IN THIS ISSUE

THIS WEEK’S QUOTES

A NOTE FROM SHARÍ

Audiences are rewriting what they want from events, meeting planners are reacting to those audiences, and B2B speakers should be paying attention.

I'm feeling a lot of mixed emotions about the events industry right now. There's real excitement from professionals wanting to gather at events once again. But I'm also worried.

Meeting planners are picking up signals from their audiences and, in some cases, drawing the wrong conclusions from them. They hear "the networking was the best part" and decide to shrink the programming. They believe "audiences have shorter attention spans" and start capping presentations at twenty minutes.

I don't think audiences have shorter attention spans. I think the bar has been raised for what deserves their attention. The answer isn't less programming. It's deeper programming. Not shorter speeches, just smarter ones.

Over the next decade, I believe we will define "a good speaker" differently. The best presentations won’t be the most polished or performative; they’ll be the most integrated.

The dust hasn't settled. The events industry is still working out what audiences really want. But the B2B speakers who position themselves well are about to break out.

Let’s get into it.

FEATURED ARTICLE

To understand today's audiences, it helps to look back at how we got here.

THE LEGENDARY ERA
1960s through the 1990s

This was the golden age of the professional speaker. Professionals went to conferences because there was no other way to access the network in the room or the information on stage.

The voices of industry titans could only be heard behind a hotel ballroom door.

Professional speakers were practically mythical. Gurus. Rock stars. You sat in those rooms to experience once-in-a-lifetime moments.. You’d home and told your spouse, your colleagues, your friends about it and the one line that changed how you thought about your work and your life.

THE DIGITAL ERA
2000s into the 2010s

The 1st shift: Access.
Globally renowned experts became familiar faces and constant companions. Those once-in-a-lifetime voices were now playing on your car's speakers, in your earbuds while walking the dog, and on your iPhone at the gym.

The 2nd shift: Reverence.
Even celebrity lost its draw. I can't tell you how many times I've heard conference-goers scoff at the celebrity headline speaker. "What’s Nicole Kidman really going to teach me about my business?" (Just as one example.)

The 3rd shift: Raising the Bar.
Audiences could now watch the best speeches ever delivered — on demand, for free. The greatest TED Talks. Legendary commencement addresses. Viral last lectures. Audiences walked into ballrooms with that bar in their heads. The speakers didn't get worse. But the comparison set got infinitely better.

THE AI ERA
Now

Information on the internet today isn't just accessible. Now it's personalized. Which means today’s speeches need to offer information and experiences that’s better than a conversation with Claude.

The good news is, as Skift’s Meetings’ Megatrends 2026 report puts it: live events are becoming the antidote to AI slop.

The question every speaker reading this should be sitting with is:

What's scarce for audiences today? (keep reading to find out)

ZOOM OUT

Storytellers have always adjusted to the wants of audiences.

Live theater → Movie theaters → Episodic TV → 24/7 streaming

Each format shift evolved the art form. A script from the 1940s is structurally different from a script in 2026. Pacing, exposition, length, and what scenes have to do in the first thirty seconds.

The medium didn't kill the storyteller. It just rewrote what good storytelling sounds like.

Movies aren't dead. Theater isn't dead.

The keynote isn’t dying. It’s evolving.

Don’t keep running the version your audiences have already moved past.

Human presence is scarce.
People work from home, behind screens. Work is asynchronous and isolated. Interpersonal interaction is genuinely rarer than ever before.

In a world that's all information-push, drawing-out is scarce.
Information comes at you constantly. What's vanishing is anything that pulls something out of you. The Socratic facilitator who points where to look instead of telling you what to see. Audiences are saturated with content that’s coming at them and starved for experiences that draw their own thinking out.

Orchestrated group experience (with individual revelation) is scarce.
This is the deepest layer and the one most speakers miss. We're tribal creatures. There's something the human nervous system needs from being in a group of other humans, working through ideas together, that you can't replicate alone. The room itself is part of the experience, and the experience is part of the insight.

An integrated speech treats the entire event as the canvas, not just the stage.

The time you spend on the platform is the centerpiece, but the speech extends backwards into how you show up before, outward into what happens in the room while you're on stage, and forwards into what the audience does with it after.

1. Self-Locating.

Build a moment into your speech where the audience places themselves on your framework. A poll. A paddle. A color-coded sticker. They apply it to themselves in real time, and they see where their peers land.

2. Compare With Your Neighbor.

A short prompt that creates an immediate one-on-one exchange between two audience members. Sixty seconds, write down X. Now turn to the person next to you and compare.

The point is the live experience of how differently two professionals in the same room can think about the same prompt. It's the lowest-friction way to get the audience thinking with each other while you're still leading.

3. Build or Solve Something Together.

Hands-on construction or puzzles during the speech. The act of building or solving is part of the learning. Tactile, memorable, and creates an automatic peer-comparison moment when people glance at each other's work.

4. The Reframe Catch.

Early in your talk, ask the audience to write down the one assumption they walked in with. After your reframe section, ask them to check whether they still hold it.

The point is the catch itself. The audience experiences themselves changing their mind in real time. Most insight is invisible to the person having it. This move makes it visible.

5. The Integration Station.

A designated space at the event where the audience can keep working with your lesson during breaks, between sessions, and across the rest of the event. Your speech doesn't end when you walk off stage. It keeps living in the room. A few options:

The Reflection Station. Where attendees write a one-line answer to a prompt and leave it behind. The wall fills up across the day.

The Diagnostic Station. An interactive visual of your framework with prompts for self-assessment.

The Conversation Starter Station. A wall where attendees vote on which topics from your speech they'd most like to discuss further. The planner uses the votes to host mini-discussions later in the event.

What’s the most memorable thing you’ve seen a speaker ask an audience to do in a room? …and did it work?

Reply and let me know.

ONE QUESTION, ONE ANSWER

Less than you'd think.

Here's something most speakers don't know: traditionally, professional speakers charge the same fee for a 45-minute keynote as they do for a half-day program.

Reason: whether on stage for forty-five minutes or 3 hours, the speaker is committing roughly the same chunk of their day to the event.

So if planners are pushing toward 20-minute time slots that doesn't mean your fee shrinks.

What changes is the packaging.

Use the ideas in today’s newsletter to include value before, during, and after the event.

A note for the B2B speakers who don't take a fee:

The same applies to B2B speakers who don't take a fee. Many of you use stages as a business development channel. The integration moves are the pipeline.

Fees, packaging, positioning, conversion from the stage.

These are the questions serious B2B speakers run into constantly. And there isn’t one “right” answer. The right move depends on your business model, your offers, and the rooms you’re in.

That’s the work we do inside Stage & Strategy – an invitation‑only community for B2B speakers who use stages to drive real revenue, not just “awareness.” Members get live coaching, courses, guest experts, and plug‑and‑play templates to turn every talk into a predictable pipeline.

Inside Stage & Strategy, you will:

If you’re a B2B speaker or founder using speaking to grow your business and you want your next 12 months of stages to be your most profitable yet, request a conversation and we’ll see if it’s a fit for the next wave of members.

Here are some links I thought you’d enjoy.