Ultra Speaking

Tristan DeMontebello's journey into public speaking began with competition. In 2017, he became the fastest competitor to reach the finals of the world championship of public speaking. Rather than keep this knowledge to himself, he recognized a massive gap: most people view public speaking as terrifying, unnatural, and something to dread. More importantly, he realized the approach taught in most courses—formal frameworks, tactics, and "public speaking voices"—was fundamentally wrong.

"People tend to get into a public speaking voice," Tristan explains in this interview. "They'll be in a class chatting normally, looking super normal. Then we say, 'okay, now give a speech for 60 seconds,' and suddenly they say 'the important part about doing this' in a completely different, professional version of themselves." He understood that conversational speaking—the way people naturally talk to close friends and family—was the real key.

Tristan partnered with Michael Gendler as co-founder and began experimenting in his own backyard. Their initial approach was simple: give someone a random speech title and watch what happened. They noticed people would freeze, overthink, and lose confidence the longer they spent thinking. The solution? Stop thinking, start speaking. They compressed the thinking time more and more, eventually landing on word-association exercises that forced immediate speaking.

As they worked with different speakers, Tristan and Michael identified recurring root causes beneath surface-level symptoms. Rather than teaching people to "count their filler words," they figured out why people used filler words in the first place—usually because they were uncomfortable with pausing and relaxing under pressure. This root-cause thinking led them to develop specific games for each issue.

Six months into this work, they realized they'd accidentally created a game-based system. It felt like a board game. Eventually, they formalized it into "Speak Before You Think," a physical card game with various exercises. When COVID hit, they moved online.

The source material doesn't explicitly detail their early customer acquisition. However, the interview shows the product has gained traction through word-of-mouth and content marketing—this podcast episode itself being an example. The fact that Lenny Chen took an "abridged version" of the speaking course and immediately felt more comfortable, then invited Tristan on his podcast, demonstrates organic, evangelist-driven growth.

Tristan's core insight was that speaking is a *subconscious, flow-oriented process*, not a conscious one. Most people fail at speaking because they overthink it, trying to control every word. The breakthrough was designing games that force people into low-stakes, high-turbulence scenarios where they can't overthink—they have to react and recover.

The games work because they combine three elements: (1) short, deliberate practice reps; (2) immediate feedback; and (3) intrinsic reward through fun. As Tristan notes, if your practice isn't enjoyable, you'll quit in two weeks, just like a bad diet.

Key tactics that emerged: - **Think Up**: When gathering thoughts, look upward (not down), which automatically makes you look thoughtful and confident - **End Strong**: Land the plane—don't taper off or leak self-doubt at the end of what you're saying - **Stay in Character**: Don't self-sabotage by announcing your insecurities; people can't see them anyway - **Conductor Game**: Tap into different energy levels (1-10) to access different emotions, stories, and insights, proving that energy leads to emotion, which leads to words

Tristan emphasizes that speaking is a meta-skill—improving it transforms other areas of life: confidence at work, in friendships, with family. But people severely underestimate this potential.

Ultra Speaking has evolved from a backyard experiment into an online course and games-based platform. The podcast episode featuring Tristan demonstrates the product's credibility and reach. Notably, after Lenny took the abbreviated course, he played the games with his family in LA—they spent an hour together and everyone felt dramatically more confident. His mom asked how to practice alone; his sister wanted to start doing open-mic nights.

This organic growth—turning customers into evangelists—appears to be the dominant traction pattern. The gamified, enjoyable nature of the practice makes it shareable and fun to recommend. While specific revenue figures aren't mentioned in this source, the product's existence as a structured online offering and its ability to convert one-off students into promoters suggests healthy, word-of-mouth-driven growth.

Tristan continues to refine the curriculum based on seven years of learnings, consistently amazed by how much the subconscious mind can deliver when freed from self-doubt and overthinking.