What AI Can't Write For You: Stories and Structure (Part 2)

John: 00:00:00

If you got my last solo episode, you'll know I spent a good

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while going through the tells that

give away a keynote that's been

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written a little too much with AI.

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Things like the rhetorical padding,

the sycophancy, the fabricated stats.

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And I think a lot of people

went away from that thinking,

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"Right, I've cleaned that up.

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I've caught myself doing all these

rhetorical things, and job done."

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It isn't done, because

avoiding the obvious tells is

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the floor, not the ceiling.

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There's a whole level underneath

that where speakers who've done

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everything right on the AI front are

still quietly handing over the parts

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of their keynote that were never

for AI to write in the first place.

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So today, I want to get into what those

parts actually are, the difference between

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a personal story and a personalized

one, because these are not the same

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thing, and most speakers don't really

find that out until it dies in the room.

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And I also want to talk about something

much more practical, which is why

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you build a keynote to run for 45

minutes, and then rarely actually

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delivers it exactly 45 minutes, and

what that means for how you should

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be structuring things from the start.

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So welcome to Professional Speaking,

the show for professional speakers

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who are serious about speaking and

becoming known, booked, and paid.

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My name is John Ball, professional

speaker, speaker business coach,

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stand-up comedian, and sci-fi nerd, and

I'm here as your guide on the journey

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to a successful speaking business.

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Right.

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So personal versus personalized.

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Let me give you the short version first,

and then we'll pull it apart properly.

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Personal gets you in the room.

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Personalized is what keeps

you being asked back.

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Now, on the surface, these sound

like the same thing, don't they?

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It happened to you.

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You're telling it.

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What's the difference?

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But I promise you, the difference is

doing an enormous amount of work, and

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it's the exact thing that separates a

keynote that gets a warm response and a

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keynote that gets someone in the audience

turning to their colleague afterwards and

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going, "Did you hear the bit about…"

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That second reaction is the whole game.

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That's what gets you rebooked.

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That's what gets you referred, and

it's almost never happening off the

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back of a story that was just personal.

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So here's the actual definition

I want you to work with.

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A personal story is something

that happened to you.

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A personalized story is something

that happened to you, chosen and

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shaped because it does a specific

job for this specific audience.

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That word chosen is doing a lot

of the lifting in that sentence.

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Most speakers don't choose their stories.

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They default to them.

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Maybe you've got two or three

stories that you always tell.

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They're comfortable.

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You know exactly where the laugh lines are

or the emotional beats, like where they

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land, and so you reach for them regardless

of who's actually sat in front of you,

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and that's the personal story trap.

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It's not that the story's bad,

it's that you haven't asked whether

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it's the right story for this room.

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So I want to give you four questions

that I actually use with clients when

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we're auditing which stories earn a

place in a talk, and I'd encourage

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you to run your own stories through

these properly, not just nodding along.

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So first one, did it cost you something?

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We're talking about stakes here.

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Good stories need stakes.

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and I mean actually cost you,

embarrassment, money, a relationship,

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your standing or status in some way.

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If nothing was risked in the telling

of it, you come out of that story

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looking basically fine the whole way

through, and it's not doing the job.

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Audiences can tell the difference

when a story has nothing at

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stake for the person telling it.

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Second, does it have a direct line to

the argument you're making, or is it

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just thematically in the right area?

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I think this one catches

a lot of people out.

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Like, you've got a nice story

maybe about resilience, and you're

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giving a talk that's broadly

about resilience, so in it goes.

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Closest thing you can think of.

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But does the story actually prove

the specific point you're making

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in that specific section, or is it

just vaguely resilience-flavored?

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Those are very different things.

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Third, can this particular audience

map it into their own situation?

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Now, I think one story that I like

to use, which a lot of people do find

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very relatable, even if they didn't

live through it at the time, was what

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happened to me when, I was on a flight

th,: 2001

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on the flight as a flight attendant,

and there was a communication issue

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where the flight crew had decided to

keep back what was happening in New

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York and other parts of America from the

people on the plane other than the crew.

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And once it became very apparent that

we were turning back and that we were

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keeping information from them, that

created a whole new set of problems.

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Very relevant story for when I'm talking

about some of the issues in communication,

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that come down from the top that often

are a bit cut off or don't always

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think through the consequences of how

decisions and choices are made there So

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fourth, and this is a big one for me.

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Could literally nobody else

on a stage tell that story?

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Because if the answer's no, if it's

a story that any competent speaker

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in your niche could tell because it's

really more of an anecdote about the

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industry than about you specifically,

that's a good sign that it's

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personal, but it's not personalized.

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So here's exactly why AI can't

help you with any of that.

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It has zero access to which parts of

your actual life carried the real stakes.

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It has none other than what you give it.

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So if you ask it to help you with your

stories, it does one of two things.

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It either genericizes whatever you give

it, smooths out the specific awkward human

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bits because those don't pattern match to

what a story should sound like, or, and,

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and this is worse really, it invents one.

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It gives you a plausible-sounding

anecdote with a beginning, middle,

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and end, and it will mean absolutely

nothing because nobody lived it.

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AI's job in this part of the

process starts after you've

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supplied the raw material.

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It can help you shape a story once

you've handed it something real.

