Do you want to learn public speaking in just 4 hours online?

Yes. If we use the Fitts and Posner Model of Skill Acquisition as a reference, online training can help you pass through the cognitive phase (information gathering), associative phase (practice and self-correction), and autonomous phase (performing to a high standard, with low effort, without thinking).

Tom Hendrick’s free online courses help you learn public speaking skills and frameworks. The coaching activities and AI Roleplays help you practice and self correct in response to feedback. Continuing this process for four sessions (4 hours total) should get you into the autonomous phase, where professional communication is low effort, high quality and automatic.

Pitch, pace, pause, projection and passion. These are covered in Tom Hendrick’s free course on Voice and Body presentation. We know that the human ear is designed to detect changes in sound and alert the brain. The ears are also designed to reduce the brain’s awareness of the same sound played at length to conserve attention and energy. The same is true of the eyes and movement. We notice a moving person or object. However, you are always looking at your nose, but your eyes have reduced your awareness of your nose to conserve attention and energy. When we can control our pitch, pace, pause, projection and passion, we can tap into the sound change and sight change alert systems in our audience. This can increase engagement and enjoyment of presentations when done correctly, and also ruin otherwise great speeches when done poorly.

Tomhendrick.com is an online platform that has all the free materials you need to learn public speaking skills in 4 hours. The platform uses AI Roleplaying activities to give you realistic presentation and conversation scenarios, where you can control the success criteria, the type of audience you are speaking to, and how hard the scenario is. You can also collect data from your own speaking performance to help you track your improvement. The platform measures word choice, word efficiency, delivery, and body language. The platform also can gauge how compliant your performance was with the principles of Audience-centric communication.

Warren Buffett famously refers to Toastmasters International as his first step into public speaking training. Tom Hendrick was also an active member of multiple Toastmasters clubs, and managed 5 clubs in Adelaide City as an Area Director (as it was called then). However, Tom realised that the Toastmasters model had two drawbacks: (1) you don’t speak often enough (meetings are usually every 2 weeks and if the club has 20+ members, you may not get to speak that week); (2) you don’t get professional feedback (feedback provided by club members or your assigned evaluator). Imagine joining a tennis club to become a professional tennis player, but you could only practice for 1 to 5 minutes every 2 weeks, and there was no tennis pro to give feedback. Under the Fitts and Posner Model of Skill Acquisition, skills come and go very quickly in the early stages of learning. So doing short, non-intense speaking practice every 2 weeks without professional feedback means a lot of skill reversibility is included in your practice time. Instead, Tom Hendrick developed a way of getting better at public speaking skills in 4 sessions, which could be done between 4 days or 4 weeks. With this training method, Tom has trained people from zero confidence and experience to being able to speak confidently and charismatically at a conference, in just 4 hours.

Tom Hendrick’s mission is to ensure that a good idea does not fail for a lack of communication or courage. Imagine if a person discovered the cure for cancer, but couldn’t talk about it. The world is a worse place when common sense doesn’t prevail; when bad ideas outspeak good ideas; when fear stops us from speaking the truth or enjoying our lives. I am privileged to work on high profile presentations and conversations for my clients, but I believe these services should be made available to everyone.

Yes. You will be emailed a certificate of completion when you successfully pass one of Tome Hendrick’s free online public speaking courses. In order to pass, you must complete both a quiz and a series of AI Roleplay scenarios to prove your theoretical knowledge and practical speaking skills. The certificate will describe what you learnt and accomplished so that potential employers or collaborators can appreciate the work you put in to achieve the certificate. However, these courses are not part of a registered training organisation, so they cannot be used as credit towards qualification or accreditation. Stay tuned.

The free public speaking courses are suitable for people of all skill levels. My clients include students all the way to CEO’s of publicly listed companies, and all of my clients benefit from learning these Audience-centric skills from beginning to end. For instance, when learning the Repeat Count skill for answering questions, a beginner can learn this skill and use it in podcasts to tell engaging sand insightful stories after practicing for 4 sessions. However, an advanced speaker will be able to combine Repeat Count with other audience-centric skills like Sound Change, Analogies, Pattern Communication, and Syllogistic Structures to give very engaging and insightful answers to questions. These are skills that don’t take long to learn, but you can enjoy small incremental improvements for a lifetime.

Yes, adults will get more benefit from the free public speaking courses and coaching than persons under the age of 18. However, the content of the free public speaking courses and coaching are suitable for everyone.

Yes. My main clients are people who already speak professionally for a living. I have worked with keynote speakers, professional comedians, authors, and leaders of large organisations to improve their skills further and prepare for particularly important public speaking opportunities like podcasts, conferences and TEDx events.