Several years ago, I went to hear an American named Darren LaCroix, who was in London talking about public speaking – in 2001, he had won the prestigious National Speakers Association International Competition, in the process beating 25,000 contestants from 14 different countries. As he admitted, he felt invisible in high school, failed as a business owner, worked in a cubicle for a decade but was now a world champion speaker. To him, if he could do it, anyone could do it.
One of the stories he told struck a chord – he said that when he was starting off in public speaking, one evening after work he drove from his home in New York (I think it was New York) for about two hours to an event, where he spoke for ten minutes and drove another two hours back to New York – hence his mantra “Never Turn Down Stage Time” - if you want to improve your public speaking, you have to grab every opportunity – and if you learn from others and your own mistakes, there is a good chance you will get better and better every time you speak.