How to become a public speaker in 1 year: Introduction

Catt Small
3 min readJun 13, 2016

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In 2012, I gave myself a goal: become an experienced product designer with management and leadership skills within five years. I was a junior designer at the time, and saw other designers moving ahead of me because of their superior communication skills. To become a better communicator (and ultimately a better designer), I knew I needed to up my speaking game.

In one year, I learned to propose interesting talks and speak with presence at conferences in tech and gaming across the United States. In three years, I learned to do so while also getting paid. Along the way, I also got better jobs and various opportunities that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t started speaking.

Since the documentation of steps I took to improve my speaking ability turned into a very long chunk of text, I’m splitting them into separate posts. I hope this information will help you find your voice and gain access to more opportunities.

Throughout the posts, I will be listing the steps I took and exercises I did in order to become a better public speaker. These printable worksheets will help with many exercises. You can print them out and use a pencil or pen to fill in spaces.

Bring the series with you

Like most self-improvement efforts, this is a long-term investment. The eBook version of this series is available on Amazon, Gumroad, or iBooks for under $10. Every eBook purchase comes with the worksheets, a $3.99 value, for free. You can bookmark this page, but there won’t be a way to highlight important points, view the series offline, or take notes.

On with your journey. Good luck!

Table of contents

Thank you for letting me help you along your journey to become a public speaker. If you like this series, please share it with anyone who might find it useful. If it somehow changed your life, I encourage you email me that positive feedback so I can celebrate with you! If you want to support the creation of more work like this, you can send me some love.

Other resources

Looking for more content about public speaking? Below are a variety of websites, blog posts, and books to check out. Please support and share content by these creators if their works help you.

Good luck, young padawan! Become a speaking master!

Originally published at cattsmall.com on June 13, 2016.

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Catt Small

Product Designer, Programmer, Game Developer, Artist, & karaoke ♥er. Bronx-born & raised. She.