The Keynote Isn't Dying: It's the Only Thing AI Can't Replace

John: 00:00:00

You'll walk away from this episode understanding why speaking is

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becoming more valuable, not less in a

world drowning in AI generated content,

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and why the keynote specifically

is built to carry that value in a

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way that almost nothing else can.

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Most people assume.

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Speaking is a soft skill

that's on its way out.

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One voice against the notion of

content that machines can now

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produce faster than any of us.

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I've spent years building a career and

coaching business on the opposite bet,

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and I still believe it's the right one.

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So here's what we're covering.

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Why speaking has mathed for thousands

of years and isn't about to stop what

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a keynote actually is properly defined,

and where all of this is heading,

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including a genuinely optimistic

prediction that I'm not making

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up, just to make you feel better.

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Welcome to Professional Speaking.

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This is the show for people who

are serious about speaking and

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becoming known, booked, and paid.

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My name's John Ball, professional

speaking coach, keynote speaker,

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standup comedian, and sci-fi nerd.

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I'm here as your guide on the journey

to a successful speaking career, and I'm

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coming to you from July in Valencia in

Spain, in the middle of a heat waves.

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The heat is unbearable.

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So here's an assumption I want to

take apart before we go any further.

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Everyone thinks speaking is losing ground.

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There's more content

than there's ever been.

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AI can generate more of it in a minute

than most speakers produce in a year,

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and attention is fractured across

every platform that you can name.

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The natural conclusion right now

at least, would be that a person

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standing on stage talking is

becoming less relevant, not more.

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And I think that's exactly backwards.

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So think about what happened

during and right after COVID.

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We had years of being told the future

was contactless remote digital first,

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and for a while it genuinely felt

that that might become permanent.

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And then the moment that we were allowed

back into a room together, we didn't

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want another bloody Zoom meeting.

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People wanted to shake hands.

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They wanted conferences with bad

coffee and even worse chairs and an

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actual human being talking to them

because it turned out that we'd been

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starved of something that we didn't

fully appreciate until we lost it.

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There was even that app clubhouse that

came out during the pandemic because

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it was about as close as we could get

to having in the room conversations

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with interesting people without adding

to more Zoom meetings and the like.

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And it disappeared probably

almost as quickly as it arrived.

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People really wanted to be

in live rooms and they didn't

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want to wait around for it.

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And even though there might have

been a little hesitation at first,

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there was a desperate desire for

human contact and connection.

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I think things were already heading

in the direction of more connection,

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better rel stronger relationships

with speakers and audiences or

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communicators and experts and audiences.

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The end of the pandemic really

accelerated that whole process.

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Here's the thing there, other than

the kind of person who watches a film

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like the Stepford Wise and thinks,

well, yes, sign me up for that, please.

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Most of us actually want

real human connection.

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We don't want the smooth content,

perfect algorithm approved version.

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We want a real person saying a real

thing in a real room, and we can tell

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the difference even when we can't

always explain why the flood of AI

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content isn't the threat to speaking.

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It's the reason.

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A real human voice in a room saying

something only they could say is about

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to matter more than it has in years.

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So that's the claim.

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Let's earn it.

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Speaking is an ancient

and powerful medium.

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It isn't new, even if it

feels urgent right now.

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Oratory has been deciding outcomes

for as long as we've had civilization.

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Wars have turned on speeches,

religions have been built on them.

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Revolutions have started with

someone standing up and saying

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the thing everyone was thinking,

but nobody had said out loud yet.

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We can all think of famous historical

speeches that come to mind, ones

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that had big impacts on society.

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There was Churchill's wartime speech,

and we'll fight them on the beaches.

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There was Martin Luther King's.

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I Have a Dream speech.

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More recently, several figures

have risen to prominence in the

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professional and personal development

industry, through their TED Talks.

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Think of people like Brene Brown, Simon

Sinek, Mel Robbins, whether you like

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them or not, their content landed really

well with audiences from their talks,

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which then got shared and spread out

and led to books and other content.

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The talks themselves were the

thing that had the impact.

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So the medium hasn't lost its power.

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Most speakers have just

stopped using it properly.

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I had Stoic philosophy expert Donald

Robertson on this podcast a long time

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ago, right, the very early days of me

podcasting, and he was talking about

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Marcus Aurelius and his relationship with

rhetoric and stoicism, and I wasn't really

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sure where there would be a connection

with professional speaking and stoicism,

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but the thing that stuck with me from

that episode is that Marcus Aurelius,

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one of the most powerful men who ever

lived, one of the most respected leaders

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who ever lived, took his own speech and

his own persuasion extremely seriously

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as a discipline, not as decoration.

