Professional Speaking: Known. Booked. Paid.

You’ve prepared a talk and told people you’re available. Why is the diary still quiet?

In this solo episode of Professional Speaking: Known. Booked. Paid., John Ball walks through the questions that help you identify where your speaking business needs attention before investing in another fix.

Follow an organiser trying to work out whether your talk fits their event. Then examine the enquiry that goes quiet and the session that earns applause without leading to more work. Along the way, John looks at buyer demand, bureau expectations and what makes a recommendation feel safe.

If enquiries arrive but bookings stall, there’s a brief check on fit, budget, timing and the next step.

Choose the question that reveals your biggest gap, then commit to one useful action this week.

• Checking whether the market wants your talk.

• Waiting for work and relying on a bureau.

• Unclear profiles, missing speaker pages and too many offers.

• Outdated websites, weak demos and evidence buyers can assess.

• Enquiries that stall.

• Overloaded talks, lecture-style delivery and referrals.

• Budget fit and choosing your next action.

Podcast guesting live event: https://present-influence.kit.com/products/get-heard-get-known-podcast-guesting

Monday Prospecting Power Hour: work on finding opportunities and following up alongside other speakers. Cameras on, microphones muted; a prospecting tool is available on the call. https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86172745844

Find Your Booking Bottleneck quiz: presentinfluence.com/quiz

CHAPTERS

00:00 Why aren’t you getting booked?

01:15 Can organisers tell what to book you for?

02:15 Does the market want your talk?

03:15 Reaching suitable buyers

03:55 Working with speaker bureaus

04:30 Monday Prospecting Power Hour

05:40 Why speaking enquiries go quiet

06:40 Why applause doesn’t lead to referrals

08:40 Making recommendations easy

09:15 Building relationships with bookers and event crews

10:40 Staying after your talk

11:00 Choosing your next useful action

12:15 Booking Bottleneck quiz and closing

FAQs

Why am I not getting booked as a speaker?

Start by identifying where progress stops. Suitable buyers may be missing your offer, struggling to understand its relevance or finding too little evidence to assess your delivery. If enquiries arrive, examine fit, budget, timing and the next step. If you already speak at events, review whether the talk fulfils the brief and earns recommendations.

Will joining a speaker bureau get me speaking bookings?

Clarify what the bureau will do, how it handles enquiries and what it needs from you. Make a clear offer and provide strong evidence of your delivery. Keep developing your own buyer relationships and opportunities alongside the bureau relationship.

What should a speaker website include?

Provide a dedicated speaker page that explains your intended audience, main talks and relevant outcomes. Include current speaking footage, specific testimonials and an obvious way to enquire. Check that links work and that the number of options helps a buyer choose.

What should a speaker demo show?

A demo should let an organiser hear you speak and assess your delivery. Use clear audio and footage relevant to the kind of engagement you want. Music, graphics and stage entrances alone give limited evidence of how you deliver a talk.

Why do speaking enquiries go quiet?

Review what you established about the event, available budget, decision-maker and selection date. Check whether you agreed a next step after sending information or a proposal. Silence alone does not identify the cause; use follow-up to clarify the opportunity.

Why am I not getting referrals after a talk?

Review whether your talk fulfilled the organiser’s brief and gave the audience an experience someone would confidently recommend. Look for overloaded material, unclear structure or a mismatch in format. Ask for specific feedback, then make a relevant introduction easy by supplying a short paragraph the organiser can forward.

How can I find my speaking booking bottleneck?

Review recent approaches, replies, enquiries and completed engagements to locate where progress stalls. Consider how much activity you have done and when organisers choose speakers. John Ball’s Booking Bottleneck quiz can help you decide where to focus; use the quiz link in the resources below.

Connect with John:

• Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint
• Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn
• Find me on Insta
• Find me on TikTok
• Find me on Threads

Discover the bottlenecks in your speaking business with the Applause Vs Invoice Quiz

For speaking/podcast enquiries or to connect with me directly, you can email [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel

If you know a speaker who would enjoy this show, let them know. Thanks for listening.

Mentioned in this episode:

Get Heard, Get Known. Podcast Guesting For Professional Speakers

Join us for a live workshop where you'll learn why most podcast guesting doesn't do much except take up your time. You'll also learn how to fix it, find podcasts that will move the needle for you professionally and we'll even look at whether starting a show is a good idea. All your podcasting questions will be answered in this intensive event with podcasting veteran John Ball.

Do speakers need a book to get booked? No. Can a relevant book be a powerful authority asset, often called your best business card and a useful tool when negotiating speaking engagements? Hell yes.

In this bonus episode from the archives, John Ball speaks with ghostwriter and book coach Ginny Carter, author of Your Business, Your Book. Recorded in early 2022, the conversation is still useful for speakers and other experts considering a business book.

They discuss how to decide what your book is for, when you’re ready to write it, how to keep it engaging and persuasive, and how to make it part of the marketing you already do. They also explore publishing choices, formats, editing, and the role podcasts can play in helping authors share their expertise.

