What to do when you are asked to speak at the last minute

It happens more often than people admit.

A meeting invitation lands with little notice.
A presentation slot opens up unexpectedly.
A journalist calls asking for a comment today, not next week.

You're capable. You know your subject. But time is not on your side, and suddenly the pressure feels very real.

When preparation time is limited, most people default to one of two things. They either over prepare -  cramming in content until everything feels blurred, or they under prepare - telling themselves they will ‘just wing it’ and hoping experience will carry them through.

Neither approach tends to work particularly well.

The real challenge with last minute preparation

The difficulty with speaking at short notice is not usually a lack of knowledge. It's cognitive overload.

Under pressure, people try to hold too much in their heads at once. Messages multiply. Context expands. The fear of missing something important creeps in.

What suffers first is clarity.

This is true whether the situation is a presentation, a panel contribution, or a media interview. The format changes, but the pressure pattern is the same.

One thing that helps more than any checklist

If you have very little time, the most useful thing you can do is reduce, not add.

Instead of asking ‘what should I include?’, ask one simpler question:

‘What do I actually need to leave them with?’

One idea.
One message.
One point of emphasis.

Everything else becomes supporting detail, not the focus.

This shift does two things. It calms your thinking, and it gives your communication a spine. Even if nerves show, clarity tends to hold.

Preparation does not have to be perfect to be effective

Last minute situations expose something important about communication under pressure.

What helps most is not having the perfect script. It's having a way of orienting yourself quickly, even when time is tight.

This is one of the reasons on-demand resources matter. Not as something you work through leisurely, but as something you can lean on when real life intervenes.

Brand Champion Bootcamp was designed with exactly these moments in mind. Not to replace preparation, but to make it more accessible when pressure, visibility, and limited time collide.

Because confidence is rarely about having more to say. It is about knowing what matters most, and being able to access it when you need it.