You’ve decided to speak. The next question is: what do I actually talk about?
You’re ideally looking for the intersection between what you know, what your audience needs, and what the event calls for.
Start with what you’ve lived through
Your easiest topics are the ones you’ve survived, not had to research.
Think about the moments in your career where you had to work something out from scratch—where nobody handed you a playbook. Audiences resonate more with those stories.
Take a speaker who spent three years managing a remote team before most companies had a policy for it. That’s a topic.
A first-generation professional who had to learn unwritten corporate rules nobody told them about. That’s another topic.
A teacher who built an online curriculum with no budget and no training. That’s a great topic, too.
You don’t need a dramatic story, just a true one. The most powerful speaking topics come from ordinary problems most people in a room are still trying to solve.
Write down ten things you’ve figured out the hard way. Pick the one you’d explain to a colleague over lunch without a second thought. That one is probably your best starting point.
Another great tip: look at your daily calendar. The meetings and tasks you do every day are a rich source of keynotes and workshops. They’re already second nature to you, but likely difficult for your audience.
Frame the topic around a problem, not a subject
“I talk about leadership” is a subject. “I help new managers stop avoiding difficult conversations” is a transformation.
Event organisers and audience members don’t book subjects. They book answers. Your topic has to connect to a question the audience hasn’t been able to answer; one they wake up thinking about.
Before you lock anything in, write one sentence: who does this talk help, and what does it help them do? If you can’t write that sentence easily, the topic needs more work.
A useful test: If someone in the audience described your talk to a colleague the next day, what would they say? If the answer is “it was about leadership,” you haven’t gone specific enough. If the answer is “she talked about how to give feedback to someone who gets defensive every time,” you’ve hit the jackpot.
Match your topic to the room
A talk that goes brilliantly at a startup event could fall flat at a corporate conference.
The room changes everything: who’s in it, what they already know, what the organiser is hoping to achieve, and what mood the audience is in by the time you take the stage (ever spoken right before or after lunch?).
When an invitation comes in, ask before you pitch:
- Who are the attendees?
- What’s the theme of the day?
- What do the organisers want people to leave thinking or doing?
- What are the other speakers covering?
That last question matters more than you realise. If three other people on the programme are covering the same ground, find a more specific angle on your topic (or change your topic altogether). You want to be the speaker who said the thing nobody else said.
| Question to ask | Why it matters |
| Who’s in the room? | Shapes the language and examples you use |
| What do they already know? | Tells you where to start |
| What are other speakers covering? | Helps you find a distinct position |
| What does the organiser want people to do differently? | Keeps your talk useful, not just interesting |
Build a small set of topics, not one
The most reliable speakers have three to five topics they can deliver well, and they choose the right one for each room.
- One might be a personal story with a practical lesson at the end.
- Another might be a how-to talk built around a clear framework.
- A third might be a provocation or bold claim that starts a conversation.
Think of your topics like tools in a bag. You wouldn’t take a hammer to every job. Having a range means you say yes to more opportunities without compromising on quality.
Here’s a rough way to organise your options:
| Topic type | Best for | Tone |
| Personal narrative | Keynotes, inspiration-led events | Warm, story-driven |
| Practical how-to | Workshops, training days | Clear, step-by-step |
| Bold opinion | Conferences, panel debates | Direct, opinion-led |
| Research or data | Corporate events, B2B audiences | Credible, evidence-first |
Test your keynote before you commit
Before you spend weeks building a full talk, test the core idea in a smaller setting.
- Write a short post about it online.
- Bring it up in a meeting.
- Give a five-minute version at a local event.
If people ask follow-up questions, you’ve found something worth developing. If nobody responds, you’ve saved yourself a lot of preparation time.
The fastest feedback loop is teaching one piece of your topic to someone who doesn’t already agree with you. If they follow it and find it useful, the talk has legs.
Know when to move on from a talk
Topics go stale. Something that felt fresh three years ago might now be everywhere on the speaking circuit (NFTs, anyone?).
Watch what’s getting covered in your industry. When your talk stops feeling distinctive, push it to a more specific angle or build something new from the experience you’ve gathered since.
The speakers with long careers stay honest about what they know, clear about who they’re speaking to, and willing to keep developing what they say.
Three-time TEDx speaker, trainer, and host of The Mo Talk Show.