At the end, John shares the fast book strategy behind his forthcoming book, Serious About Speaking: The Business of Becoming Known, Booked & Paid. He explains how he’s using his existing LinkedIn newsletter articles, podcast transcripts and programme materials to build a useful, coherent book, with AI helping to compile and organise the material. It isn’t a case of asking AI to write a book and publishing the result: the process includes reviewing, editing and shaping the work.

John will release a wait list for Serious About Speaking with next week’s episode.

Ginny Carter’s book, Your Business, Your Book, is available at all major retailers. Find Ginny and her work at ginnycarter.co.uk.

No. You can build a professional speaking career without writing a book. A book is an asset, not a requirement.

A relevant book can demonstrate your expertise, strengthen your authority and give event organisers a tangible sense of your ideas. It can also be a useful negotiating tool when discussing a speaking engagement, if it connects to the talk, audience and client’s needs.

It can be. A book gives potential clients a deeper view of your expertise than a business card can. The more clearly the book relates to your speaking work, the more useful it is as an authority asset.

When they have enough experience, examples and insight to offer readers, and they know what they want the book to achieve. Ginny advises getting clear on the book’s purpose before making decisions about its content or publishing route.

Ginny recommends incorporating the book into marketing that’s already working, such as a podcast, blog or existing online presence, rather than automatically building separate channels just for the book.

Stories, examples and the author’s personality help keep readers engaged. Ginny also discusses a “why, what, how, what if” structure: explain why the topic matters, what it is, how to act on it, and what could happen as a result.

John is developing Serious About Speaking from existing material, including LinkedIn newsletter articles, podcast transcripts and programme resources. AI helps compile and organise relevant content; John then reviews, edits and shapes it into a coherent book.

Times are approximate. Check against the final published audio/video before posting.

00:00 Why this archive conversation is being released now

02:40 Introducing Ginny Carter and the value of an engaging business book

05:20 Why people struggle to start and finish books

07:40 Making book marketing part of your existing marketing

10:00 How books build authority

12:20 Is it the right time to write your book?

14:00 Book as an asset: cache, not cash

19:00 What writing a book can do for your expertise and business

24:00 What makes a business book effective?

27:00 Traditional publishing and self-publishing

29:00 Book design, production and first impressions

32:00 Print, ebook and audiobook formats

34:00 Podcasts as a way to reach relevant audiences

35:00 Writing persuasively: the “why, what, how, what if” structure

38:00 Editing, grammar and reader trust

42:00 How authors can use podcasts

44:00 Ginny’s book recommendations

47:30 John’s fast book strategy and Serious About Speaking

Why Great Speakers Are Often Broke

Listen next for a related conversation about the business skills and assets speakers need alongside their stage craft: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/0f56e6d2-15f1-4c21-8a5b-96d44ab8c67b/

Next week: Why Aren’t You Getting Booked as a Speaker? We’ll look at what may be standing between your expertise and the bookings you want.

Podcast guesting live event: https://present-influence.kit.com/products/get-heard-get-known-podcast-guesting

Connect with John:

• Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint
• Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn
• Find me on Insta
• Find me on TikTok
• Find me on Threads

Discover the bottlenecks in your speaking business with the Applause Vs Invoice Quiz

For speaking/podcast enquiries or to connect with me directly, you can email [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel

If you know a speaker who would enjoy this show, let them know. Thanks for listening.

Mentioned in this episode:

Get Heard, Get Known. Podcast Guesting For Professional Speakers

Join us for a live workshop where you'll learn why most podcast guesting doesn't do much except take up your time. You'll also learn how to fix it, find podcasts that will move the needle for you professionally and we'll even look at whether starting a show is a good idea. All your podcasting questions will be answered in this intensive event with podcasting veteran John Ball.

Lorne Kelton asked AI to find research supporting an argument. It returned what seemed like a cited study. When he checked it, the study and researcher didn’t exist.

That experience opens a conversation about the responsibility speakers carry when they use evidence on stage. Lorne and John discuss why confidence can be mistaken for competence, how “fake it till you make it” advice can lead speakers astray, and what critical thinking looks like when a client wants to put it into practice.

They also disagree, or at least place different bets, on what AI means for professional speaking. Lorne sees pressure on familiar keynote topics as AI gets better at producing plausible content. John argues that an audience’s relationship with a live speaker still matters. Both questions are worth asking: how strong is the thinking behind your talk, and what happens in the room because you are there?

The conversation also covers Lorne’s use of AI during preparation, his approach to choosing stories, and the less glamorous reality of earning a living as a speaker.

