How to Connect with Young Audiences with Ryan Sweat.

Welcome to Public Speaking with Peter George. Do you want to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then stay tuned as we discuss public speaking tips, techniques, and tactics that help you increase your impact, influence, and income.

If you want to test your true effectiveness as a speaker, try presenting to students and young adults. They won’t give you polite attention out of professional courtesy — they’ll give you exactly what they think. Ryan Sweat, pastor at Beach Church in Jacksonville Beach, leads a student ministry of over 300 students and has spent 15 years developing the skills to reach one of the most discerning — and most distracted — audiences alive today.

Marinate, Don’t Microwave

Ryan’s approach to preparation is built around a single distinction: marinating versus microwaving. Microwaving a message — pulling it together at the last minute — can work if you’re talented enough, but it rarely produces your best. Marinating means knowing your topic far in advance, letting it develop slowly, and staying open to the stories and examples that life delivers once you know what you’re looking for. Ryan plans his messages 12 months out. By the time he steps on stage, he’s been thinking about it for weeks — and it shows.

Practice Out Loud, in the Conditions That Match the Real Thing

Ryan’s single most impactful piece of advice: practice out loud, on stage, with your microphone in hand, the way you’ll actually do it. Not sitting at a desk reading notes. Not running it in your head. Out loud, with everything in place. This is where you find out that the point you thought would take a minute actually takes five, that the story you planned to cut is the strongest thing in the talk, and that the section you spent the most time writing bores even you. If it bores you in practice, it will bore your audience when it counts.

Keeping the Most Distracted Generation in the Room

For young audiences, Ryan relies on visual elements, active participation, and deliberate re-engagement. He asks non-rhetorical questions and waits for actual answers. He has audiences repeat key phrases aloud. He stops mid-message and runs a brief stretch break when the energy drops. These tools work because they interrupt the passive dynamic of sitting and listening — creating moments of active involvement that reset attention and help key ideas stick. And they work just as well with adults; most speakers simply don’t have the courage to try them.

One clear action step. Short. Repeated. With examples. That’s Ryan’s formula for getting any audience, young or otherwise, to actually do something with what they’ve heard. I’ll see you next time.