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It can't go and find that real thing for

you because it doesn't have its own life

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to be able to pull those stories from.

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It can only scrape them

from other people's content.

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Now, I will say as well, I've worked in

environments where speakers have been

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expected to use particular kinds of

stories and adapt themselves to that.

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Now, if you're teaching someone else's

material and they have specific stories

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they want you to use, it might not

sit comfortably with you, but you're

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probably gonna have to do that.

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This is not the same thing as where you

are the creator of the keynote, delivering

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your own content and having the choice

to be able to give your own stories.

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Don't borrow other people's

stories because you think

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that they fit right for you.

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A personal, personalized story should

come from you, have stakes, and be about

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you or related to your life or something

that's from, at least from your point of

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view of a situation that has happened.

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Now, the second thing I want to get

into, and this one's a bit more of a

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practical structural point rather than

a philosophical one Most speakers build

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just one version of their keynote,

and it runs whatever length it runs,

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usually somewhere around forty-five

minutes because that's roughly the

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industry standard, and that's the talk,

and that's the only talk that exists.

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And then a booking comes in and the brief

says, "We want twenty minutes," or the

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brief says, "We've actually got you for

the full ninety with a workshop element."

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And suddenly you're either hacking chunks

out of that talk that wasn't built to

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lose those chunks or padding it up with

stuff that wasn't really meant to be in

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there to stretch it out, and it will show.

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It will always show.

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So the way I want you thinking about

this is design the core skeleton

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for forty-five, but know precisely

which sections are load-bearing

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and which are expansion material.

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load-bearing means that if you cut it,

the whole thing stops making sense.

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Expansion means it adds some richness,

examples, a bit more depth, but

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the argument survives without it.

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why this actually matters commercially,

and why this is the bit that people skip

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past, is that briefs vary constantly, and

if your talk only works at one specific

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length, you're gonna be structurally

fragile, and that's not a small thing.

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That fragility is going to cost you

bookings that you would otherwise get

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because you're either turning down briefs

that don't fit your one version or you're

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taking them and delivering something that

doesn't quite work, and neither one of

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those is good for your long-term career.

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So the actual takeaway here, and this is

something that you can go and do this week

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if you want to, go through your current

keynote or at least your signature keynote

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if you have multiple, and mark out what,

your non-negotiable through line is.

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The steel thread, if you like.

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The version that still works, still

makes sense, still lands even if you

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were somehow only given twenty minutes.

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And then separately mark out your

expansion material, the stuff that's there

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to fill you out towards sixty, ninety, or

whatever the longer version needs to be.

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Know the difference before somebody

asks you to be flexible on that on short

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notice because that phone call comes

more often than you'd probably think,

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and it's a much better conversation to

have when you already know the answer.

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So if I pull these two things

together with what we've covered

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last time, here's the actual thread

running through both these episodes.

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Every single trap that we've talked

about, the sycophancy, the fabricated

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stats, the rhetorical padding, and

now the generic stories and the

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structurally fragile talk, all of it

comes back to the same root cause.

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AI can accelerate the mechanics

of putting a talk together.

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What it can't do is take on the

risk of that on your behalf.

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It can't go into your actual life and mine

it for the story that costs you something.

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look, it may be possible to prompt

AI to help draw those stories out

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of you, it just can't do it for you.

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And it can't build you a structure

that flexes with judgment because

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judgment is exactly the thing

that it doesn't have any skin in.

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Your keynote's only worth building if a

machine couldn't have built it for you.

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Everything else is just

gonna be speedier mediocrity.

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Now, one more place that this exact same

principle shows up briefly is frameworks.

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A good framework earns its place

because it's memorable, and it actually

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helps someone diagnose something

true about their own situation.

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It's a really useful tool to have to be

able to shorten and expand very easily.

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If you have multiple elements to a

framework, you can get clear on which are

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the non-negotiable parts of that and which

are the bits that you could leave out of

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a keynote and perhaps add into a workshop,

or at least let people know that there's

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more because there's a whole framework

that you're only teaching a part of or

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you're only talking about a part of it.

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Now, a hollow one, and AI is

very good at producing hollow

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frameworks, is more decorative.

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It's just an usually a nice

acronym or something like that.

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I'm not gonna get into that properly today

because I've got something much better

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coming up for you on that very, very soon.

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My good friend Susanna Reay is joining

me for next week's episode, and She's

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written a brilliant book called Framework

Thinking, and we're going to deep dive

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on exactly what makes a framework work

rather than just what sounds like one.

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And that, I promise you, is not

an episode that you want to miss.

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This is really valuable stuff for creating

your IP, thought leadership and more.

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So with that said, make sure you

are following the show to get

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next week's episode with Susanna.

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It's a absolute blinder,

I can promise you that.

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And if you are looking for some help on

your keynotes, on becoming more known,

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better paid, more booked, do check out

the Known, Booked and Paid Blueprint.

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It

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If you are listening to this just after

publication, there's still time to get

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in on the September cohort, which is

the founding cohort for this blueprint

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program, and I'm offering that at 50%

for those who are looking to either

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boost or develop a speaking career

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You'll find a link for that in the

show notes, and you'll find links

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to reach out to me if you have any

questions about the program or any

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other ways that you can work with me

in the meantime, have an amazing week.

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Go and do something worth talking about