Here’s a scenario every keynote speaker for meeting planners should probably hear.

You’ve booked the venue. The agenda is set. You’ve got your keynote speakers lined up, good speaker reels, solid reviews, a message about resilience or leadership or embracing change. Perfectly fine. Perfectly… fine.

And somewhere in the back of your mind you’re quietly hoping this one lands well.

I get it. I’ve been on the other side of that equation for almost 40 years.

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to after all that time on stage: audiences don’t walk away remembering inspiration. They walk away remembering experiences. The moment the room erupted in laughter when they weren’t expecting it. The moment something clicked that they genuinely didn’t see coming. And this is the part that still gets me, the moment later that same evening when they tried something they just learned and it actually worked.

That’s what I do. It just doesn’t fit in any category you’d expect.

It’s Not a Memory Show. It’s Something Harder to Explain Than That.

In nearly four decades of professional speaking, I can count on one hand the number of times someone has called me specifically looking for a “memory speaker.” It almost never happens that way.

What does happen, usually after someone has seen a clip, or gotten a referral from another planner, is a conversation that starts with, “So what exactly do you do?” Because what I teach doesn’t fit neatly into the usual keynote slots. It’s not motivation. It’s not a leadership framework. There’s no audience ‘repeat after me’ chants or ‘raise your hand if…’ No motivational acronyms or Winston Churchill or Ghandi quotes, which frankly puts me in a pretty small club.

What it is, at its core, is this… remembering people. Their names, the things they’ve told you, the personal details that matter to them.

Simple to say. Genuinely rare to do.

In most rooms I walk into, the majority of people in the audience will forget the name of someone they just met within about 30 seconds of the introduction. Not because they’re distracted or rude, they just weren’t taught any other way. And nobody has ever stood up at a conference and said, “this is actually costing you business.” Until now, I suppose.

The professional who actually remembers, who runs into a client three months later and uses their name, who asks about the thing they mentioned last time, who remembers the name of their partner, or children because they were genuinely paying attention, that person builds relationships that don’t require a follow-up email to keep warm. It’s a trust skill, a relationship skill, and once you see what it does for referrals and retention, you realise it’s a revenue skill too.

Oh, and when I teach it, people laugh, a lot, that part matters more than most speakers will admit.

What Meeting Planners Actually Tell Me Afterward

The feedback I get most often has nothing to do with memory techniques specifically. It’s about what happened in the room.

“The audience was so engaged.”

“They were still talking about it at dinner.”

“You made me look good.”

That last one is my favourite. Mostly because I appreciate the stress and uncertainty every meeting planner experiences.

Here’s why I think it works. The topic is a genuine surprise. Nobody sits down expecting to pick up a skill that’s going to change how they operate both professionally and socially before they get home. They think they’re attending a keynote. What they get is something closer to a show, with real takeaways woven in so naturally that by the time they notice how much they’ve learned, they’re already using it at the conference.

I’ve worked with as diverse an array of clients as financial advisors to dental professionals who feel embarrassed when bumping into their clients/patients locally and forgetting their names. Sales teams have told me that something as straightforward as actually remembering a client’s name and using it naturally, because they genuinely remembered it, have shifted entire tones of conversations. I’ve had association members come up to me years later and quote back things they memorised at one of my keynotes.

I’m not saying this to impress you. I’m telling you because meeting planners deserve to know what they’re actually booking, not just what looks good on a one-sheet.

Who It Works For

Honestly? Almost any room.

That’s not me avoiding the question, it’s genuinely one of the more useful things about this topic. Whether your audience is made up of financial professionals, insurance advisors, healthcare workers, salespeople, executives, or association members, they all operate in the same environment: if their product or service is good, then their success is built on relationships, and relationships start with making people feel like they matter, like they are valued.

I’ve delivered this keynote in more than 35 countries, across financial services, real estate, dental and medical associations, corporate sales teams, and a few industries I probably couldn’t have predicted when I started out. The reason it translates isn’t because I adjust the material for each group, it’s because the human need is the same everywhere. People want to feel seen. The professionals who can make them feel that way have an edge that’s very hard to replicate any other way.

