Our public-speaking and presentation training serves companies, executives, founders, conference speakers, sales leaders, academics, subject-matter experts, keynote speakers and professionals preparing for important presentations.
We also work with individuals preparing for promotions, town halls, conventions and industry events — as well as people who want to become influential voices or professional paid speakers.
Whether you are terrified of public speaking or already highly accomplished, Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations help bring out the strongest, clearest and most captivating version of you.
We do not turn you into someone else.
We help you become the speaker people remember.
Schedule a Public Speaking Strategy Call →
When Knowledge Is Not Enough
The person with the most knowledge is not always the person selected to present it.
Sometimes a brilliant subject-matter expert is passed over for someone with less expertise but more confidence or charisma. The expert has the information, but another person is trusted to deliver it.
Yes And Innovations closes that gap.
People seek public-speaking and presentation training because they:
- Become nervous, overexcited or visibly uncomfortable
- Focus on themselves instead of the audience
- Ramble, lose their place or forget material
- Sound stiff, memorized or unnatural
- Fail to establish authority
- Deliver too much information without a clear direction
- Create confusing slides filled with excessive text
- Use slides that do not support what they are saying
- Struggle to construct relevant stories
- Depend on lists instead of creating a compelling experience
- Use a flat voice with little variation in pace, tone or volume
- Rush without pausing
- Move without purpose or remain physically frozen
- Gesture awkwardly or constantly point toward the screen
- Ignore the intelligence and knowledge differences within the audience
- Fail to adjust when an audience becomes confused, restless or disengaged
- Have no clear intention for what the audience should think, feel or do
Some people can power through a presentation, but powering through is not mastery.
Brett Duggan and the Yes And Innovations team help speakers replace survival with connection, flexibility and command.
Big-Talk Mastery
A great keynote, town-hall address or conference presentation should capture the audience immediately.
Big-Talk Mastery begins with an opening that creates attention and curiosity. The speaker then launches into a captivating story, introduces a valuable idea and uses supporting micro-stories, examples and imagery to carry the audience through the presentation.
Yes And Innovations helps speakers develop:
- A compelling opening
- A clear central idea
- Captivating long-form stories
- Short micro-stories that reinforce important points
- Simple, interesting and purposeful slides
- Confident physical and vocal presence
- Deliberate pacing that continues building
- A conclusion that brings the complete experience together
- A clear audience outcome
Big-Talk Mastery is not simply about appearing comfortable on a large stage. It is about constructing and delivering a complete audience experience.
After an entire day of conference presentations or town-hall talks, wouldn’t you like to be the speaker everyone remembers?
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations help speakers create the story, imagery, insight and emotional connection that make that possible.
Small-Room Magnetism
Presenting to ten decision-makers in a boardroom requires a different form of mastery than speaking to a thousand people from a stage.
In a small room, the speaker must read subtle changes in attention, status and energy. The speaker may need to demonstrate authority and gravitas in one moment, then become relaxed, conversational or self-deprecating in the next.
Small-Room Magnetism teaches speakers how to:
- Read the room
- Understand status dynamics
- Shift between authority and approachability
- Use silence and longer pauses comfortably
- Speak quietly without losing command
- Make a presentation feel conversational
- Stop seeking visible approval from the highest-status person
- Adjust pacing and tone in real time
- Communicate with confidence, clarity and class
- Guide a room without making people feel manipulated
- Balance pushing, pulling and inviting
- Influence decisions with strength and subtlety
Big-Talk Mastery builds and carries an audience.
Small-Room Magnetism reads and influences a room.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations train speakers to do both.
Begin With the Audience Outcome
A successful presentation does not merely transmit information.
It moves an audience to think, feel, remember and act.
Before developing a presentation, Yes And Innovations helps the speaker identify the desired audience outcome.