In this episode:

• How an invented citation made it through an AI research request
• Why confidence and competence need separating
• How Lorne turns a critical thinking idea into a corporate workshop
• What AI can help a speaker do, and what the speaker must check
• Why a speaking business may need more than keynote fees

Connect with Lorne to find out more: https://www.thinkshift.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lornekelton/

Chapters:

00:00 AI Citation Hallucinations

01:14 Confidence vs Competence

03:48 AI as Speaking Partner

05:04 Generic Topics at Risk

07:11 Training AI to Your Voice

10:55 Fact-Checking and IP Rights

13:44 Will AI Replace Speakers

20:19 Critical Thinking Origin Story

22:59 Workshop Framework and Triggers

25:29 Biases and Motivation Industry

27:41 Evidence and Truth Seeking

30:14 Future Opportunities for Speakers

32:37 Owning Your Viewpoint

32:54 Expertise vs Relevance

34:32 Celebrity and Internal Competition

37:07 Making Speaking Pay

38:43 The Business of Speaking

41:32 Why Speakers Get Booked

43:35 Storytelling Over Slides

50:42 Finding Stories and Testing

53:49 Encouragement and Authenticity

55:27 Where to Connect

56:23 Host Reflection on AI

57:47 Final Sendoff

What is the difference between confidence and competence, according to Lorne Kelton?

Competence is built through real experience and expertise. Confidence can be performed without either. Kelton argues that speakers, and especially newer ones, get told to fake confidence before they've built competence, which he says derails careers rather than accelerating them.

Why does Lorne Kelton think certain keynote topics are at risk from AI?

Kelton names leadership, productivity, change management and resilience as topics where AI can already generate passable content, which he expects will lead booking committees to question paying five figures for a human speaker on those subjects specifically.

How does Lorne Kelton recommend speakers use AI without losing their own voice?

Kelton feeds AI his own books, articles, emails and video transcripts so it can act as a sceptical research partner rather than a writer. He treats the deep, time-consuming version of this process as the only one that produces anything close to authentic output.

What happened when Lorne Kelton asked AI to find supporting research for an argument?

The AI returned a fully formed citation for a study that turned out not to exist, attributed to a researcher who also doesn't exist. Kelton now treats this as a standing warning to verify any AI-sourced research before using it on stage.

What is Lorne Kelton's process for teaching critical thinking to corporate clients?

Kelton works backwards from a specific trigger incident, then moves the person through reflection, surfacing their assumptions and biases, reframing the situation, and finally writing a concrete plan for how they'll respond differently next time.

What percentage of Lorne Kelton's speaker association members make a full-time living from keynoting alone?

Fewer than 13%, based on an internal survey his association conducted. The majority earn keynote fees as one component of a broader income that includes facilitation, training, MC work and consulting.

How does Lorne Kelton choose which stories to use in a talk?

He starts from the client's desired outcome and works backwards to find a personal experience, often a failure, that speaks to it directly. He then tests the story with a small trusted group before using it on stage.

What advice does Lorne Kelton give speakers who feel threatened by the current market?

Be authentically yourself rather than copying another speaker's style or delivery. He calls this the fail-safe way to get booked and rebooked, and warns against speakers who present themselves as facsimiles of someone else.

Connect with John:

• Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint
• Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn
• Find me on Insta
• Find me on TikTok
• Find me on Threads

Discover the bottlenecks in your speaking business with the Applause Vs Invoice Quiz

For speaking/podcast enquiries or to connect with me directly, you can email [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel

If you know a speaker who would enjoy this show, let them know. Thanks for listening.

Mentioned in this episode:

Last Call For Founding KBPB Mebers

There's one last spot in the founding membership of The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint. This is the only time you can get the program at 50% off. After that, it goes to the full program price, which is still great value, but it's not half-price value. Find out if it's the right fit for you at presentinfluence.com/kbpb

A man paid $6,000 to a speaker agency that promised him multiple $10,000 bookings. Six months later, he had nothing but excuses. John, your host, has been in the coaching industry for years and has either seen or personally walked into most of what he covers in this solo episode: six distinct ways new professional speakers get sold something that looks like opportunity and isn't.

Some of these are straightforwardly dishonest: fake agencies charging registration fees, pay-to-speak stages dressed up as exposure. Others are murkier: podcast invites that turn into PR funnels, speaking coaches with no paid industry experience, and PR agencies that deliver exactly what they promised but don't move the needle. John draws on his own experience getting pulled into a podcast-to-PR funnel, and on years inside the coaching industry watching credentials fail to guarantee competence.

Every example comes with a specific, practical question to ask before you hand over money or trust, the kind of question a legitimate operator answers without flinching and a dodgy one stalls on.

You'll walk away with a single filter that applies well beyond the six examples covered here: a real opportunity survives you asking one basic question.

What is a fake speaker bureau/agency? A fake speaker bureau/angency charges new speakers an upfront registration fee, typically five hundred to fifteen hundred pounds, to be listed in their directory, without any track record of actually booking speakers into paid work. A legitimate bureau earns a commission, usually twenty to thirty per cent, only once it has booked a paying gig.

How can a new speaker tell if a speaker bureau or agency is legitimate? John recommends asking any agent or bureau to name three speakers they've booked into paid gigs in the last six months. A real bureau answers specifically and quickly. A fake one stalls or gives names you can't verify. Most proper bureaus will feature their speakers on their website, so you can ask directly.

What is pay-to-speak, and why is it a trap for new speakers? Pay-to-speak conferences charge speakers, typically five hundred to five thousand pounds, euros, or dollars, for a short speaking slot marketed as exposure to bookers or credibility building. The trap is that the audience is often largely made up of other speakers who paid the same fee, not buyers deciding whether to hire a speaker.