The Part I Didn’t Expect to Become So Relevant

There’s a section I include in almost every talk now that wasn’t part of my original program. It found its way in gradually, because I kept noticing the reaction it got.

It’s about technology. Specifically, about what we’ve quietly handed over to our devices without really deciding to.

We don’t memorise phone numbers anymore. We don’t remember directions. We don’t retain the details of conversations because we assume we can look everything up later, find the person on LinkedIn, check the notes app, re-read emails, and to be fair, mostly we can.

Except the moment of connection doesn’t wait for later. That introduction at the welcome reception, that conversation over lunch, that two-minute exchange before the session starts, those moments either build something or they don’t. No app goes back and rescues a first impression. No CRM makes someone feel like you actually remember them.

It’s a point that lands differently depending on the audience, but it always lands. And it opens up a conversation that goes well beyond remembering names. It’s about attention, about presence, about what it actually means to show up for the people in front of you.

If You’re Looking for Something Different

I know meeting planners are not short on options. Speaker bureaus, LinkedIn, your own network, there’s no shortage of people who will tell you they’re unique and engaging and guaranteed to get your audience fired up.

What I’d say instead is this, if your audience has sat through enough sessions about unlocking potential and leaning into disruption, and the new darling AI, and you want to give them something they’ll actually use, a skill they’ll try before the conference is even over, delivered in a way that makes the room genuinely engaged, I think we should talk.

Nearly 40 years, I still love my job. The material is tight, the laughs are real, and people notice the results fast enough that they come back and tell you about it.

That’s the best pitch I’ve got. I think it’s a pretty good one.

Bob Gray is a keynote speaker who has spent nearly four decades helping professionals in financial services, sales, healthcare, and associations build stronger relationships through the lost art of actually remembering people. He has spoken in more than 35 countries across 6 continents and is based in Canada. Learn more at memoryedge.com.

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Better memory better sales.

How often have you attended a networking event and you bump into someone you’ve met before and you cannot remember a thing about them?

Imagine the impact you could have on your business and your sales if you could walk into a networking event and recall the names of everyone you previously met?

This is the difference between a trained memory and an untrained memory

Take two salespeople selling a comparative service/product, similar features, benefits, price range. They both meet a potential client at a networking event. Two months later all three of them are attending the same conference. Each of the salespeople individually encounter the potential client. Salesperson 1 cannot remember the name of the potential client or where they previously met. Salesperson 2 not only remembers the potential clients name and where they met, but also their partners name who was introduced to them in their first meeting, they also recall they were a huge soccer fan and they were a die-hard Arsenal supporter …. who do you think gets the sale?

Salesperson 2 is not selling a superior product or service; they are selling a superior encounter. People do business with people they like, people they trust, trust builds relationships, relationships builds business.

Salespeople with a trained memory will always outperform salespeople without.

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Digital Amnesia

How Technology is Stealing Your Brain…and how to steal it back!

Digital Amnesia: The experience of forgetting something important because you trust a connected device!

Since we’ve been able to place more memory power in the palm of our hand than was used to land a man on the moon, we’ve banished our own memory to the back burner. The more we rely on technology to retrieve information, the more we erode the process to recall that information ‘naturally’ and we trigger Digital Amnesia.

So is this a problem? Well, aside from the mental health aspects, here’s just one scenario. You have a pre-arranged appointment, you have reviewed all the pertinent information about that client/customer/patient, you’re able to ask after their spouse/partner, kids, calling them all by name, you can even comment on their favourite sports team. They feel you have a great relationship.

A month later you bump into them unexpectedly, not only have you ‘forgotten’ their spouse/partners, kids, names…you can’t even recall THEIR name. How’s that relationship now? How’s your credibility now? How helpful is that device now?

