Podfluence

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

Want to get coached for free on the show? Fill in the form https://forms.gle/mo4xYkEiCjqtz9yP6, and if we think your challenge could help others, we'll invite you on.

For speaking enquiries or to connect with me, you can email john@presentinfluence.com or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PresentInfluence

Thanks for listening. Rating the show 5* on Spotify helps their algo recommend the show, so please take a moment to follow the show and leave a rating.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint (Founding cohort)

Get all the information on the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint at https://presentinfluence.com/kbpb to see if it's the right fit for you.

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

FAQs

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:

• 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

For speaking enquiries or to connect with me, you can email john@presentinfluence.com or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PresentInfluence

Thanks for listening. Rating the show 5* on Spotify helps their algorithm recommend it, so please take a moment to follow and leave a rating.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint (Founding cohort)

Get all the information on the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint at https://presentinfluence.com/kbpb to see if it's the right fit for you.

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

FAQs

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.

Visit https://strategic-speaker.scoreapp.com to take the 2-minute Strategic Speaking Business Audit and find out what's blocking you from getting more bookings, re-bookings, referrals and bigger fees. There's a special surprise gift for everyone who completes the quiz.

Want to get coached for free on the show? Fill in the form https://forms.gle/mo4xYkEiCjqtz9yP6, and if we think your challenge could help others, we'll invite you on.

For speaking enquiries or to connect with me, you can email john@presentinfluence.com or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PresentInfluence

Thanks for listening. Rating the show 5* on Spotify helps their algo recommend the show, so please take a moment to follow the show and leave a rating.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint (Founding cohort)

Get all the information on the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint at https://presentinfluence.com/kbpb to see if it's the right fit for you.

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

FAQ Section

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.

Are you a speaker who wants to be better known, more booked and paid what you're worth? The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint might be just the ticket. Check out our founding member offer: https://presentinfluence.com/kbpb

Visit https://strategic-speaker.scoreapp.com to take the 2-minute Strategic Speaking Business Audit and find out what's blocking you from getting more bookings, re-bookings, referrals and bigger fees. There's a special surprise gift for everyone who completes the quiz.

Want to get coached for free on the show? Fill in the form https://forms.gle/mo4xYkEiCjqtz9yP6, and if we think your challenge could help others, we'll invite you on.

For speaking enquiries or to connect with me, you can email john@presentinfluence.com or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PresentInfluence

Thanks for listening. Rating the show 5* on Spotify helps their algo recommend the show, so please take a moment to follow the show and leave a rating.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint (Founding cohort)

Get all the information on the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint at https://presentinfluence.com/kbpb to see if it's the right fit for you.

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.

FAQ

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

Visit https://strategic-speaker.scoreapp.com to take the 2-minute Strategic Speaking Business Audit and find out what's blocking you from getting more bookings, re-bookings, referrals and bigger fees. There's a special surprise gift for everyone who completes the quiz.

Want to get coached for free on the show? Fill in the form https://forms.gle/mo4xYkEiCjqtz9yP6, and if we think your challenge could help others, we'll invite you on.

For speaking enquiries or to connect with me, you can email john@presentinfluence.com or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PresentInfluence

Thanks for listening. Rating the show 5* on Spotify helps their algo recommend the show, so please take a moment to follow the show and leave a rating.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint (Founding cohort)

Get all the information on the Known, Booked & Paid Blueprint at https://presentinfluence.com/kbpb to see if it's the right fit for you.