Is paying to speak at a conference always a scam? No. John Ball notes that paying for access to a room isn't automatically illegitimate, since some sponsorship arrangements are genuine trades. The key question is whether the room includes real buyers or mostly other paying speakers.

How can a new speaker tell if a podcast guest invite is actually a sales funnel? Warning signs include a show whose business name mimics a recognisable publication it isn't actually associated with, interviews that get rescheduled repeatedly for no clear reason, and a post-recording debrief that pushes toward a call with someone else who can "help with your business goals" rather than simply asking the guest to share the episode. John Ball notes that a defensive or angry reaction to being asked about this confirms it as shady.

Do certifications like ICF or EMCC guarantee a good speaking coach? Not at all. John Ball states that these bodies certify a coaching process, not a coaching outcome. He notes as an example that ICF certifies specifically in ontological coaching, a purely question-based, non-directive style, which is why he's never pursued the certification himself despite operating as a coach for over twenty years. No barrier prevents anyone from calling themselves a speaking coach, regardless of paid speaking experience.

What should a new speaker check before using a podcast pitching or PR agency? Ask how they actually find and select the shows they pitch you to, and whether they check for topical relevance before sending a pitch. John Ball notes that most of these agencies blanket-pitch the same generic message to any podcast that's loosely adjacent to your field, regardless of whether the audience would ever be an interested buyer, which is why the placements they deliver often don't produce any inquiries even though they're technically legitimate.

What is a Keynote Speaking Coach? A keynote speaking coach is someone with industry, coaching, and often additional experience and expertise who can help you improve your keynote talks, which in turn helps you get more bookings and referrals. Many keynote coaches only work with speakers on the talk and stage elements, but a select few, like John Ball, will first work with speakers on the business side of speaking before developing the stage and presentation side, which may still involve work on the keynote itself but will more relate to market positioning, becoming known as a speaker and developing warm relationships with bookers, as well as developing an opportunity engine that will help you to stay as fully booked as you want to. Programs like John Ball's Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint offer the full range of elements to help you grow your speaking business.

What is the Known, Booked and Paid Blueprint? The Known, Booked and Paid Blueprint (KBPB) is John Ball's cohort-based coaching programme for professional speakers, built to give speakers a structured route into the industry rather than having to work out what's legitimate offer by offer. Find out more at https://presentinfluence.com/kbpb

Connect with John:

• Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint
• Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn
• Find me on Insta
• Find me on TikTok
• Find me on Threads

Discover the bottlenecks in your speaking business with the Applause Vs Invoice Quiz

For speaking/podcast enquiries or to connect with me directly, you can email [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel

If you know a speaker who would enjoy this show, let them know. Thanks for listening.

Mentioned in this episode:

Last Call For Founding KBPB Mebers

There's one last spot in the founding membership of The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint. This is the only time you can get the program at 50% off. After that, it goes to the full program price, which is still great value, but it's not half-price value. Find out if it's the right fit for you at presentinfluence.com/kbpb

This isn't a normal episode. It's an announcement about where The Professional Speaking Show goes from here.

John explains the decision behind moving the podcast from weekly to fortnightly, why the numbers that once looked promising dropped off a cliff earlier this year, and why he's stopped trying to force a recovery that isn't coming.

He talks honestly about what it means to admit a show isn't finding its audience, why the podcast is becoming more of a personal passion project than a professional growth channel, and where his time and energy are moving instead: focus on coaching clients and speaking gigs, daily short-form content, and a new exclusive to YouTube content strategy.

He also shares a review point. At 300 episodes, he'll decide whether the show continues at its current cadence, drops further, or ends altogether.

If you're a speaker weighing up whether podcasting is the right growth channel for you, this episode is a candid look at what that decision actually costs, and how to know when a passion project should stop pretending to be a business strategy.

In this episode:

• Why John moved from weekly to fortnightly episodes
• What happened to the show's numbers this year, and why he stopped chasing a fix
• The difference between a passion project and a professional growth channel, and why the podcast is shifting to the former
• Where John is redirecting his time: prospecting, coaching clients, daily short-form content, and a new YouTube strategy
• His honest take on whether podcasting is the right move for speakers starting out
• The 300-episode review point and what happens next

Links mentioned:

• Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint: presentinfluence.com/kbpb
• Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=6882642444815519744
• Find me on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/professionalspeakingpodcast/
• Find me on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@professionalspeaking
• Find me on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@professionalspeakingpodcast

Subscribe and follow on your podcast platform of choice. Rate on Spotify, review on Apple Podcasts, and subscribe on YouTube.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Announcement Intro

00:25 Why The Change

00:57 Stats Drop Reality

01:49 Passion Versus Business

02:24 New Content Strategy 03:22 Podcasting Lessons

04:37 Six-Month Review Plan

05:08 How To Support

06:35 Back Catalogue And Coaching

07:15 New Cadence Farewell

Connect with John:

• Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint
• Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn
• Find me on Insta
• Find me on TikTok
• Find me on Threads

Discover the bottlenecks in your speaking business with the Applause Vs Invoice Quiz

For speaking/podcast enquiries or to connect with me directly, you can email [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel

If you know a speaker who would enjoy this show, let them know. Thanks for listening.

