I Told AI I Wanted to Wear Shorts in January. Here's Why Speakers Should Care

Why I Went to AI Without Knowing the Right Words

Nebraska winters and I have reached an understanding. They happen. I complain about them. Every year.

A while back, Mark and I started talking about getting away during the worst part of winter. Nothing complicated. We weren't looking to move or become full-time RV people. I just knew what I wanted.

I wanted to wear shorts and a T-shirt. No coat. No hat. No scarf. Preferably no scraping ice off anything.

We thought about taking a camper somewhere south. But there were catches. We'd need a place to leave the camper year-round. Not too far from Nebraska. Water nearby would be nice. A cute town would be nice. And there was a budget.

Here's the interesting part. I didn't know what that kind of place was called. RV resort? Seasonal campground? Snowbird community? Long-term camper storage? I had no idea.

So instead of searching for a term I didn't know, I just told ChatGPT the situation. Nebraska winters can be brutal. We want a month or two somewhere warmer. We're thinking a camper, and it needs to stay there year-round. Then I kept adding clues. Shorts-and-T-shirt weather. Maybe Florida or Alabama. Water would be nice but not mandatory. Here's our budget.

I knew the result I wanted. I just didn't know what to call it.

Speakers, that matters more than you might think.

What Does This Have to Do With Speaking?

Speakers spend a lot of time deciding what to call what they do. Resilience. Change management. Leadership. Employee engagement. Workplace culture. Emotional intelligence. Burnout prevention. Communication.

Those labels matter. They help organize your expertise.

But here's where we get into trouble. We start assuming the person who needs us will use that exact same language.

She may not.

An event planner might never type "organizational resilience keynote speaker." She may not even know that's the phrase she needs. But she knows this:

"Our managers are exhausted. We've been through restructuring, new technology, staffing shortages and constant change. Morale is low, and I need someone who can help them feel capable again, without another motivational speech that misses the point."

That planner knows exactly what she wants. She just may not know what you call it.

I didn't know I needed an annual RV site in a warm-weather snowbird destination. I knew I was cold.

How Does AI Change the Way People Search?

Traditional search often required us to know the right words. You had to figure out what to type into Google before Google could help.

With conversational AI, you can start somewhere else entirely. You can begin with:

• Here's my situation.
• Here's what I'm trying to solve.
• Here's what matters to me.
• What should I look at?

That's a very different thing, and it means speakers need to think beyond simply putting their topic name all over their website.

Is My Topic Name Enough, or Do I Need More?

Let's say your expertise is employee engagement. If your website repeatedly says "Employee Engagement Speaker," that's useful for someone who already knows that's what they need.

But what about the planner who says:

"Our people are showing up and doing their jobs, but nobody seems invested anymore. We've lost some really good employees, communication feels disconnected, and leadership wants to rebuild trust."

She may need you desperately. She may never say the words "employee engagement."

This is why your website, speaker page, talk descriptions and articles need to talk about more than the category you belong in. They need to describe the world before someone hires you.

Those are dots too. And AI can't connect dots you haven't put down.

How Do I Stop Making the Planner Translate My Expertise?

This is one of the easiest things to fix.

Look at language like this: "I speak on transformational leadership and human-centered organizational change."

Perfectly respectable. But what does that look like at 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon, inside the company that needs you?

Now try: "I help leaders guide teams through periods of rapid change without losing trust, communication or the people they need most."

Now we can picture the situation. You haven't abandoned transformational leadership or organizational change. You've translated it into a problem someone recognizes.

That translation matters for humans. And it gives AI systems more useful context when someone is researching a possible fit.

No magic tricks. No secret AI code. Just clearer information.

What Should I Actually Do This Week?

Here's a simple exercise. Forget your official speaking topic for a minute. Forget your keynote title. Pretend you're sitting across from the event planner who needs you most. She has no idea who you are, and she doesn't know the professional phrase you use for your expertise.

What does she say?

Maybe:

• "Our sales team is good, but they've lost confidence after a rough year."
• "Half our employees are working remotely and people don't feel connected anymore."
• "Our nurses are exhausted, and I need something practical, not another speech telling them to practice self-care."
• "We have talented women in our organization who keep holding themselves back from leadership roles."

Now ask yourself: does my online presence contain those ideas? Not word-for-word. We're not trying to predict every prompt someone might type. We're trying to make sure there's enough clear, useful context around your expertise that your fit can be understood.

Your website shouldn't just answer "What does this speaker talk about?" It should help answer "When would someone need this speaker?" That may be the more valuable question.

Because once you know when your expertise becomes relevant, you start writing differently. Instead of "5 Tips for Better Leadership," you write "My Best Employee Just Quit. Now What?" That's closer to how a real person experiences the problem. And it's usually more interesting to read too.

Where Can I Go Next to Work on This?

Go to your speaker website and find the section where you explain what you speak about. Read it once. Then ask: would someone with this problem recognize themselves here, even if they didn't know what my topic was called?

If the answer is no, you don't have to redo the whole website. Just add one sentence. Something like, "You might need this talk if..." and finish it in the language your buyer would actually use. That's one more dot.

If you want real help getting this clear across your whole online presence, that's exactly what we built the Speaker Positioning Suite for. It walks you through your audience, your message and your proof, so your website says what your buyer needs to hear, not just what you call yourself.

And if you'd like to talk this through with others working on the same thing, we unpacked this whole topic in this week's post and podcast. Come find us there.

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