Conference Speaker

Leverage My Decades of Experience

You Tell Me How I Can Help You With Your Event

Planning conferences, keynotes, workshops, and breakout groups is stressful and complicated. Pick my brain and leverage my 30 years of sales, training, consulting, and speaking to help you with:

1. Goal: What is the ideal outcome of your event, i.e., motivate, inspire, big-picture, or tactical, brass tacks advice? Allow me to make a recommendation on how I can customize my signature talks to help you reach your goals.
2. Format: Is this an opening or closing keynote? Maybe a workshop or breakout session? Is this in-person or remote? Heck, it can be all of the above. I'll show you how we can promote the session ahead of time, over-deliver at the event, and reinforce the message and lessons learned in follow-up sessions.
3. Attendees: Message-to-market match is key in any business. Our job in business is to meet our people where they are. So let me know who your people are so we can strategize on how best to serve them.
4. When: When is the talk? Are we catching them first thing in the morning, during lunch, or after a long day of sessions? Maybe it's even after lunch when they are struggling to focus or even stay awake. There's a talk for that! 
5. Why: Why are they attending? Is it mandatory? Is it optional? Are they paying their own money to be there? Again, we gotta meet them where they are, which includes "why they are," so "Talk to me, Maverick!"

Tongue-in-Cheek...or Crazy Like a Fox?

Date My Daughters...Please

"Are you crazy? What does dating have to do with my event?"

The answer to the first question is "Yes. Aren't we all?"

The answer to the second question is "Everything."

In 2023, the fourth of my five girls went to homecoming and prom with a group of girls because boys didn't have the guts or rizz to ask them out.

That happened to my first three daughters as well, but in 2023, the word of the year was "Rizz." While my sweet, naive wife of 29 years didn't know the word's meaning, my two sons and five daughters did. It's slang for charisma, and most people lack it.

"Fine, Wes, it's a new, catchy word with kids. How does it apply to my event?"

Matthew 18:20 tells us, "'For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them.'" Well, when two or three meet for any reason, a sale is made, because everything is sales.

Right now, you are negotiating venues, food, travel, goodie bags, lanyards, and speakers. Your people negotiate raises, promotions, vacation days, and what they can expense. Your server sells you appetizers, desserts, and the catch of the day. Your significant other and children sell you on going out to dinner or ordering pizza or watching a movie or having friends over.

Everything is sales, and the key to sales is owning your space, which some call the frame, which takes confidence, which is the foundation of charisma, or rizz.

Yes, this is a funny/awkward/interesting/offensive title, which means it does not violate the #1 sin of marketing, which we can discuss when you...

To Make Any Sale, You Must Make Every Sale

This is my foundational message and is a great way to set the tone of your conference. This talk is based on my nine years in the Air Force, being promoted to GM in my first year of selling mobile homes in the Deep South, a decade selling technology to giants like Sprint, Google, and Apple, and nearly 20 years of selling SaaS, consulting, and training on my own around the world.

There's a saying that "fish don't know they're wet." Well, most people, even salespeople, don't understand that:

1. Everything is sales.
2. Everything you do in sales advances or hinders your progress.

Your attendees will become and remain enlightened and inspired—and a little frightened—with their new insight into how the world of sales and marketing impacts every aspect of their professional and personal lives.

With this new insight, they will know the power and simplicity of the saying, "Small hinges swing big doors," and they will be able to easily apply that to how they speak, write, and engage with everyone they meet to get what they want, and even deflect and counter these techniques when manipulators are trying to lure you into doing something that is not in your best interest.

When's The Last Time You Did Something For The First Time?

Just 66 days before my 47th birthday, I caved and attended my first Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class at the behest of a "friend" who had literally nagged me for six months to give it a try.

I say "friend" because anyone who invites you to be turned into a human pretzel for 90 minutes a day—and to pay for the privilege—may not be a friend.

But he was, and still is, and nearly eight years later, we still laugh about it.

However, these have been some hard years. I can talk about it now, but for the first several months of training, I did not tell my wife how much I ached. Having never grappled and having fallen into a bit of a rut in my fitness endeavors, I was not prepared for the mental and physical challenges that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu throws at you.

But I was hooked, and from the first week I've trained 5-6 days a week, which proves I'm crazy.

The point of this talk is not to recruit your attendees to train in BJJ—although I will encourage them to do so! No, the point is to encourage them to try something new and achieve something new.

Everything we do, from our diets to how we spend our downtime to the projects and assignments we take on at work, affects everything else.

Yes, mastering something can bring rewards and fulfillment, but to remain young at heart, vibrant in life, and an asset to your company and your customers, you must always challenge and reward yourself by trying something new.

It's how Gmail was invented, and it's how at least one of your attendees will reinvent themselves!