Mentioned in this episode:

Last Call For Founding KBPB Mebers

There's one last spot in the founding membership of The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint. This is the only time you can get the program at 50% off. After that, it goes to the full program price, which is still great value, but it's not half-price value. Find out if it's the right fit for you at presentinfluence.com/kbpb

Most speakers are told to be visible: post more, show up more, build a personal brand. Susanna Reay thinks that's backwards. In this episode, framework thinking expert and author Susanna Reay makes the case for framework first, visibility second: the idea that without a clear, ownable structure behind your ideas, all that visibility just evaporates the moment you leave the room.

Susanna walks through the difference between a personal brand (built on personality) and an authority brand (built on intellectual property), why the best frameworks borrow "safe but new" shapes the brain already trusts, and the five core structures she uses with clients: the linear roadmap, the circular model, the pyramid, the Venn diagram, and the two-by-two matrix. She also unpacks her own Framework Thinking Triangle, built from visual recognition, impact detection, boundary setting, and transfer integrity, and explains why she deliberately avoided forcing it into a clever acronym.

Expect practical rules on naming (five letters or under, no repeated letters, don't force it), the neuroscience of why visual frameworks are 65% more memorable three days later, and a genuinely useful tangent on how colour choices in branding aren't just aesthetic, they're strategic.

Connect with Susanna: frameworkthinking.uk or on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susannareay/

Chapters:

00:00 Why Frameworks Fail

01:02 Framework First Branding

04:12 Umbrella Framework Metaphor

07:41 Authority DNA And Energy

10:28 What A Framework Is

13:54 Simplicity Design Thinking

15:51 Frameworks On Stage

20:20 Make It Visual

23:11 Five Visual Framework Types

28:14 Iterate Your Framework

32:51 Acronyms And Naming

39:21 Book Showcase And Branding

43:34 Colour And Consistency

49:28 Connect With Susannah

51:48 Show Updates And Wrap

What is a framework, according to Susanna Reay? A framework is a structure that brings ideas together in a way that's simple for others to understand. A good framework is simple, clear, unique, and specific to a defined space, rather than a long list of steps that functions more like a process diagram.

What is Susanna Reay's "framework first, visibility second" principle? It's the view that experts and speakers need to establish their intellectual property and structure before focusing on personal visibility. Without a clear framework, ideas don't stick with an audience after a talk ends, no matter how visible the speaker has been.

What is the SPARK process? SPARK is Susanna Reay's trademarked process for authority building: Self, Premise, Art, Reach, and Kudos. It starts with self, meaning personality, passion, and prowess (the "three Ps"), which she says most people skip when trying to imitate other speakers' styles.

What are the five core IP families for building a visual framework? Susanna Reay identifies five recognisable shapes: a linear roadmap (A to B), a circular model (mastery through repetition), a pyramid (layered progression, as in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs), a Venn diagram (overlapping pillars of thought), and a two-by-two matrix (two axes of transformation, as in the Eisenhower Matrix).

What is the Framework Thinking Triangle? It's Susanna Reay's own framework, developed iteratively from an original two-by-two matrix into a triangular structure. It has four elements: visual recognition (top), impact detection (bottom left), boundary setting (bottom right), and transfer integrity (centre, representing whether ideas travel beyond the room without the speaker present).

Does a framework need to spell out a word or acronym? No. Susanna Reay says a framework always needs a name and title, but its internal elements don't have to form a word. When a word does work (like SPARK), she recommends five letters or fewer with no repeated letters, since anything longer becomes harder for the brain to hold onto.

Why does Susanna Reay recommend visual frameworks over verbal ones? She cites research suggesting a presentation is 65% more memorable three days later when it includes a visual, and that the brain processes visuals roughly 65,000 times faster than text. A visual framework also travels intact when shared, unlike a spoken message, which tends to degrade the more it's retold.

Connect with John:

• Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint
• Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn
• Find me on Insta
• Find me on TikTok
• Find me on Threads

Discover the bottlenecks in your speaking business with the Applause Vs Invoice Quiz

For speaking/podcast enquiries or to connect with me directly, you can email [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel

If you know a speaker who would enjoy this show, let them know. Thanks for listening.

Mentioned in this episode:

Last Call For Founding KBPB Mebers

There's one last spot in the founding membership of The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint. This is the only time you can get the program at 50% off. After that, it goes to the full program price, which is still great value, but it's not half-price value. Find out if it's the right fit for you at presentinfluence.com/kbpb

Part two of the AI and keynotes series. Last episode covered the tells that give away a keynote written too much with AI. This one goes underneath that, to the parts of a keynote that were never AI's to write in the first place, even for speakers who've already cleaned up the obvious tells.

John draws the line between a personal story and a personalised one: a personal story is something that happened to you; a personalised story is something that happened to you, chosen and shaped to do a specific job for a specific audience. He walks through four questions he uses with clients to audit which stories actually earn a place in a keynote, including a real example from his own experience: the story of being a flight attendant working the flight that turned back on September 11th, 2001, and the communication breakdown that followed.

