Unlocking Inspiration: Why a Guest Speaker Can Transform Your Australian Event
Introduction Picture this: you walk into a conference room in Sydney, the room humming with quiet chatter, and then one person starts talking. Everyone stops. Listens. Really listens. That is the power of a good guest speaker. I’m Nathan Baws. For more than 40 years, I have built businesses from scratch right across Australia – from dusty workshops in Perth to high-rise offices in Melbourne. I have stood on stages in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, and everywhere in between. And I can tell you this: the right guest speaker does not just fill time. They change the room. This article is for you – whether you run a small business in regional Victoria, organise corporate off-sites in the Whitsundays, teach at a TAFE in Cairns, or lead a university society in Canberra. You want your next event to matter. You want people to leave differently from when they arrived. I will walk you through exactly how a guest speaker makes that happen, how to pick the right one, and how to make sure the day works. By the end, you will know what to do next. Key Takeaways: Understanding the Role of a Guest Speaker in Australian Events Australia runs on events. Trade mornings in Geelong. Leadership days in Darwin. School career nights in Launceston. A guest speaker is the person who walks in, spends an hour or two, and leaves everyone talking about it for weeks. What Actually Makes a Guest Speaker Work I have watched speakers flop, and I have watched them fly. The ones who fly do three things. First, they know their stuff cold – no waffling, no guessing. Second, they talk like a normal person, not a textbook. Third, they finish with clear next steps. When I spoke at a startup breakfast in Newcastle last year, I spent ten minutes on how I turned a $400 marketing budget into $40,000 in sales. People took notes. They emailed me later. That is the benchmark. How a Guest Speaker Keeps a Room Alive Energy drops after lunch. Phones come out. A guest speaker stops that. They ask questions. They pause. They look people in the eye. At a mining safety day in Kalgoorlie, I got the whole room to stand up and swap seats with someone they did not know. Two minutes of movement, ten minutes of new conversation, and suddenly everyone was awake. Simple, but it works. Fitting the Talk to the Crowd One size never fits all. A room of year-12 students in Alice Springs wants different examples from a boardroom in Sydney’s Barangaroo. I change the stories every time. For students, I talk about the side hustle I started at 19 while studying. For directors, I talk about the merger that almost sank me in 2008: same lessons, different packaging. Selecting the Ideal Guest Speaker for Your Event You have a date, a venue, and a budget. Now you need the person. Checking Experience Against Your Goals Look at what they have actually done. Not the fancy bio – the results. Have they grown a business in Australia? Survived a recession? Turned around a failing team? I keep a folder of case studies: the café in Fremantle that tripled foot traffic, the online store in Toowoomba that cracked $1 million. Ask for those stories up front. Watching How They Actually Speak YouTube is your friend. Watch a full talk, not the polished three-minute reel. Do they rush? Do they say “um” in every sentence? Do they answer questions properly? I record every talk I give. If I watch it back and cringe, I fix it before the next one. Working the Numbers Travel adds up fast in Australia. A speaker flying from Melbourne to Broome is two flights, one night’s accommodation, and maybe a 4WD transfer. Get quotes early. Most speakers bundle travel into the fee. Ask what is included – prep time, follow-up emails, and handouts. I always throw in a resource pack because people forget 70% of what they hear within 24 hours unless you give them something to keep. Preparing Your Event for a Guest Speaker’s Success A great speaker still needs a great host. The Pre-Event Brief Send one page, no more. Who is in the room? What keeps them up at night? What do you want them walking out ready to do? I had an organiser in Wagga Wagga send me a list of the exact pain points her retail members faced. I rewrote half the talk the night before. Worth every minute. Building in Interaction Do not let the speaker talk for 90 minutes straight. Break it up. Ten minutes of stories, five minutes of table talk, repeat. At a franchise conference on the Gold Coast, we ran a quick “text your biggest hurdle” poll. I answered the top three live. The room loved it. Getting the Word Out Start teasing the speaker four weeks out. Short video clip, one killer quote, a photo from a past event. I once had an organiser post a 15-second clip of me drawing a business model on a napkin. Registration jumped 40% in two days. Measuring the Impact of Your Guest Speaker If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. Quick Feedback That Actually Helps Hand out a half-page survey as people leave. Three questions: What will you do differently? What was the best part? What could improve? I read everyone. At a leadership day in Townsville, 22 people wrote that they would change their Monday morning meeting. That is gold. Checking In Later Email attendees four weeks later. Ask for a one-line update. I do this after every corporate gig. Last month a GM in Adelaide told me the delegation framework I shared saved his team 18 hours a week. Numbers like that justify the fee. Tweaking the Next One Look at what worked and what did not. Too much theory? Cut it. Not enough stories? Add two. I keep a running log. Every event gets better. Integrating Guest









