Know what to fix
before it counts

Captions written by the EchoPitch channel.

You've got an interview next week. Or a sales pitch. Or maybe a board presentation that's keeping you up at night. You know you should practice. But practicing alone feels pointless — and practicing in front of colleagues feels worse. That's why I built EchoPitch. **EchoPitch is an AI presentation coach that gives you real feedback on how you come across** — not just what you say, but how you say it. Here's how it works. **Step one: choose your scenario.** Job interview, sales pitch, investor presentation — or upload your own job description for tailored questions. **Step two: record yourself.** Just hit record and answer the questions. No audience. No judgment. Just you and your camera. **Step three: get instant feedback.** EchoPitch analyses your confidence, your clarity, your pacing, and your filler words. You'll see exactly where you lost momentum — and where you nailed it. What makes this different from other tools? Most apps count your "ums" and call it a day. **EchoPitch uses emotional intelligence — 44 facial action units mapped to the same framework used in clinical research** — to measure how trustworthy and confident you actually appear. Because here's the truth: **audiences decide if they trust you in the first seven seconds.** Before you've made your point. Before you've shown your slides. EchoPitch helps you get those seconds right. **You get five free practice sessions.** No credit card. No commitment. Link's in the description. Go practice before your next big moment.

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So, if you're nervous about presenting, watch this. 75% of people fear public speaking. If you're one of them, you're not broken. You're perfectly normal. I'm going to share three techniques that actually work, backed by research, not just vibes. Use these before your next presentation, interview or pitch. So let's start. The first one is the physiological sigh. This comes from Stanford neuroscience research. It's the fastest way to calm your nervous system. So here's how. Breathe in through your nose. Then take a second small inhale to fully expand your lungs. Then exhale slowly through your mouth. Inhale. Second sip of air and exhale. One or two of these will lower your heart rate faster than any other breathing technique. Do this in the bathroom, in your car, or right before you walk on stage.

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So, welcome to part two of looking at ways of helping your presentation anxiety. The first part was talking about physiological breathing. The second one is about reframing anxiety as excitement. So, it sounds a little counterintuitive. Reframing anxiety as excitement sounds too simple, but Harvard research proves it works. When you feel your heart racing, don't tell yourself to calm down. Instead, say out loud, "I'm excited." So, anxiety and excitement are almost identical in your body. Same heart rate, same adrenaline. The only difference is the label your brain applies. When you say, "I'm excited," you shift from a threat response to an opportunity response. Your brain stops fighting and starts performing. Try it out. Try it out loud. I'm excited. It feels silly, but it works.

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So, welcome to part three of dealing with your presentation anxiety. So, part one was talking about breathing techniques. Part two was relabeling the feeling. It's all about how you think about your presentation. And the last one is about practicing. The best presenters practice. They practice an awful lot. So we're going to talk about practicing under pressure, but privately. So, here's the problem with practicing alone. First, it just doesn't feel real, and it doesn't prepare you for the real thing. And practicing in front of colleagues can just make anxiety worse. The solution is simulated pressure without real consequences. That's what EchoPitch does. It records you, it analyzes you, and it gives you feedback. So you feel the pressure of being watched, but you're completely private in the comfort of your own home. Research shows that repeated exposure to low-stakes pressure reduces anxiety in high-stakes situations. It's called desensitization, and it's the same principle therapists use. The more you practice with feedback, the more your brain learns that presenting isn't a threat. So, to summarize: physiological techniques to help you breathe and calm down, reframing the feeling, and saying "I'm excited" instead of "I'm nervous". And the last one is, and I cannot emphasize this more, practice, practice, practice. Get used to the feeling of speaking and to the sound of your own voice.

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75% of people fear public speaking more than death. That interview you're dreading. The sales pitch that keeps you up at night. The investor presentation where everything's on the line. You know what you want to say. But when the pressure hits, your voice shakes, the filler words creep in, and your confidence disappears. EchoPitch is your private AI presentation coach. Practice your pitch, interview, or presentation. And get real time feedback on how confident you actually sound. Not just what you say, but how you say it. Trust signals, credibility cues, the subtle vocal patterns that make audiences believe in you. No awkward practice sessions with friends, no expensive coaching, just you, your camera, and AI that understands the science of persuasion. Built by a team with 13 industry awards. Start free at echopitch.io. Five free sessions, no credit card. Sound confident before the real thing.

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smile. Enjoy. so probably hard to believe, but 30 something years ago, I would have been in your position. Yeah. Sitting in school with my tie on, wondering, "Oh, what am I going to do?" Yeah. So, at your age, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I went to six form and then I knew I wasn't ready to get a job. So, I went to university. and then I finished university. I did an English degree and I still didn't know what I wanted to do. And I ended up working in the bank. No plan. Wasn't planned. No one grows up. I bet very few of you in here are thinking, "Oh, I want to work in a bank or insurance because it's not an exciting thing. You probably think I want to develop games or I want to be an influencer. I want to be a footballer or some other cool thing." Yeah. So, my journey then was I worked in a bank for 10 or so years. back in this very building on the fifth floor. So, this is a bit of a full circle for me. So I worked there for sort of 10 15 years and at that point you would thought when you're in a bank you'll be in a bank forever like you're saying a fixed career set of I go from this job then I get promoted then I get promoted and eventually I'll retire a long time in the future but that's not what happened. So I went from a bank and I went to work for a price comparison site. Does anyone know what a price comparison site is? Have you heard of compare the markets the cats? Yeah. So that's a a tool you use to choose financial products. So whe that's loans or credit cards or it can be insurance. Yeah. So you will all you will all use one of those in the future to help you make better decisions. Okay. And there are four big ones. Compare the market money supermarket go compare and confuse.com. Two of them are in this city. Yeah. So you've got confuse which is about four doors down and you've got go compare which is just the other side of town. So I went to work for them. So I went working in a bank of 11,000 people to a company of 60 people. Yeah. Very different mindsets as as just sort of talked to you about. So very fixed, very sort of formal. You knew exactly what you're going to do every day to hey, you've got to wear a million different hats and you've got to think about everything that could possibly go wrong, identify opportunities way faster pace, more authority to you to do stuff. So I worked there for four years and then I went and worked for a company called Direct Line in Churchill. You may have seen the adverts with a dog and stuff if you kids watch adverts anymore. and I worked there for 10 years in London. So I was having to travel back and forth from here to London because sometimes the job that you want might not be on your doorstep. Yeah. So you might have to go further a field. So again, you know, I'm from suddenly you're living in working in London. lots of good things about working in London. You get to obviously see lots of stuff that's going on down there. It's a bit of a faster pace than Cardiff. but it's obly a lot more expensive anyway. So, it cost you a lot more to buy anything in London than it does here. And I've got two kids, one that's 12 and one that's nine. And I decided, right, I don't really want to work away all the time, be away from my family because different stages of your life, different things will matter more for you. So in the earlier stage of my career that I was talking about what did I care about being able to buy nice football boots going out on the weekend having nice holidays having a nice car I wasn't necessarily thinking about what does career mean it was I want to do cool stuff and I need time to do that when we had our first child that's when my brain went I now need to have what I call a career so I now need to start thinking a bit further than the weekend so going to watch Cardiff City play or go to IP holiday I start planning and have a future plan around where my career goes. Yeah. So that's all of you in the room will have that switch where you go from I have a job to thinking I need a career and it'll be different for all of you. So like me it was when we started having a family. For others in the room you might already know what you want to do. You might already have a career plan. You might already know what GCSEs you need to do, what A levels you need to do to get to a degree to then go and do whatever. A doctor, a vet, a nurse, a Yeah. So that career moment will happen differently for all of you. And then 18 months ago, I left there and I decided I've had enough of kind of working for other people. So let's go and try and be an entrepreneur. let's try and build a company that solves a problem. And I think that's the bit I'd add to that entrepreneur thing is founder. An entrepreneur is someone who's identified a problem. a fix doesn't currently exist or the thing that does exist isn't very good or doesn't solve that problem and you think you can do it better because you're experiencing that problem. You're living that challenge every single day. You think, well, what if they did it like this? So, instead of waiting for someone else to fix and do it like this, why can't any one of you be the person who fixes that problem? Yeah. Don't wait for someone else. You know, you've all got I'm sure you're all really smart. If you see a problem or something that frustrates you in everyday life, How would I do this differently? How could I fix this problem? Why should I wait for someone else to come and fix it for me? So, we've started a company called Cavefish. Okay, so I'm going to ask you a question. How many of you think the decisions you make every day are based on I'll give you two options, logic or emotions? If you think the decisions you make are based on logic, put your left hand up. If you think your decisions are made from emotion, put your right hand up. Nice and clear. We've not been in the gym this morning. Left is emotion. Right hand is logic. So, where do you think your decision making starts? Emotions. Emotions. Emotions are logic. So, you're right. 