The episode also covers a practical structural point: why a keynote built to run exactly 45 minutes and nothing else is a commercially fragile talk, and how to identify the load-bearing throughline that has to survive at 20 minutes, versus the expansion material that fills you out to 60 or 90 minutes.

Closes with a brief mention of frameworks, teeing up next episode's conversation with Susanna Reay, author of Framework Thinking.

Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint founding cohort here: https://presentinfluence.com/kbpb

Any questions, you can find my LinkedIn and email info at the end of the show notes.

Chapters:

00:00 AI Tells Aren't Enough

01:35 Personal vs Personalised

03:21 Four Story Audit Questions

06:00 Why AI Can't Write This

07:51 Build Talks That Flex

09:37 Steel Thread and Expansion

10:25 The Real Principle Behind It

11:27 Frameworks and Next Episode

12:50 Subscribe and Program Invite

13:39 Final Send Off

What's the difference between a personal story and a personalised story in a keynote?

According to John Ball, a personal story is simply something that happened to the speaker. A personalised story is something that happened to the speaker, deliberately chosen and shaped to do a specific job for a specific audience. The distinction is what separates a keynote that gets a warm response from one that gets people talking about it afterwards.

How do you know if a story belongs in a keynote?

John Ball uses four questions with clients: did the story cost the speaker something (embarrassment, money, relationship, status), does it have a direct line to the specific argument being made rather than just a thematic connection, can the audience map it onto their own situation, and could literally nobody else on a stage tell that story.

Why can't AI write personal stories for a keynote?

AI has no access to which parts of a speaker's actual life carried real stakes. When prompted for a story, it either genericises the material it's given, smoothing out the specific and awkward human details, or invents a plausible-sounding story that means nothing because nobody lived it.

How long should a keynote be?

John Ball recommends designing the core skeleton of a keynote for 45 minutes, but identifying which sections are load-bearing (the talk stops making sense without them) versus expansion material (adds richness but isn't essential), so the talk can flex to a 20-minute or 90-minute brief without falling apart.

Why does keynote length flexibility matter commercially?

A talk that works only at a specific length is structurally fragile. Speakers either turn down briefs that don't match their fixed version or deliver something that doesn't quite work, both of which cost bookings over time.

Connect with John:

• Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint
• Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn
• Find me on Insta
• Find me on TikTok
• Find me on Threads

Discover the bottlenecks in your speaking business with the Applause Vs Invoice Quiz

For speaking/podcast enquiries or to connect with me directly, you can email [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel

If you know a speaker who would enjoy this show, let them know. Thanks for listening.

Mentioned in this episode:

Last Call For Founding KBPB Mebers

There's one last spot in the founding membership of The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint. This is the only time you can get the program at 50% off. After that, it goes to the full program price, which is still great value, but it's not half-price value. Find out if it's the right fit for you at presentinfluence.com/kbpb

Mike Verret last joined the show in 2021, back when it was still finding its way under a different name. He's back with a sharper, more focused message: the reason most pitches, whether for a speaking gig, a podcast guest slot, or a networking room, fall flat isn't the words. It's that the person pitching is thinking like a business when the person listening is thinking like a human.

Mike spent fourteen years in advertising and agency work before six years on-site at Hasbro Toys, where his job flipped from "think like the audience" to "think like the business," and back again once they discovered he could actually talk to a room. That whiplash is where his framework comes from.

In this episode, John and Mike cover why an "I help" statement is the fastest way to sound like everyone else on LinkedIn, how to turn an elevator pitch into an eight-floor conversation instead of a monologue, why the order you deliver information in matters more than the information itself, and why AI-written pitches are becoming easier, not harder, for audiences to spot. Mike also shares the Hasbro Monopoly Cheaters Edition story: a single audience insight and three slides that sold 500,000 units.

If you've ever frozen up trying to explain what you do in under thirty seconds, or wondered why your polished LinkedIn "I help" line isn't landing bookings, this one's for you.

Guest: Mike Verret, founder of Pitch Lab, former agency and Hasbro Toys communications director.

Connect with Mike: linkedin.com/in/mike-verret

Pitch Lab (membership, founding rate $99/month for the first 30 members) connect with Mike on LinkedIn to find out more.

Want to check out my chat with Mike from 5 or so years ago? https://player.captivate.fm/episode/5d6eb0be-87a4-427c-b568-7ff34507c7e5/

CHAPTERS

00:00 Business vs Human Pitch

00:35 Meet Mike Verret

04:02 Hasbro Pitch Lessons

06:27 Instant Audience Connection

10:52 Set Expectations Fast

12:23 Pitching Speaking Gigs

14:43 Ditch the I Help

17:11 Practice for Authenticity

18:46 AI Voice Pitfalls

24:51 Order Beats Content

26:34 Taming the What-Ifs

28:46 Stop Catastrophizing

29:30 Emotion Beats Logic

30:03 Curiosity And Closure

30:17 Rethinking Elevator Pitches

31:42 Eight Floor Pitch Framework

34:21 Benefits And Proof

36:11 Fixing Bad Guest Pitches

40:04 New Offers Pitch Lab

43:53 Think Like A Human

45:57 Monopoly Cheaters Edition

48:18 How To Connect

50:38 Wrap Up And Next Episodes

Why do most professional speakers' pitches sound the same? Most speakers pitch from a business mindset rather than a human one. They lead with credentials, services, or an "I help X achieve Y" statement, all of which are common phrasing patterns that blend into every other pitch an audience or booker has already heard.