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He didn't see rhetoric as

performance for his own sake.

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He saw it as a tool that had to

be used with restraint honesty and

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purpose, or it became dangerous.

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So it's worth sitting with that for a

moment because most speakers today treat

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their words as content to be produced, not

as something with actual weight behind it.

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The stoics didn't separate how you

speak from who you are, and I think

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that's closer to the truth than

most modern speaker training gets.

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So let's define this properly because

the word keynote gets used very loosely.

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What is a keynote?

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Well, a keynote is just a longer talk.

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It isn't a workshop, it isn't a panel.

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It's a deliberate structural

choice, one voice, one sustained

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block of attention built.

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So a single perspective can land without

being diluted by other voices in the room.

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Now I'll be honest, not

everyone agrees exactly on what

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that looks like in practise.

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Keynotes vary hugely

in style and delivery.

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Some are story led, some are data led,

some are almost performance pieces, and

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some are closer to a structured lecture.

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And that's fine.

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The format isn't about a single style.

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It's about what the format is built to

protect, which is a sustained undiluted

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line of thought from one person.

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Compare that to the alternatives.

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Panels, split authority across however

many people are sitting on the stage,

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so nobody gets to build a full argument.

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Workshops shift the room into

facilitation mode, which is

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valuable, but it's a different job.

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Webinars lose the physical presence and

the shared attention of a actual room.

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I mean, hands up.

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If you've ever been playing with

your phone or searching around on

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other things on the internet whilst

you've been on a webinar, hello.

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None of them.

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Do what a keynote is

specifically built to do.

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So let's come back to the claim

from the start of the episode.

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Is speaking actually becoming

more valuable as AI floods

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the world with content?

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I think the answer is an honest yes.

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And here's the mechanism,

not just, not just the vibe.

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A guest on the show recently, David

Newman, made the point that how to

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content is essentially finished as of

the point that chat, GPT went public

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AI can outproduce any human on pure

instructional content all day every day.

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What's left?

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What AI genuinely can't replicate

is how you think, what you believe,

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and where you see things going.

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Your convictions, your values, your

beliefs, and that's not a nice sentiment.

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That's a specific testable claim

about what's still scarce, unique

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points of view that can be backed

up are still pretty scarce.

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And that's exactly what a keynote

done properly is built to deliver,

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not information, position, even

a transformation of thought.

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I've got Dominic Eldred-Earl

from London Speaker Bureau coming

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up on the show next episode.

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and without giving the whole conversation

away, he made a point that stuck with me.

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There are still speakers getting booked

purely on how to content regardless

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of David Neman saying that that's

over, although maybe that's somewhat

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less and less, but some of the topics

that people are getting booked and

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paid for may genuinely surprise you.

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But he was clear that the real money is

in business and corporate speaking and

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that even then the landscape is shifting.

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And there are certain issues around

fees and negotiations at the moment

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that have been more complicated.

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But generally the industry is growing.

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More speakers than ever are

entering the market and the demand

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is still increasing regardless.

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And the speakers who are actually

good keep getting booked.

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Now that's not blind optimism.

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That's someone inside the speaker

bureau telling me the market is getting

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more crowded and more valuable for

the right speakers at the same time.

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So here's the prediction,

and I'm not hedging it.

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Speaking gets more valuable as content

gets cheaper because a room with

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one person who has something real

to say is the one thing that nothing

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else on the list can replicate.

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Not ai, not a panel, not a webinar.

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The flood of content isn't

the threat to speakers.

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It's exactly why a real one

becomes impossible to ignore.

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So if you found this useful, the

best place to keep up with me on

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this kind of thinking is on my

YouTube channel where I'm putting

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out content like this every week on

the speaking business specifically.

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So if you're not already subscribed,

please go there and subscribe.

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And this week on all my main channels,

especially LinkedIn, I'm giving away

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email templates, the email templates

that I use myself for outreach and

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follow up if that's useful for you.

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If you struggle with what to say or

what to send to potential bookers or

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what to say, is someone there pick up

the phone when you try to call them.

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Then go and find me there.

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Grab them before the weeks's

out if you miss them.

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Uh, you might just find the

link in the description or

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show notes for this episode.

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But that's it for this week.

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And do make sure you are following

the show because not only have we

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got Dominic Eldred-Earl from London

Speaker Bureau next time, but I've

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also got one of my favourite interviews

ever with Owen Fitzpatrick coming

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up before the end of the month.

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It was an amazing chat.

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Some great questions and some

wonderful answers from Owen himself

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that you won't want to miss.

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For now, go and do something worth

talking about and I'll see you next time.