Jul 16, 2025
Keynote Speaker Training
How do you move from occasional speaker to seasoned professional?
The best keynote speakers make their presentations seem effortless. From their introductions to their materials to their storytelling, they involve the audience every step of the way. But behind that polished presentation are months of practice and years of training. Not to mention the business savvy to secure a place on the biggest stages.
If you would like to become a more polished and professional speaker like AI expert Zack Kass or Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph, there are many organizations that can help you improve both your presentation and business skills.
Here are a few resources to get started.
Speaking Skills
To build your reputation, you need to polish your skills as a speaker. There are a number of professional organizations that can help you prepare and get peer feedback.
For getting practice and peer feedback, Toastmasters is a great place to start. For a reasonable fee, you can upgrade your presentation skills through practice, peer feedback, and observation. Best of all, there are clubs everywhere: online, hybrid, and in-person.
Another resource for boosting your skills is to present at your local TEDx event. It’s free to speak, but it’s competitive to be selected. However, once selected, you will receive mentoring and feedback for your talks. For your professional career, your talk will be posted on the TEDx YouTube channel. Look for TEDx events in your local community.
Besides TEDx, you could also apply to become a TED Fellow. Once accepted, you’ll get practice through workshops and one-to-one mentoring. Fellows learn to hone their skills in public speaking, media relations, and more.
Business Skills
If you intend to pursue keynote speaking as a career, you’ll also need to develop your business skills in sales, marketing, and finance. Professional speakers need to know how to market and sell themselves to find paid speaking gigs as well as handle all the taxes and expenses that come with success.
A good place to start your business journey as a speaker is the NSA. For an annual fee, you’ll have access to a community of speakers and resources. There are local chapters all over the United States. They also offer a credentialing program (CSP Certified Speaking Professional) that will legitimize your services for potential clients. With their vault of business courses, you can learn about website development, CRM solutions, automation, contracts, and more.
If you’re looking for more mentoring, Jane Atkinson, a speaker with over three decades of experience, offers a coaching service for speakers to improve their skills. Jane’s Wealthy Speaker School helps emerging speakers and seasoned pros develop a business model and marketing systems to scale their speaking business. She has helped speakers, such as sales and leadership expert Ryan Estis and storytelling expert Kindra Hall, scale their speaking businesses.
Speaking and Business Skills
If you’re just starting in your career or a pro with years of experience, you can benefit from joining a workshop at Impact Eleven. Impact Eleven was formed by a group of professional speakers with decades of experience.
Their trainers offer group workshops, one-on-one speaking coaching, and business expertise. They also offer services to help speakers with their brand strategy, website development, and speaker reel production.
Jia Jiang, resilience expert and bestselling author of Rejection Proof, thought the program was so good, he got off his plane to attend an optional third day of the bootcamp. Since then, his already thriving business has soared.
Good luck with your career. BigSpeak Speakers Bureau looks forward to representing you one day.
To learn more about the keynote speaking business, read