October 2nd, 2017. Ten little fingers. Ten little toes. All wrapped up in a bundle of joy.
With nine words, Bryan Wannack hooks you. You know exactly where you are. You can see the hospital room, feel the weight of a newborn, and sense the fierce protectiveness of a new father. It is one of the most technically precise openings you will hear in a Toastmasters speech. And it is just the beginning.
Bryan is the 2026 District 3 International Speech Contest champion, the highest honor a speaker can earn at the district level. District 3 spans Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of West Texas, encompassing more than 125 clubs and thousands of members. To reach that stage, a speaker must win at the club level, then the area, then the division, competing against the best speakers in the region at every round. Bryan did all of that, and now advances to the International Semifinals to represent District 3 on a global stage.
He sat down with host Rupesh Parbhoo to break down the craft, the technique, and the years of refinement behind his championship speech.
A Story That Needed Telling
Bryan's speech is about his second son, Daniel. When Daniel was young, he had a seizure while sick with a fever. Bryan and his wife watched it happen and, in that moment, believed their son had died in front of them.
He hadn't. The doctors said it was benign. A natural occurrence. Nothing to worry about. But the fear did not care about the diagnosis.
"The trauma and the fear was very real," Bryan said. "Every time there was a fever, she started acting different. I started acting different. We were shorter with each other, with our kids, because we were afraid of that seizure experience."
The speech was never written for a contest. It started as Bryan's attempt to shift from essay-style speeches to storytelling. He was looking for real stories from his life that were worth telling, and this one kept surfacing. He had already shared it at dinner tables, with friends, with doctors. It was a story well-told before it ever became a speech.
Then an evaluator named Ryan Burns wrote three words on a feedback sheet: contest winning speech.
That planted the seed.
Years of Refinement
The path from that evaluation sheet to the district stage was not a straight line. Bryan first entered the speech in 2024 and won at the club level. Then he was disqualified at the area contest for going over time by two seconds.
After that, he made a mistake many speakers make. He changed the speech. He turned it into something anecdotal, stringing together multiple stories about how he had become a better father. It lost its focus. It did not even place.
So he went back to the original version and started refining with more care. And he discovered something that changed everything.
"The real focus of the speech wasn't me," Bryan said. "I thought it was about how I changed and how I've become a better father. But when I framed it that way, it didn't even place. So I took Bryan out of it and made it wholly about Daniel and the fear and the emotional path. And that's been what is resonating."
The Two Voices
Through years of delivering this speech, Bryan found its real message. It was not about cherishing every moment or being a present father, though those things are true. It was about fear and the quiet voice that lives underneath it.
"There's going to be two voices in my head in these times," he said. "One's going to be a very, very loud voice of fear and fear mongering. This is going to be the worst case scenario. You should fight or flight. And the other one is a very, very soft voice where it's like, have peace, because you'll get through it."
That message did not arrive fully formed. It revealed itself through repetition, through contests that went wrong, through versions of the speech that missed the mark. The story stayed the same. The reason for telling it kept evolving until Bryan finally understood what the audience needed to hear.
"A great story is an amazing story," he said. "A contest winning speech has a message the audience wants."
The Craft Behind the Curtain
What sets Bryan's speech apart is not just the story. It is the technique layered underneath it.
His opening is a case study in hooks. He drew inspiration from the screenwriting book "Save the Cat," which teaches that the theme needs to be stated immediately. By naming the date of Daniel's birth and counting his fingers and toes, Bryan introduces both the protagonist and the emotional stakes in a single breath. The audience is counting along with him without realizing it. (For more on why those first seconds decide everything, see our breakdown of the ten most common mistakes speakers make when they start a speech.)
His use of dialogue is equally deliberate. Rather than narrating what happened, Bryan replays conversations. He calls his mom. His wife tells him something is wrong with Daniel. These are not invented scenes. They are real moments rebuilt as dialogue, and they pull the audience into the story far more efficiently than description alone.
"If you can describe something through dialogue without any descriptive words, that's very effective," Bryan said. "It helps the audience relive it from your shoes, so it can become more of their story."
