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Daniel Reyes

Daniel Reyes

Speaking coach and the author of every guide on this site. More than 600 talks coached, from eight-person standups to 2,000-seat keynotes.

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Background

I coach people who have to speak as part of their job and would rather not. Engineers presenting to executives, founders pitching, sales teams who can sell one-to-one and freeze in front of forty. Since 2014 that has added up to more than 600 talks coached, ranging from eight-person standups to a 2,000-seat keynote.

I am not a naturally gifted speaker and I did not become one. My first conference talk was bad in the specific way most first talks are bad: over-rehearsed, delivered to a spot on the back wall, twelve minutes of material stretched over twenty. What I have is a decade of watching the same handful of problems appear in different people and learning which fixes actually transfer.

Credentials and affiliations

Toastmasters member since 2014. Regular club member, and I have served in evaluation and Table Topics roles.
600+ talks coached across technology, professional services and non-profits.
Author of every guide on this site. Nothing here is ghostwritten or syndicated.

How I work

Three things shape everything I write here.

The body comes before the mind. Most speaking advice starts with confidence and mindset. In practice, breathing, voice warm-up and sleep move the needle faster than any amount of positive thinking, because the problem is usually adrenaline rather than belief.

Specific beats general. "Make good eye contact" helps nobody. "Hold one person for one complete thought, roughly three to five seconds" is something you can do on Tuesday. If I cannot make advice specific enough to act on, I leave it out.

Say when the evidence is thin. Public speaking is full of confidently repeated folklore, the 7 percent communication statistic being the worst offender. Where a popular claim does not hold up, I say so. Where something is my own observation rather than research, I label it as mine.

What I am not

I am not a clinician. Speaking anxiety sits on a spectrum and at the severe end it overlaps with social anxiety disorder, which is a matter for a doctor or therapist. The fear guide says where that line is and this site's disclaimer states it plainly.

I am also not a professional performer, a TED speaker, or someone who will tell you that speaking is easy once you find your authentic voice. The work is repetition and it is a bit boring.

Get in touch

Corrections are the messages I act on fastest. If something on this site is wrong, out of date, or contradicted by better evidence, tell me through the contact page and I will fix it and change the updated date.

Guides by this author

Every guide on the site, most recent first by review date: