SpeakX to UNLEARN: notes on an experiment we ran, renamed and retired
Most companies only talk about what they launch. We think a journal about honest communication should also show the things we tried, changed and stopped. Here is the short life of SpeakX, a two-hour live workshop, and what it became.
By Brightside English editorial team
Reviewed by a Brightside senior coach · · 4 min read
In July 2026 Brightside ran SpeakX, a two-hour live online workshop with our founder, Jonah Joy, for people who know what they want to say but lose the words when it counts. It was renamed UNLEARN and split into three tracks, then retired in September 2026, when we chose to run a single focused masterclass instead. Its central habit, speak, get feedback and speak again at once, lives on.
Why we tried it
Brightside English was founded in Kochi in 2019 and coaches people one to one. That is still the heart of what we do. But one experience came up so often in first conversations with learners that we wanted to try addressing it in a live group room as well.
The workshop's own headline put it in the learner's words: "I know what to say. Nothing comes out."
We wrote SpeakX for the person who rehearses a sentence in their head and then watches the moment pass. Their grammar holds up on paper. Their speaking stalls under pressure. Often they would rather stay silent than risk a mistake in front of others. A group room seemed worth testing for this, precisely because a group adds the mild pressure that brings the stall out.
What the evening looked like
SpeakX ran on 15 July 2026, from 8 to 10 in the evening, India time, online, with cameras on, led by Jonah Joy. The two hours had five parts:
- Naming the stall. Why a fluent mind goes blank, and what is happening when it does.
- First practice round. Each person speaks, gets a read on what happened, and adjusts.
- A drill block. Short exercises on speed, recall and response.
- Second practice round. The same kind of pressure as the first, this time handled.
- A plan from here. A way to keep practising daily after the evening ended.
The promise we allowed ourselves was modest: to respond in the moment instead of replaying it on the way home, and to leave with a method to practise.
What it became
After that first evening, SpeakX was renamed UNLEARN and reshaped into three separate tracks, each for a different need:
- Speak Your Heart, on public speaking and stage presence. It moved through reframing the fear with a breathing reset, an on-the-spot structure (point, reason, example, restate), delivery (pace, pitch, pause, fillers, eye contact, stance), making a message memorable, and live practice rounds, ending with a short practice speech of 60 to 90 seconds.
- The Authority Edge, on presence at work: setting the tone before you speak, leading a presentation with clarity and control, and the language of direction, feedback and pushback, with live practice and real-time feedback.
- Fluent and Fearless, on fluency and vocabulary: a rapid warm-up, substitution techniques for the word you cannot find, timed topic-card rounds and practice in pairs.
Why we stopped
On 2 September 2026 we retired UNLEARN from sale and replaced it with a masterclass hub that holds one live masterclass at a time. The one that went live was Think on Your Feet, a 90-minute room on answering the question you did not prepare for.
We will not invent a neater story than the record supports. What the record shows is a choice to narrow: from three tracks to one focused room, built around a single, specific moment of pressure. Three tracks asked people to diagnose themselves before they arrived. One clearly described moment is easier to recognise in yourself.
What survived
Three things carried over from SpeakX into everything we have built since.
Speak, get feedback, speak again, immediately. In SpeakX it was the two practice rounds either side of the drills. In Think on Your Feet, the exercise is repeated straight after the coaching. Hearing your own second attempt is the fastest teacher we know.
Point, reason, example, point. The same short structure appears in Speak Your Heart's on-the-spot round and in Think on Your Feet. It is also at the centre of our guide to saying the point first.
The problem is rarely English. Every version of this experiment was written for people who already know the language. What gets in the way is pressure, habit and the fear of a visible mistake. That belief shapes our one-to-one coaching too.
Why publish this at all
Because the advice we give learners applies to us. When something you said or built does not work as planned, say what changed, plainly, and keep what was good. A team that hears "we tried this, here is what we kept" trusts the next launch more, not less.
"We tried something new. Here's what worked, here's what we changed, and here's what we're doing next."
Facts in this piece come from Brightside English's own programme records for SpeakX, UNLEARN and the masterclass hub.
Published by The Full Stop, the journal of Brightside English, in the Inside Brightside series. Written from Brightside's own programme records. Reviewed by a Brightside senior coach. Corrections: see our editorial standard.