Then there is the humor. Bryan describes his comedic style as playfully standing on the fence of an uncomfortable situation. His signature moment involves discovering a mysterious substance on his shoulder, the kind of unidentifiable stain every parent knows, and tasting it. It is applesauce. The audience's relief becomes the laugh.
"Most of my jokes you'll see in threes," Bryan said. "The last one is the heavy hitter. And the tension of the moment is the style of that particular joke."
He also shared a moment of humor that did not land at the district contest. After describing the traumatic scene with Daniel, he attempted a joke about saying goodbye to his son that morning at breakfast. The room went silent. His wife had warned him not to say it. He abandoned ship, pivoted to a backup joke about icebreaker speeches, and kept going.
"Humor is always a risk," he said. "And that one didn't work." (Bryan is in good company here — comedian and speaker Paul Pastore makes the case that funny is built, not born.)
Breaking the Fourth Wall
One of the most memorable techniques in Bryan's speech is a moment where he is on the phone with his mom, who is explaining what a suppository is, and he pauses the conversation to address the audience directly. He puts his mom on hold, turns to the crowd, and shares his internal reaction.
It is a technique called breaking the fourth wall, and Bryan executes it with perfect timing. The gesture is small. The comedy is huge. And it works because it mirrors something every listener has experienced: the private thought you have in the middle of a conversation that you wish you could say out loud.
"That was me sharing my initial reaction with the audience," Bryan said. "It was the moment in the moment."
Keeping It Real
Rupesh asked Bryan a question that every repeat speaker eventually faces: how do you stay emotionally authentic in a speech you have given dozens of times?
Bryan's answer was unexpectedly honest. The emotion in the speech was always real, but through the contest process, he realized the deepest source of it was not what he expected. It was not Daniel's seizure. It was a memory from his own childhood, burying a horse that had to be euthanized when he was fourteen.
That unprocessed grief had been living underneath the speech the entire time, surfacing every time he stepped into the story's most vulnerable moments.
"The advice then is just to carry unprocessed trauma with you," Bryan joked. Then, more seriously: "I'm working on it."
Gestures Without Choreography
Rupesh noted that Bryan's physical gestures felt unusually natural compared to many contest speakers. Bryan explained his approach: he sets guardrails rather than choreography. If he is on the right side of the stage, he sweeps with his right hand. If he is on the left, his left hand. He keeps a short list of habits to avoid, like grabbing his lapel or doing unconscious scooping motions. Beyond that, he lets his body respond to the moment.
"I do want to avoid the robotic automation," Bryan said. He observed another district-level speaker whose gestures were impressive but felt choreographed. Technically excellent, but not quite natural. Bryan's goal is the opposite: controlled enough to avoid distractions, loose enough to feel real.
Practice What You Don't Care About
Bryan's advice for new speakers was one of the most original pieces of guidance to come through the podcast. Instead of giving speeches about topics you are passionate about, give speeches about topics you do not care about.
"That way you'll focus on the techniques rather than the content," he said. "And you'll work through the muscles of fear. When you actually are talking about content you want to talk about, especially to people who need to hear it, then you'll be all the more effective at it."
It is a counterintuitive idea. Most speakers start with what they know and love. Bryan suggests starting with what forces you to focus on how you speak rather than what you say. The technique becomes muscle memory, so when the story matters, the craft is already there. It is the same principle world champion Darren LaCroix lives by: do the reps first, and the magic comes later.
The Quiet Voice Wins
Bryan Wannack's contest-winning speech took years. It was disqualified on time. It lost focus and did not place. It found its way back to the original story, shed the ego, and discovered its real message.
And that message is simple. Fear will always be loud. It will always arrive first. It will always tell you the worst is happening.
But underneath it, there is a quieter voice. And if you can hear it, it will say: have peace. You will get through this.
About Bryan Wannack
Bryan Wannack is the 2026 District 3 International Speech Contest champion. He is a husband, father of three, and a member of Dobson Ranch Toastmasters in Gilbert, Arizona. Connect with Bryan on LinkedIn.
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