The speaker may want audience members to:
- Understand a complicated idea
- Remember an important story
- Feel inspired, hopeful, concerned or curious
- Recognize the speaker as a credible authority
- Ask meaningful questions
- Continue the conversation afterward
- Contact the speaker
- Visit a website
- Complete an application or form
- Support a proposal
- Investigate an issue
- Share the idea with other people
- Change a behavior
- Take a specific action
Brett Duggan teaches speakers to stop asking only, “What do I want to say?”
The more powerful question is:
What do I want this audience to think, feel and do because I said it?
Our Public-Speaking Development Process
Yes And Innovations approaches presentations as both a creative process and a performance discipline.
Many professionals attempt to create and criticize simultaneously. They generate an idea and immediately judge it, which shuts down the creative process before the presentation has a chance to develop.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations teach speakers to separate the creative and critical stages.
First, create.
Then evaluate and refine.
Then return to creativity.
This allows speakers to discover stronger ideas, stories, connections and possibilities before deciding what belongs in the final presentation.
Depending on the engagement, participants may practice:
- Generating and organizing ideas
- Developing a central message
- Identifying audience outcomes
- Learning multiple story structures
- Writing and editing in their authentic voice
- Improvising around prepared material
- Memorizing material using techniques suited to the individual
- Delivering the same talk with fresh, spontaneous energy
- Creating or repairing slide decks
- Using physical space
- Developing purposeful gestures
- Strengthening vocal range, pace and power
- Using silence and pauses
- Rehearsing in front of colleagues
- Receiving precise, constructive feedback
- Studying expert presentations
- Analyzing why unsuccessful presentations fail
- Adapting to real audience responses
Improvisation is an important part of Yes And Innovations presentation training because even a memorized presentation must remain alive.
A masterful speaker can follow the structure of a prepared talk while remaining present enough to respond to the audience.
Writing, Editing and Building the Entire Talk
Yes And Innovations can enter the process after a presentation has already been created — or work with a speaker from the first idea.
Brett Duggan and the Yes And Innovations team are writers as well as presentation coaches. Our coaches understand storytelling, structure, creative development, performance and audience psychology.
We can help a client:
- Discover the central idea
- Identify the intended audience
- Establish the desired outcome
- Generate relevant material
- Find and develop stories
- Write the presentation in the speaker’s voice
- Edit for clarity and impact
- Structure the complete talk
- Develop slides
- Rehearse delivery
- Prepare for audience interaction
- Refine the talk through continued practice
Our multi-month Big-Talk Mastery Program can take a speaker from the first idea to a fully developed signature presentation.
Yes And Innovations does not hand you someone else’s speech and ask you to imitate a generic speaking style.
We help you find, write and deliver your talk in your voice.
The NeuroSpontaneity System™ for Public Speaking
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations use three primary NeuroSpontaneity™ elements in public-speaking and presentation training:
- StoryGenesis™
- Somatic Resonance™
- Magnetic Influence™
Together, these elements develop the story, the speaker and the audience experience.
StoryGenesis™
StoryGenesis™ begins with the foundations of storytelling and moves into a deep collection of techniques and storytelling styles.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations help speakers create stories that captivate, enchant, move and inspire audiences.
A story can be extremely short or much longer. Three sentences can tell a story. Ten minutes can tell a great story.
StoryGenesis™ helps speakers recognize when to use a longer central story, when to use a short supporting story and how to connect each story directly or indirectly to the presentation’s central idea.
Somatic Resonance™
Somatic Resonance™ develops the voice and physical presence of the speaker.
It includes:
- Vocal power
- Tone and inflection
- Pacing
- Breathing
- Gestures
- Physical placement
- Purposeful movement
- Comfort within the body
- Grounded stage presence
A regulated, physically grounded speaker helps an audience feel more comfortable and secure.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations teach speakers to create vocal and physical authority without shouting, forcing energy or imitating someone else’s personality.
Magnetic Influence™
Magnetic Influence™ connects the presentation to the desired audience outcome.
It involves holding the space, projecting an appropriate tone and energy, structuring the talk to deepen attention and drawing the audience further into the experience.