What's wrong with the "I help" statement in a LinkedIn bio or pitch? The "I help" opening, sometimes called StoryBrand Mad Libs, is one of the most common ways professionals open a pitch, which means it carries no differentiation. Using verbs like "I guide" or "I assist," or reframing the sentence around the audience's outcome rather than the speaker's service, creates more distinctiveness.

Is the elevator pitch still relevant for professional speakers? Yes, but not as a scripted monologue. An effective elevator pitch is structured as a conversation with predictable stages: what you do, who you help, how you help them, the benefit to them, and proof it works. Each stage should prompt the listener to ask a follow-up question rather than switch off.

Why do audiences disengage from AI-written pitches and bios? Audiences increasingly recognise AI-generated phrasing, including consistent cadence and punctuation patterns such as em dashes. Once a listener or reader identifies content as AI-written, their engagement and trust in it drops, even if the underlying information came from the person themselves.

What causes stage fright before a pitch or presentation? Pre-presentation anxiety is often driven by catastrophic "what if" thinking: imagining unlikely negative outcomes before speaking. Naming this pattern and consciously redirecting attention toward likely positive audience responses reduces its grip.

Why does the order of information matter in a pitch? A pitch organised in the order the speaker's business thinks in (services first, credentials first) rarely matches the order an audience needs to understand and retain it. Presenting connection, then problem, then process, then benefit, then proof follows how a listener processes new information, which increases retention.

Connect with John:

• Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint
• Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn
• Find me on Insta
• Find me on TikTok
• Find me on Threads

Discover the bottlenecks in your speaking business with the Applause Vs Invoice Quiz

For speaking/podcast enquiries or to connect with me directly, you can email [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel

If you know a speaker who would enjoy this show, let them know. Thanks for listening.

Mentioned in this episode:

Last Call For Founding KBPB Mebers

There's one last spot in the founding membership of The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint. This is the only time you can get the program at 50% off. After that, it goes to the full program price, which is still great value, but it's not half-price value. Find out if it's the right fit for you at presentinfluence.com/kbpb

Most speakers think the problem with their keynote is the content. It's rarely the content. In this episode John breaks down why writing your keynote with AI is a bad idea, even as the tools keep improving, starting with a story about a speaker he coached at TSL whose entirely AI-written talk was, in John's words, drivel.

John walks through the planning-stage traps that happen before a word gets written: AI's sycophancy (it will tell you your topic is great and bookable when it has no actual market data to base that on), and its habit of fabricating statistics, quotes, and studies with total confidence and zero hedging. He then moves into the writing-stage tells that show up once a talk is drafted, particularly the overuse of rhetorical devices deployed because they pattern-match to "sounds like a keynote" rather than because the moment earned them.

The throughline: AI can't lose you a booking, so it never needs to hedge. Everything it writes for you sounds finished. That's the tell, because nothing true costs that little to say.

This is part one of a two-part series. Part two covers what AI genuinely can't do for your keynote: write your stories, or build a framework that means anything.

Is it a bad idea to write a keynote with AI?

Yes, according to John Ball, because AI produces confidently mediocre talks. It cannot access personal stories, emotional experience, or genuine insight into what makes a specific keynote work for a specific audience, and it will validate a topic's commercial viability with false confidence.

What is AI sycophancy in the context of keynote writing?

AI sycophancy refers to the tendency of AI tools to validate whatever topic a speaker brings to them, including telling the speaker their topic is strong and highly bookable, without having any actual data on what talks are currently being booked or what the market wants.

What are common signs that a keynote was written by AI?

Common tells include overuse of rhetorical devices such as the rule of three, tricolon, and "not this, but that" constructions used because they pattern-match to keynote style rather than because the moment calls for them, along with generic phrasing such as variations on "a wolf in sheep's clothing," and bland, generic stories that show no sign of having actually happened.

Can AI write good stories for a keynote?

No. AI cannot generate a speaker's personal stories, emotional experiences, or unique perspective, since it has no lived experience of its own. When prompted for a story, it tends to produce generic content or invent one, according to John Ball.

Does AI fabricate information in keynote research?

Yes. AI tools can invent statistics, quotations, and studies and present them with full confidence and no indication of uncertainty, which has caused real-world problems in other professions, including cases of lawyers citing non-existent legal statutes generated by AI.

CHAPTERS

00:00 AI Keynote Red Flags

01:09 Welcome And Host Intro

01:35 The AI Written Keynote Story

03:56 Speechwriters Versus AI

06:01 Why AI Flatters You

09:51 Ethics And Smart Use

11:44 Hallucinations And False Certainty

14:14 Rhetorical Padding Tells

15:58 Outlining Tool And Real Stories

17:26 Confidence Without Stakes

18:20 Next Episodes And Wrap Up

Connect with John:

• Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint
• Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn
• Find me on Insta
• Find me on TikTok
• Find me on Threads

Discover the bottlenecks in your speaking business with the Applause Vs Invoice Quiz

For speaking/podcast enquiries or to connect with me directly, you can email [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel

If you know a speaker who would enjoy this show, let them know. Thanks for listening.