90% of decision making starts with emotions. Lots of people think you start with logic. So, let's say you know, I'll use football boots as an example, right? So, I've got a pair of football boots. There's nothing wrong with them, but hold on, there's a pair of L messy football boots come out. They look wicked. I want to get those. I really need to change the boots. But if I make up some sort of logical excuse like, oh, but these ones are much better at playing on 3G or 4G than the boot. So, I definitely So, I'm trying to apply logic to what is an emotional decision. And in business at the moment, most people measure things based on logic. So what have people done? So for example, how did you all get to school today? Some of them maybe on the bus, some of you maybe walked, some of you maybe cycled. And your school will measure that fact. How you got to school? But it does understand why. Is because you wanted to cycle because you want to improve your fitness. Is it because you live too far away to walk? So there's reasons why which will be different as to why you got to school. At the moment school would just measure what you did. Yeah. And that's what business does. It measures how many times did you come to my shop, how many things did you try, how many did you buy, you left without buying something. But businesses struggle to understand why those things happen. And that's why we developed a tool that helps measure emotion. So we can analyze anything you write. We can analyze a picture of you. We can analyze a video of you. And we can analyze what you say and how you say it and we can play back and say that is the emotion that that person is feeling and convey. Yeah. So that's a big step change for business. We're going from what you've done to understanding why. And if I understand why you do things then I can sell you better products so I can give you better services that meet your needs rather than just giving one thing to everybody. That's exactly the same. Okay. There's one tool we built which I think would be really good for you guys. It's called EchoPitch. So, hands up if you have to give a presentation in school. Yeah. How did you feel? Did you feel super excited or did you feel a bit nervous? Nervous. Yeah. How did you practice? Did you practice or do you just go, "Right, I'll just get up and I'll just do it and I'll get off as quickly as possible." Yeah. So, 75% of people feel exactly the same. Yeah. Standing up here like now is their biggest fear. They would hate to do it. So, they just do what you said. Just do whatever I can. I'll get a bl out and I'll just run off as quickly as possible. That is done. So, we've developed a tool to help with that. So, it's a a website you go to, you can practice your presentation, your pitch interview. You can speak to your device, your laptop, your your phone, wherever it might be. We'll analyze you doing your interview or your pitch and we'll give you feedback straight away. We'll give you a score. We'll tell you what you did well. We'll give you suggestions for how you can do things differently or better for next time. So that next time you are asked to do a presentation, you've got that confidence that you've kind of trained yourself. You've learned and then you can present in a much more confident manner and it's not about running off at the end. You go, hey, actually I know what I'm going to say, how I'm going to say it. And you feel like you can do a better job. So, if you guys want access to that for free, we give you some free credits. Guess this free credits. All we would ask is you just give us some feedback on how you found the tool. Yeah. Does that sound fair? Have you had lunch yet? That's probably the problem. So, that's it really. I guess I'm just going to say that you can start out on one journey and end up in a completely different one. Just to echo, always ask questions. Always be curious. Never do things just because people say that's how it's always done. Always ask questions. Any one of you or all of you in this room could be the next Elon Musk or whoever it might be. You could change the world. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. So, a big round of applause, Steve. Thank you very much. So, few things. My brain was yeah, scattering different ideas initially. Steve, it's Steve or Steve. I've been called a lot worse. Steve spoke to you guys about entrepreneurs, people that solve spot problems and try and find a solution. Right. That's exactly what I want you to do as part of your entrepreneurial work experience this afternoon. Your problem is how do you create a service that helps young people to better manage their finance in the future? It's entirely up to you what that