It may be presumptuous of me to reflect on nearly 30 years in the speaking business and offer a few tips I’ve learned along the way. But I’m doing it anyway, and let me start by inviting you to add your insights, disagree with mine, or simply say yes. That way the lessons won’t just be one person’s thoughts but a magnificent edifice of ideas built by many minds.

Here goes.

1. Like any other field, this one is changing – and faster than ever. You’ve got to speed up. The speakers who are successful are the ones willing to change their speeches up even when the current ones seem to still be hitting. You never get the word from your audience that you’re outdated – the audience just melts away. So don’t lose the passion and the focus that got you to the stage, but do keep reinventing, even if it hurts. Even if you still love your current message. Reinvent yourself now.

2. Despite your fixations (and mine), the success or failure of your speech is not about the technology. Speakers spend a lot of time obsessing about the right technology – and of course it can add a gee whiz factor and make you look cool. But it’s way, way more important to get the story right, and to get your attitude toward the story clearly focused, than any slide or video or comfort monitor. People connect to people in the end, always. Stop worrying about the slides and get the story right.

3. You have to take care of yourself; no one else will do it. Speaking can run you ragged, it can put stress on families, and it can eat you alive with the emotional swings, the headiness of success and the bottomless pit of failure – and that’s just from one speech. It’s your job to work out a regimen that will keep you healthy, sane, and connected to the people that matter in your life.  Figure out non-speaking things that will feed your soul and keep you happy.

4. Not every speech is going to be a winner. Despite your best efforts and the good intentions of everyone involved from the technical people to the meeting planner to the driver who got you there, not every speech will connect. Audiences have bad days, and so do speakers. And a message can misfire. So you’ve got to find ways to deal with both the winners and the losers. Sometimes the feedback is helpful, and you need to hear it, and sometimes it was just the wrong event for you. Learn to let go of both the good and bad.

5. Public speaking is a performance art. That means that you have to show up every time. That’s the professional part, and the unforgiving part of performance. Picasso could paint a picture and leave it on the wall, but you have to give the speech with energy and passion for every audience, not just the ones that seem particularly important or cool. You can’t just do it right once – you have to be able to repeat the phenomenon. Get ready to switch on when the lights are up.

6. Some of the most painful — and important — lessons in public speaking are the ones you learn in public. Rehearsal and coaching can of course help you find your best self faster and get to your peak with fewer missteps. But in the end, you’re going to have to learn some lessons in front of the audience, on camera, with bright lights shining in your eyes. Because until you perform, you won’t know whether or not you’re a performer. And how you do that best.

7. The speaking hour is short; the rest of it is long. You can never do enough to push your career forward. There will never be an end to the calls, the emails, the social media, the blog posts, the television, the radio, the you name it. But that hour that you live for, the performance, that will go by in a heartbeat. So don’t mistake busyness for progress and don’t forget what all that other stuff is for. And don’t get distracted by all those distractions when the lights go up and the Voice of God says, “Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome….”

That’s your moment. Be there with all your being.