Conor Neill spent years studying why 19 out of 20 speakers lose their audience in the first sentence.
3 best ways to start a speech (worst to unforgettable):
1. 19 out of 20 speakers open the exact same forgettable way. They say their name, where they are from, and what the talk is about. But all of that is already printed on the paper in front of the audience. By repeating what people already know, you send a signal that now is a safe time to check their phone. The opening that feels safest is the one that loses the room.
2. The worst possible start is fumbling with the equipment. How much time do I have? Is this plugged in? Is the mic working? Neill says this happens constantly at conferences, and it is painful because it is often the first time the audience meets this person. They came expecting a leader in the industry, and a kid presenting on giraffes at school would have done a better job.
3. There are only three real ways to start a speech, and Neill ranks them. The same logic applies to walking into a group at a networking event. If you approach three strangers and announce your name, age, and hobbies, they walk away. The opening has to earn attention, not just deliver information.
4. The third best way is a question that matters to the audience. Not a question about you, but one that frames a problem the audience actually faces. It pulls them in because the answer is something they need, which makes them lean in to hear where you go with it.
5. The second best way is a factoid that shocks. Neill's examples: there are more people alive today than have ever died, or the energy reaching Earth from the sun every two minutes equals the entire annual energy usage of humanity, every car, every light, every air conditioner, for a whole year. A fact that forces the audience to rethink something buys you their full attention.
6. Shock facts work even better now because anyone can verify them. Given two or three minutes, the audience can Google whether what you said is true. Neill points out they trust him partly because he looks the part and has the credentials, but the facts hold up under checking. The credibility of a surprising, verifiable claim is what makes it land.
7. The best way to start is the same way you start a story for a child. Once upon a time. When Neill says those words, his daughter leans forward and engages, because we were all trained as kids to recognize when a story is coming. We also learned to recognize when a teacher is about to deliver 40 minutes that will not matter to our lives.
8. There is a grown-up way to say once upon a time. Jack Welch and Steve Jobs do not literally open with a fairytale line, but they signal a story is coming. Listen to the interesting people at a dinner table or the person holding a group of eight at a networking event, and you will hear it. Neill's own version: the last time I was in this room, someone said something to me that changed how I think about speaking. The audience immediately wants to know what was said.
9. The pause is part of the technique. After teasing that someone said something that changed his thinking, Neill can pause for 30 seconds, even two or three minutes, and the audience sits there wanting to know what it was. Creating that gap, and then holding it, is what pulls people to the edge of their seats. The tension does the work.
10. Stories are about people, never about things. If you want to tell a good story about your product, do not talk about the software. Talk about the people who built it, what they sacrificed, what matters to them. All the features and benefits are already in the document and the PowerPoint. What the audience needs is to trust you and care about you as a person, because that is what makes them decide to act.
11. Connect the topic to your own life, because in speaking we assume self-interest. Tell the story of why you joined the company, or the first time you saw someone's life changed by what you do. When you show what quality of life means to you and how your work affects a customer's quality of life, that is where the stories that connect you to the audience come from.
The Head of Claude Code at Anthropic said he hasn’t written code by hand in months.
In 2 days he shipped 49 full features. All written 100% by AI.
He just dropped a 30 min talk on exactly how he does it.
Worth more than any $500 vibe coding course. Bookmark it:
How we prompt AI is very different in 2026 than 2022 when ChatGPT came out.
I'm teaching a new course, AI Prompting for Everyone, to help you become an AI power user — whatever your current skill level.
It covers skills that apply across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other AI tools. How to use deep research mode for well-researched reports on complex questions. How to give AI the right context, including more documents and images than most people realize you can provide. When to ask AI to think hard for several minutes on important decisions like what car to buy, what to study, or what job to take. And how to use AI to generate images, analyze data, and build simple games and websites.
I also cover intuitions about how these models work under the hood, so you know when to trust an answer and when not to.
Along the way, you'll see flying squirrels, a creativity test, some of my old family photos, and fireworks.
Join me at https://t.co/tcQc4iJAJG
My guest today is Paul Tudor Jones (@ptj_official), one of the greatest macro traders of all time.
He correctly predicted the 1987 stock market crash and shorted the Japanese bubble in 1990. For over 40 years, his flagship fund has had a negative correlation to the S&P 500. 100% of his returns are alpha.
He says today's market has so many similarities to 2000, "the easiest bear market I've ever seen in my whole life."
He makes the case for going long dollar-yen, why Bitcoin beats gold as an inflation hedge, and why he was wrong about Warren Buffett.
But what I'll remember most from this conversation is Paul's zest for life. He's 71 and still wakes at 2:30 every morning to trade the London open. He works out for two hours a day. He walks with his wife every evening. He travels the country chasing peak spring and peak fall. He's so excited about the songs picked for his funeral that he wishes he could be there to hear them.
Paul has lived five lifetimes in one. He's one of the most entertaining and interesting people I've met, and the conversation will leave you searching to be as passionate about what you do as he is about what he does.
Enjoy!
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:00 The Kindest Thing
13:19 Trading vs. Investing
17:33 Lessons from Warren Buffet
22:24 The Existential Risks of AI
29:54 The Nature of Trading
31:46 Bitcoin
35:55 Bubbles
42:08 A Day in the Life of PTJ
46:00 Information Overload
47:07 Passion for Markets
50:49 The Robin Hood Foundation
54:18 The Workless World
56:03 Journalism
1:00:00 Principal Components of a Great Life
1:05:06 Kill Them With Kindness
"No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future." - former GE executive Ian Wilson quoted by James Clear
George Bernard Shaw was at one of those awful cocktail parties, where nothing gets said. Someone asked him if he was enjoying himself. He answered "It's the only thing I am enjoying here" - story told by Anthony de Mello in #Awareness
@michaelxpettis The issue I see is that a large part of the debt growth has been on public sector balance sheets. So if you do debt forgiveness you will only aggravate this problem and states defaulting would just aggravate the problem. So moderate inflation is the only way out.