Are you ready for this? I don't think Steve Jobs is a naturally gifted speaker.

Think about it. Nobody is born knowing how to deliver a presentation. Jobs rehearses and rehearses to get everything just right. It's not uncommon for him to be practicing on stage for four hours at a stretch in the days before presentations. I also believe that Jobs has become a more polished speaker over time.

Author Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out that it takes someone 10,000 hours to gain world-class expertise in something--be it sports, surgery or music. That's about three hours a day over 10 years. Well, Steve Jobs has improved dramatically every decade. He started sharing ideas with his friend and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak in 1974. Ten years later, in 1984, he gave one of the greatest presentations I've ever seen--the introduction of the Mac.

Fast forward about a decade later, in 1997, when he returned to Apple after a leave of absence. He was a much more polished presenter, losing the lectern and not reading from notes as he had done in 1984. Now, fast forward to 2007, the launch of the iPhone at Macworld. From start to finish, it was his greatest presentation. Steve Jobs is not a natural. He works at it.