Most Speakers Deliver an Hour. I Deliver a Result.

Robert had the sharpest ideas in every meeting he sat in. Colleagues came to him first when a project stalled. Eighteen months after his company’s AI initiative kicked off, almost nothing had actually changed in how his team worked. He knew everything. He had deployed almost none of it. That gap is exactly what separates a speaker worth booking from one who’s simply good on stage…
read more

Elon Musk’s Plan for AI Is “Enjoy the Ride.” Yours Can’t Be.

On July 23, 2026, Elon Musk sat down with The Economist’s editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes, for a 90-minute interview. Deep into the conversation about artificial intelligence, he said something that should grab the attention of every single person reading this: “Let’s enjoy the ride, is my philosophy at this point.” That’s not a soundbite taken out of context. It’s the actual plan…
read more

18 Rebels and Non-Conformists Who Made the History Books

Every name that made the history books was, at some point in their own life, called something unflattering. Difficult. Naive. A troublemaker. A threat to the way things were supposed to work. History eventually reclassified most of them as visionaries, but that reclassification came later, usually well after they had already paid a real cost for refusing to go along…
read more

Intel Paid $120,000 for One Hour. Twenty Minutes In, They Pulled…

Seventeen years ago, I watched a client pull one of the most respected voices in business off the stage, mid-speech, in front of 3,000 people. It’s the clearest example I’ve ever seen of speaker credentials vs connection, and how having one without the other can cost you the room…
read more

Two Brothers, Zero Employees, $401 Million

Matthew Gallagher is 41 years old. He lives in Los Angeles. In September 2024, he sat down with $20,000, a laptop, and a handful of AI tools. No investors. No office. No team. Last year, his company generated $401 million in revenue. This year, it’s on pace for $1.8 billion. Total employees: two. Matthew, and his younger brother Elliot…
read more

What to Look for When You Choose an AI Keynote Speaker

If you’re trying to choose an AI keynote speaker, you already know your audience is smart, accomplished, and anxious about AI. They’ve read the headlines. They’ve sat through the breathless predictions. What they haven’t heard, what they’re desperate for, is someone who tells them what to do about it. That’s the first thing every event planner and bureau should understand before booking one, and it’s the question this guide is built to answer…
read more

What Is Your Number? The One Question That Tells You Where You Stand in the Age of AI.

Everyone Has a Feeling. Almost Nobody Has a Number. The AI readiness assessment question most professionals avoid is the simplest one: where exactly do I stand? Over the past two weeks, more than 39,000 people engaged with a single data point about AI and jobs…
read more

They Bought the Books, Scanned Them, Then Shredded the Evidence.

I got the email this week confirming my book, Achieve With Accountability, is part of a $1.5 billion settlement with Anthropic. It’s a good moment to sit with legal versus trustworthy, because this story is the cleanest example of that gap I’ve seen in years.
Last week, more than 4,000 pages of unsealed court documents revealed something Anthropic had spent two years trying to keep quiet…
read more

Every AI Keynote Sounds the Same Right Now. Here’s the One Question Most of Them Skip.

Last September, I spent two days in Chicago with roughly 100 senior executives, clients of Stefanini, a $1.4 billion global AI and technology services company, at a summit built around a single subject, how to lead through the AI era. What that room needed most, it turned out, wasn’t more information about where AI is headed. It was an AI leadership framework they could actually put to work. By the time I got on stage, that room had already heard a fireside chat on where AI is headed next. An executive panel on AI strategy came right after me. My session sat in the middle, with sixty minutes to make the case for something different…
read more

The Questions I Ask Every Client Before I Walk On Stage

Most keynotes are forgettable. These keynote speaker preparation questions are why mine are not. Not because the speaker is bad. Not because the content is wrong. Because the content was never built for that specific room. A speaker gets booked. They send their standard deck. They show up, deliver it with energy, collect their check, and leave. The audience feels inspired for about 72 hours. Then nothing changes. That is not what I do…
read more

A Speaker Posted His Own Evaluation Criteria. Here’s Where I’d Push Back.

How to evaluate a speaker is a question every planner eventually has to answer, whether they realize it or not. A keynote speaker named Peter Chatteris posted something worth reading this week. His own four-question test for evaluating a speaker before you book one. What’s the one idea? Is there a named framework? What’s the proof, not credentials? What do past organizers actually say about working with you? Three of those four are exactly right, and worth holding every speaker, including me, to…
read more

Everyone Wants the Closing Keynote. I’d Rather Open.

Melissa Spencer, a speaker manager at Spencer’s Consulting, posted something last week that most planners never say out loud: opening vs closing keynote is a real decision, not a formality, and the two are not the same job. One sets the tone for a room that just walked in cold. The other sends people home with something they can actually use. She’s right, mostly. But the best opener doesn’t just do the opening job, done well, they do both: set the tone and send people home with something they can actually use. That’s the case I want to make. And given the choice between the two slots, I’d rather open…
read more