Mentioned in this episode:

Last Call For Founding KBPB Mebers

There's one last spot in the founding membership of The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint. This is the only time you can get the program at 50% off. After that, it goes to the full program price, which is still great value, but it's not half-price value. Find out if it's the right fit for you at presentinfluence.com/kbpb

Most speakers assume their audience is persuadable by good evidence. Psychologist Owen Fitzpatrick, who trained under NLP co-creator Richard Bandler and has travelled to over a hundred countries, including North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran, studying how belief actually forms, argues that's backwards. People believe what feels right, fits their identity, and keeps them inside their tribe. Evidence comes after, as justification.

Owen built his reputation on charisma work (his book The Charismatic Edge argued charisma is an impression you create, not something you're born with) before moving into belief and propaganda with his new book Inner Propaganda, out 4 August. In this conversation, he lays out his DELP model (an expansion of Aristotle's ethos, logos, pathos to include demos — understanding your specific audience), explains why intelligent, critical-thinking people are often the most convincing propagandists to themselves, and draws a sharp line between persuasion, manipulation and propaganda that every speaker standing on a stage should sit with.

We also get into why spontaneous, unscripted delivery reads as more truthful than polished delivery (with Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" as the example), and why AI's tendency to flatter you is quietly making this problem worse, not better.

In this episode:

• Why charisma is built, not innate, and why it matters more now than when Owen wrote The Charismatic Edge in 2013
• The DELP model: demos, ethos, logos, pathos
• Why perceived authenticity beats actual authenticity, and why spontaneity reads as truth
• Why critical thinking doesn't protect you from bad beliefs (argumentation vs investigation)
• Motivated reasoning, naive realism, and sacred values: why smart people hold ridiculous beliefs
• The difference between persuasion, manipulation and propaganda, and why every speaker is, to a degree, a propagandist
• Owen's practical tools: the belief audit, the feels right/fits in/makes sense framework, and E-Prime language

Connect with Owen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/owenfitzp/

The book and the special workshop are available at https://innerpropaganda.com, and you can discover more about Owen and his work at https://owenfitzpatrick.com

What is Owen Fitzpatrick's DELP model?

The DELP model is Owen Fitzpatrick's expansion of Aristotle's rhetorical triad of ethos, logos and pathos. Owen adds demos, the requirement to understand the specific audience being addressed, alongside ethos (credibility and positioning), logos (logical structure and evidence) and pathos (emotional impact).

What is Owen Fitzpatrick's book Inner Propaganda about?

Inner Propaganda is Owen Fitzpatrick's book, to be released on 4th of August 2026, about how individuals generate their own propaganda internally through feelings, self-narratives and motivated reasoning. It argues that people convince themselves of beliefs the same way state propaganda convinces populations, through internal versions of state media, indoctrination and truth engineering.

What is the difference between persuasion, manipulation and propaganda, according to Owen Fitzpatrick?

Persuasion is the ethical attempt to change beliefs, attitudes or behaviour while genuinely caring about what the other person wants. Manipulation uses deception and serves only the persuader's own interests. Propaganda combines both, using every available tool of persuasion and manipulation to construct an entire reality for the audience.

Why doesn't critical thinking protect people from believing false things?

According to Owen Fitzpatrick, critical thinking and intelligence make people better at constructing airtight arguments (argumentation) rather than at genuinely investigating what is true (investigation). Motivated reasoning, a concept from psychologist Ziva Kunda, refers to people reasoning toward conclusions they already want to be true.

What is naive realism?

Naive realism is the belief that one's own perception of reality is objectively accurate and shared by anyone reasonable. Owen Fitzpatrick argues this prevents people from applying the same critical scrutiny to their own beliefs that they readily apply to beliefs they disagree with.

What is E-Prime language and why does Owen Fitzpatrick use it?

E-Prime is a form of English that eliminates the verb "to be," originally developed by David Bourland based on Alfred Korzybski's work on language and semantics. Owen Fitzpatrick uses it as a belief-flexibility tool: replacing "this is true" with "this seems true to me" builds in the possibility of revision.

Connect with John:

• Find out more about the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint
• Subscribe to the Serious About Speaking newsletter on LinkedIn
• Find me on Insta
• Find me on TikTok
• Find me on Threads

Discover the bottlenecks in your speaking business with the Applause Vs Invoice Quiz

For speaking/podcast enquiries or to connect with me directly, you can email [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel

If you know a speaker who would enjoy this show, let them know. Thanks for listening.

Mentioned in this episode:

Last Call For Founding KBPB Mebers

There's one last spot in the founding membership of The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint. This is the only time you can get the program at 50% off. After that, it goes to the full program price, which is still great value, but it's not half-price value. Find out if it's the right fit for you at presentinfluence.com/kbpb