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Level 3 · Week 2 of 8
Signature Style
Why This Matters
By Level 3, technique alone isn't the differentiator — every gate-passing speech has sound structure and real evidence. What separates a merely competent 10-minute address from a memorable one is a voice that sounds like nobody else's.
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Suggested pace: about a week. This lesson works best across a few short sessions, not one sitting — write today, come back and revise in a day or two, then rehearse once more before you submit. Real progress comes from returning to the same skill more than once, rested, not from cramming it all in at once.
This Week's Exercise
Day 1–2 Start Here — Reflect
Before rereading your past work, think about how you actually talk when you're explaining something you care about to a friend — not presenting, just explaining. That register is closer to your real voice than most first drafts are.
Day 3 Draft & Rehearse
Read back through your last two gate submissions and mark any phrase, rhythm, or turn of thought that feels distinctly like you, not like a template.
Identify one place in this speech where you're writing the way you think a speech "should" sound rather than the way you actually talk. Rewrite it in your real voice.
Find a recurring image or idea you can plant early and return to later in the speech — a signature thread the audience can follow across ten minutes.
Ask someone who knows you well to read the draft. If nothing in it sounds like you specifically, it could be anyone's speech — that's the gap to close.
Day 4–5 Go Deeper & Rehearse Once More
Take one paragraph you marked as sounding "like a template" and rewrite it exactly the way you'd say it out loud to a friend, then clean it up only slightly. Compare the two versions — the gap between them tells you how far your written voice has drifted from your real one.
Day 6 Before You Move On
Did I find and rewrite at least one place where I was writing "how a speech should sound" instead of how I actually talk?
Does my signature thread actually reappear later in the speech, not just once at the start?
Did the person I showed this to confirm it sounds like me specifically?
Day 7 Coach's Note — Nancy Duarte: The best speeches follow a shape the audience can feel — but the voice inside that shape has to be unmistakably the speaker's own. Structure is learnable by anyone; your specific voice is not.