Zero to Keynote

A field guide for the conference speaker

Learning to speak from the stage was the single most important move I ever made in my career.

It opened doors I didn't even know existed - consulting work, invitations, the chance to travel the world and share my ideas.

But it didn't start well.

My first conference talk was, by my own assessment, a rather hot mess. I bounced around, lost the room, and had an out-of-body experience watching myself fail.

Then, the next day, I signed up to do another one.

A year and eight talks later, I delivered my first keynote.

Zero to Keynote is the field guide I wish I'd had at the beginning.

Not the arm-waving, "go big or go home" school of speaking advice.

The real foundations of speaking well: finding something worth saying, getting it accepted, building the talk, preparing properly, delivering it with calm presence, dealing with nerves, answering questions and surviving the things that inevitably go wrong.

Make every talk a keynote

This is the idea underneath the whole book.

You don't need to wait until someone gives you a keynote slot to behave like a keynote speaker.

Make every talk a keynote.

Treat a 20-minute conference session with the same care you'd give the main event. Find something worth saying. Build it properly. Rehearse it. Think about the audience. Make it land.

Do that consistently, and the bigger opportunities have somewhere to come from.

Twenty years of speaking, in one book

This is a 195-page, full-colour field guide built to be carried to a conference and dipped into as you submit, build and deliver a talk.

It's the consolidation of twenty years of presenting around the world - and of teaching hundreds of people to do the same.

It's for the person thinking: I've got something worth saying. Now how do I get it onto a stage?

Inside the book

Why speak from the stage?

What speaking can do for your ideas, your career and the opportunities that follow.

A hot mess

The story of my first talk, what went wrong, and what I learned from doing it again anyway.

Make every talk a keynote

The principle that runs through the whole book.

What kind of talk should you give?

Finding the right format for your ideas, your audience and the opportunity.

Generating talk ideas

How to find something worth saying — and turn your experience into a talk.

The ten communication principles

The fundamentals that make ideas clearer, more memorable and more likely to land.

Submitting to a conference

How to understand a call for speakers, shape a proposal and give organisers a reason to say yes.

Creating the presentation

Turning an idea into a coherent talk rather than a collection of slides.

The art of being prepared

How to prepare enough to be confident without becoming robotic.

Delivering with calm presence

Nerves, energy, movement, voice, attention and what to do when you're standing in front of a room full of people.

Q&A and dealing with problems

Questions you weren't expecting, technology that misbehaves and the other small disasters that make live speaking live.

How to support a speaker

Useful guidance for organisers, colleagues and anyone helping someone else take the stage.

How to survive a conference

Because getting on stage is only part of the job.

What you get

• 195-page full-colour field guide
• The complete journey from first idea to finished talk
• Practical guidance on proposals, presentation design, preparation and delivery
• The ten communication principles
• Advice on nerves, Q&A and things going wrong
• PDF · Immediate download · Lifetime access
• Version 1, 2025

Every industry needs fresh voices with something worth saying.

There's room for you.

"Presenting my ideas at a conference was my worst nightmare. Now it's the thing that brings me the most joy in my career."

Details

195-page full-colour PDF

Immediate download · Lifetime access

Published by Cultivated

Created in the United Kingdom

A print edition is also available for UK readers — A5, full-colour, gloss paper stock, with a handwritten thank-you note.

£12.99 print

Refunds

For digital products you may request a full refund within 30 days of purchase by emailing info@cultivatednotes.com or visiting our FAQs.