Know Your Own Executive Presence Strengths & Opportunities:
Click here to pinpoint the specific area in your executive presence that’s keeping you invisible to senior leadership and guarantees you stay working hard as a pack mule who never gets promoted.
What could change in your career—and your life—if you stopped waiting to feel confident before taking action?
Fear can keep even smart, capable people quiet when they have something valuable to say. You hesitate to speak up in the meeting, introduce yourself to someone influential, volunteer for the presentation, or pursue an opportunity because you’re afraid of rejection, failure, or not saying it perfectly.
In this episode, Joze Piranian shares how he went from avoiding speaking because of his stutter to performing stand-up comedy, delivering TEDx talks and corporate keynotes, and ultimately landing a book deal. His approach isn’t about eliminating fear—it’s about changing your relationship with it through small, deliberate acts of courage.
By the end of Laura’s conversation with Joze Piranian you’ll know:
🔎How to identify your “inner stutter”—the moments when fear causes you to hold back—and uncover the beliefs driving that hesitation
🔑Why collecting small “micro moments of bravery” can gradually retrain your response to fear and help you take action even when you’re uncomfortable
🚫How to stop waiting for confidence and start using fear as a signal to move toward the opportunities that could change your career and life
Play this episode to learn how small acts of courage can help you stop holding back, speak up when it matters, and build confidence through action.
Access the Executive Presence Scorecard assessment here.
To learn more visit www.speakupwithlaura.com. New Speak Up podcast episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday early in the morning.
About our guest:
Joze Piranian spent 25 years unable to say his own name. Not metaphorically, literally. A lifelong severe stutterer, he navigated social anxiety and depression while watching others take up space he couldn't access.
Today, he delivers keynotes at Google, Tesla, and the UN.
His book, Stop Holding Back:An Honest Guide to Turning Fear into Action (HarperCollins, 2026), is built around two concepts he developed: the "inner stutter," which is the invisible hesitation that stops capable people from speaking up; and "micro-moments of bravery," the small, uncomfortable actions that build real communication confidence over time.
The Speak Up Podcast helps high-performing professionals develop executive presence through strategic communication, executive confidence, and leadership influence. Each episode provides practical strategies to help you speak up in meetings, communicate with senior leaders, present ideas with clarity, build executive visibility, strengthen your leadership presence, influence without authority, stop overexplaining, answer difficult questions with confidence, and become a trusted executive leader.
Whether you're preparing for your next Vice President promotion or looking to communicate with greater credibility and gravitas, you'll learn actionable executive communication skills that accelerate career growth.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Overcoming fear of public speaking
- Building confidence through action
- Micro moments of bravery
- How to stop holding yourself back
- Speaking up confidently at work
- Overcoming social anxiety and fear of judgment
- Using humor in workplace presentations
- Developing executive presence
- Turning fear into a trigger for action
- Exposure therapy for building courage
- Changing limiting beliefs about yourself
- Using discomfort for personal and professional growth
- How a stutter led to stand-up comedy and keynote speaking
- Networking and creating opportunities through courage
- The connection between small actions and career-changing opportunities
