Everyone Hates Marketers | No-BS Marketing & Brand Strategy Podcast · Louis Grenier | Marketing & Branding

How to Impress Every Time You Speak (5 Unusual Public Speaking Tips)

·44 min·2 clips

I faked confidence for years. When I channeled it inward, everything changed.

Nausheen Chen is a French-based executive public speaking coach with a corporate background at Procter & Gamble in marketing training, who now coaches leaders in six countries on camera and in-person presentation. She opens by reframing public speaking as any communication to more than one person, which means it is relevant to nearly everyone in business. Chen explains that most of her clients come to her after a traumatic incident — freezing on stage, blanking mid-presentation, or watching a recording and not recognizing themselves. She identifies the inner psychological work as foundational: many clients have learned behaviors like speaking too fast out of fear that a pause reveals ignorance, and these cannot be fixed by technique alone. Her core framework covers three components: energy (the hardest to change and most individual), voice (pronunciation, pitch, pacing, and pauses), and body language (easiest to teach). For energy, she recommends developing a pregame routine — whether dancing, meditating, or doing jumping jacks — to deliberately switch into performance mode before recording or presenting. For voice, she emphasizes the importance of deliberate pauses, explaining that mouths that outrun brains produce repetitive filler because the buffer is empty. She demonstrates a vocal exercise live on air, asking Louis to read the same sentence in a neutral voice, a job-interview eager voice, and a checked-out voice, highlighting how tone completely changes perceived sincerity. For body language on stage, she advises planting feet at one of three positions and moving between them intentionally rather than pacing like a caged tiger. She also addresses online presentations, noting that camera-shy presenters forget their upper bodies are still expressive tools even when they cannot pace the room. The conversation touches on personal branding, with Chen sharing how her purple hair became a deliberate brand element after listeners started noticing it, echoing Louis's own bonjour bonjour signature. Both hosts are candid about their own journeys from low self-esteem to platform confidence. The episode appeals to marketers, entrepreneurs, and professionals who present, record, or pitch in any format and want actionable tools beyond generic advice.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Everyone Hates Marketers | No-BS Marketing & Brand Strategy Podcast