Learn the 5 C's
12 month unlimited access to help you with all your speaking
Public speaking isn’t just a skill; it’s a transformative journey. Whether you’re looking to boost self-confidence, conquer the fear of speaking, or achieve personal mastery, the rewards are life-changing. Externally, powerful communication opens doors to leadership, career growth, and lasting influence.
That’s why we offer 12 months of unlimited access to our online course. It gives you the time and flexibility to build these essential skills at your own pace—turning fear into confidence and words into impact.
25 bite sized learning lessons
We get it, you’re busy. So we’ve created this course with that in mind. We’ve broken down the modules with short punchy videos that are no longer than 10 minutes. We understand, Michael’s got ADHD so there’s no point overloading, just give you what you need.
A workbook to help collect epic ideas on your learning journey
There’s nothing worse than downloading a digital file and you can’t fill it in. We’re looking at you MasterClass. You want to be able to take control of your learning while you’re on the go.
Learning where you want.
How you want.When you want.
On the bus, on the boat, wherever you choose to float, sometimes the best learnings happen when you’re on the go or in between things. Like riding an Uber to your next meeting or sitting at home with the family over Christmas and looking for any excuse to get away. Your learning is in your hands.
Nicola Turner
Director of Mainstream Green
William Trubridge
World Champion and World Record Holding Freediver
Kura Te Ua
Choreographer and Artistic Director
Jordan Watson
How to DAD (Youtube Celebrity)
Robyn Twemlow
Director at Tourette's Association New Zealand
Alex Tan
Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at University of Canterbury
Craig Jarvis
Architectural designer
Why The Ultimate Guide To Speaking?
This course focuses on the way you speak, the language you choose to use, your natural ability to influence others, your unconscious mannerisms and behaviours that might be preventing you from being larger than life.
Inspire your audience in 3 easy steps.
We can guarantee you'll be a better speaker with the Ultimate Guide to Speaking than without it.
Get access to Michael's online course
Master key public speaking skills
Deliver world-class talks and presentations
Turn fear into confidence and words into impact. The complete online course to master the art of speaking powerfully and persuasively.
FAQs
Get access to 25 intensive short and punchy step-by-step video guides, plus a downloadable workbook that walks you through everything you need to design, develop and deliver a TED-worthy talk.
Michael helps you start strong by teaching you to ask the right questions of your event hosts, ensuring you have complete clarity from the beginning.
He explains how to construct your script and get your ideas flowing from your head onto paper. Learn how to use a variety of models to craft your talk and connect with your audience.
Master body language, vocal techniques, and stage presence to create a positive and effective impact on both your audience and yourself.
Watch Astella Philpott's video to learn best practice and fresh ideas for constructing great PowerPoints, while Michael explains the theory behind effective supporting visuals.
Discover Michael's insights on how to practice and exactly how much practice you need to hit that stage prepared and confident.
There's much more to explore – watch the Ultimate Guide to Speaking platform demo to see everything for yourself.
The course is self-paced, taking just a few hours to complete. For best results, Michael has broken it into micro-learning components with short videos. We recommend watching one section at a time and completing the corresponding tasks in your downloadable workbook.
12 months with access to new content as it’s uploaded.
Since you get instant access to the platform, learning materials, and downloadable workbook, we don't offer refunds.
Definitely, just get in touch and we can discuss options for you and your team.
Yes! Contact us to discuss your speaking project and explore how many coaching sessions would work best alongside the course.