Core Skill 015 practice ideas
Tell your story on demand
Before you can be interesting for an hour, you need a story you can deliver any time, at any length, without notes.
- 1
Write your origin story
Write how you got into your work in about 300 words. Then cut it down to what you can say in 60 seconds. Record both versions until the short one sounds natural, not memorized.
- 2
Build 20 answers to “What do you do?”
On 20 separate days, write a different one-sentence answer to “What do you do?”. Saying it 20 ways keeps it fresh, and you learn which framing makes strangers lean in.
- 3
Record a two-minute intro video
Once a week, record a video answering “How did you get into this?”. Watch it back, note one thing to cut, and record it again. Ten reps and you'll stop hearing your own voice as a stranger.
- 4
Let AI interview you
Ask an AI assistant to interview you about your work for 15 minutes. Transcribe it, underline the sentences that sounded best, and steal them for your stories.
- 5
Tell your story in a real conversation
Once a week, find a natural opening to tell part of your story to a colleague or friend. Notice where they ask follow-ups — that's the interesting part.
Core Skill 025 practice ideas
Answer anything in 90 seconds
Podcast moments are won with short, clear answers. The skill is saying one thing well, then stopping.
- 1
Build a question bank
Write 30 questions a host could ask you. Sort them into easy, hard, and “I hope they don't ask”. This becomes your practice curriculum.
- 2
Do timed answers
Pick one question and set a 90-second timer. Answer out loud. If you ran over, answer again and cut something. Do it daily with a new question.
- 3
Practice the bridge
Take a hard question and practice moving from an honest short answer to the point you want to make: “That's really two questions — the short answer is X, and what it taught me was Y.”
- 4
Record and tighten
Record five answers in one sitting. Listen back at double speed, mark every answer that rambled, and do each one again in half the time.
- 5
Rapid-fire rounds
Have a friend or an AI fire 10 unexpected questions at you, no pauses. You're not polishing answers — you're training recovery: breathe, land one point, move on.
Core Skill 035 practice ideas
Be comfortable in the room
Calm on a recording is the residue of many rooms and conversations. You can't rehearse composure — you accumulate it.
- 1
Speak first in meetings
For the next month, be the first to speak in every meeting you're in — even just a question or a summary. You're training the reflex of speaking while attention turns to you.
- 2
Volunteer for low-stakes speaking
Take the toast, the introduction, the team update. Once a month, put yourself in front of a friendly room on purpose.
- 3
Facilitate a small session
Offer to run a 30-minute discussion for your team or community. Facilitating means thinking on your feet while managing a room — the exact muscle of live audio.
- 4
Have 150 conversations about your work
Take every coffee, every “what are you up to?”, every chance to describe what you do and why. Count them. Around a hundred, your comfort stops depending on the audience.
- 5
Make the mic normal
Record something — a voice memo, a video, anything — three times a week for two months. The goal isn't content, it's making a live microphone feel like a kitchen table.
Core Skill 045 practice ideas
Ask questions like a host
Great guests are great interviewers. The quality of the conversation is a skill you bring, not luck with the host.
- 1
Study three interviewers
Pick three podcast hosts you admire. For each, list five questions they ask and what each one does for the conversation. Steal the patterns, not the questions.
- 2
Practice the follow-up
In every conversation this week, ask two follow-up questions before offering your own view. Follow-ups are where the real conversation lives.
- 3
Prepare host-quality questions
Before any conversation that matters, write three questions you're genuinely curious about. Bring them even when it's not your job to ask.
- 4
Interview someone monthly
Once a month, interview a colleague or friend for 20 minutes about their work. Hosting is the fastest way to learn what makes answers land.
- 5
Debrief every conversation
After any conversation that mattered, write down one question that opened it up and one that shut it down. Your question bank grows from real evidence.