“When I saw Steve making light work of a job that I had struggled with — compere-ing the ‘live demonstration theatre’ at a cosmetic surgery conference with ease and assurance — I realised two things. a) that I needed to learn how to stand on stage and look calm, authoritative and at ease with an audience and b) here was the guy to teach me. I’ve known Steve for years as we have both worked in the area of cosmetic aesthetics and I also knew that he taught well — I’d been to one of his seminars for journalists, and found it useful.

“So I invested in a one-to-one session for improving my speaker skills, and it was a blast.  Apart from the bits where I had to stand up and actually talk about things, but that got easier as the morning went on. I learned a fantastic amount in three short hours – from what not to do (rely on Powerpoint. Eek. Also, not a good idea to seize up into a rigid posture and stand there rocking…) to how to structure a talk, how to engage with audience, how to time a talk, how to get information across to them and, crucially, how to ‘perform’ a bit more and make the whole thing more entertaining for the audience.

“Then came the hard bit – going home and putting it into practice, which, well, it’s a work in progress. But I’ve done one speaking job since then and while there’s still a lot of practising to be done, I felt miles more at ease and more confident just knowing what it was that I ought to be aiming at, and how to go about it, and had great feedback from my audience.  Thank you, Steve.”