[dontbenebby]

I was briefly a child actor, but left that world to focus on developing tools and techniques to fight some of the horrible people I met in that space.

There is no replacement for practice… make a slide deck or script and practice it repeatedly, to the point you barely need notes. This will take 10-40 hours for a 30 minute presentation. (Spaced across multiple weeks - you will increase the chances you bomb your talk if you attempt on short notice)

Then practice it in front of someone, and edit the copy until someone who is not an expert in your domain doesn’t want to ask clarifying questions.

Then practice another 10-40 hours until you’re as comfortable as you were prior to trying it out on a test audience.

You might spend 20-40 hours practicing per 30 min of speaking initially, but eventually you’ll get to a point where that ramp up period will get much shorter.

The above, paired with some improv classes and purposefully letting yourself bomb a few open mics will get you to a point where not only will you advance your career, you’ll be so persuasive you may not care if you have one due to all the side quests you go on with the enraptured folks who come to you after your lectures :-)