Magnetic Influence™ helps a speaker move an audience toward a thought, feeling, decision or action without making the audience feel manipulated.
StoryGenesis™ creates the story. Somatic Resonance™ gives the story a grounded voice and body. Magnetic Influence™ focuses attention and moves the audience toward the outcome.
Together, these elements help Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations bring out the individual speaker’s strongest qualities.
A Technical Founder Becomes the Voice of His Company
Yes And Innovations worked with a large organization that had acquired a promising startup and its technology.
The organization wanted the startup’s founder to become a charismatic public face for the new service. He was a gifted mathematician, computer scientist and technical creator — but he was not naturally comfortable as a speaker.
The solution was not to force him to become extroverted.
Brett Duggan and the Yes And Innovations team helped him understand that public speaking could be learned as a system. Like an algorithm, it could be examined, practiced, adjusted and mastered.
He learned how to access greater comfort, expression and clarity while remaining himself.
Over time, he became the voice of the application and a visible figure within his industry. He developed into a highly effective speaker and presenter.
That confidence also transferred into:
- One-on-one interactions
- Small-room pitches
- Video presentations
- Leadership communication
- Industry visibility
He did not need to become someone else.
He needed a learnable system that revealed the most compelling version of himself.
Public-Speaking Expertise
Brett Duggan
Brett Duggan is the founder of Yes And Innovations and the creator of the NeuroSpontaneity System™.
Brett Duggan began performing stand-up comedy at age seventeen. He has toured the United States performing clean comedy and story-based comedy, learning firsthand how to capture attention, read audiences, adjust material and make people respond.
Brett Duggan is also a trained Shakespearean actor who has performed at large outdoor festivals. His improvisational training includes work with leading teachers and performers connected to Second City, Chicago, Hollywood and modern improvisation pioneer Keith Johnstone.
Brett Duggan brings:
- 35 years of professional performance experience
- More than 15 years teaching performers
- University teaching at an R1 research institution
- Executive coaching experience
- Keynote-speaking experience
- Stand-up comedy instruction
- Acting and directing experience
- Corporate presentation training
- Experience training award-winning speakers
- Experience developing talks for executives and influencers
- Experience coaching novices, competitors and accomplished speakers
Brett Duggan combines storytelling, comedy, acting, improvisation, writing, directing and corporate communication to help speakers understand what actually happens between a person and an audience.
Dr. Rockford Sansom
Dr. Rockford Sansom is Yes And Innovations’ expert in voice and speech.
Dr. Sansom is a communication coach, professor and author who served for seven years as editor of the academic journal Voice and Speech Review.
He has coached:
- Fortune 500 executives
- United Nations delegates
- Members of the United States Congress
- TED speakers
- Professional actors and performers
Dr. Sansom holds a PhD and an MFA and has published extensively on voice, communication and voice pedagogy.
His expertise strengthens the Yes And Innovations approach to vocal power, presence, clarity, authenticity and high-stakes communication.
All Yes And Innovations coaches bring performing-arts experience and an understanding of professional and corporate presentations.
Training and Coaching Formats
Yes And Innovations offers:
- Keynote-development coaching
- Private public-speaking coaching
- Presentation makeovers
- Speech writing and editing
- Slide-deck development and repair
- Half-day workshops
- Full-day workshops
- Two-day presentation intensives
- Corporate presentation training
- Conference-speaker preparation
- Town-hall preparation
- Pitch coaching
- Group speaking cohorts
- Multi-month Big-Talk Mastery programs
- Professional-speaker development
Yes And Innovations works with companies and individuals throughout the world.
Training and coaching are available online and in person.
Wherever You Begin, You Can Improve
You may be terrified of speaking. You may already be very good. You may be preparing for a promotion, town hall, conference, keynote, pitch or new career.
Wherever you begin, you can improve.
Do not let someone with less knowledge become the voice of your idea simply because that person is more comfortable speaking.
Learn to tell the story. Learn to hold the room. Learn to move the audience.