In Bob’s latest highly interactive, empowering, and funny, keynote presentation, he shows you how to keep your memory in shape, how to steal your brain back from technology…and how you’ll never again need to say “Sorry, I forgot your name”.

This same method, which is the foundation of all memory systems dating back thousands of years, can be adapted to recall any sequential information such as presentations, lists, safety procedures and more.

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Here I show a customized ending to a keynote for my Australian client.

One of my biggest challenges when I keynote is convincing the audience that I do NOT have an innate ability to remember things, it is not a ‘natural’ ability…it is an application of systems that ANYONE can learn, adapt and apply to their business. Adapting these systems allow you to stand out from your competition.

Watch the video, it’s just a couple min’s, it will show you the untapped power of our brains.

Funny, unique and interactive in his entertaining conference keynotes and workshops, Bob Gray reveals the untapped potential in each of us. His empowering systems and their many applications in the business world give participants immediate ‘walk away’ value. Book Bob Gray today as your next conference keynote speaker.  Watch Bob in action.

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Ask the average person what percentage of our brain we use and the majority will say 10%, very few will say we use 100%, which would be the correct answer. Imaging methods have shown that even simple tasks produce activity throughout the whole brain.

So where did this 10% myth come from?  It seems to be traced back to the American psychologist William James, who in his 1906 speech ‘The Energies of Men’ said:

“We make use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.”

He never actually stated a percentage, yet somehow along the way this ‘undeveloped potential’ was picked up and morphed into a percentage. One example is a 1929 ad that ran in The World Almanac, which read:

‘Scientists and psychologists tell us we only use 10 percent of our brain power’.

But it really took hold and was popularized in 1936 when American writer Lowell Thomas, in the preface to Dale Carnegies best seller How to Win Friends and Influence People, falsely stated that:

“Professor William James of Harvard used to say that the average man develops only ten percent of his latent mental ability.”

Then there was no stopping it. Fortunes and careers have been made over the years with self-help books tapping into this myth. Individuals involved with the paranormal have championed this ‘fact’ to explain the potential for psychic powers.

Even Uri Geller, remember him? He made a career out of convincing people he could bend metal with his mind. He claims in his book, Uri Geller  Mind-Power Book:

“Most of us only use 10 percent of our brains if that.”

Having us believe that he has tapped into some, if not all of the remaining 90%.

Think about it logically, if big chunks of our brain were never used, then damaging them would have no effect on us.

Funny, unique and interactive in his entertaining conference keynotes and workshops, Bob Gray reveals the untapped potential in each of us. His empowering systems and their many applications in the business world give participants immediate ‘walk away’ value. Book Bob Gray today as your next conference keynote speaker.  Watch Bob in action.

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For those of us in our 50’s or older, here’s a question. When you were in high school or university and you forgot something, did you ever say, ‘Oh dear, another university senior moment’? Of course you didn’t, you probably just brushed it off without as much as a second thought.

It seems once we turn 50 that every little slip of our memory suggests we are heading down a dementia tunnel. A memory study was conducted amongst a group of seniors, one group was told that our memory declines as we age, the other group was told the opposite, that it doesn’t change much at all. They were given a memory test, sure enough, the group that was told our memory declines, did much worse than the positive group. In fact the positive group didn’t do much worse than a controlled group of college students.

So it turns out that ‘worrying’ about our memory, or those ‘senior moments’ is one of the worse things you can do for your memory. So the next time you stand in front of the open fridge door wondering why you’re standing there, forget where you put your glasses or why you walked from one room to another…..forget about it……literally.

Funny, unique and interactive in his entertaining conference keynotes and workshops, Bob Gray reveals the untapped potential in each of us. His empowering systems and their many applications in the business world give participants immediate ‘walk away’ value. Give him a call, see if he’d be a fit as your next conference keynote.

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While at work, have you ever received a phone call from home asking you to pick up a few groceries from the store, or been told not to forget to book your dental or doctors appointment as you leave the house? How about trying to remember to write down this to-do list as soon as you sit down in your office, only to forget everything as soon as you’ve poured yourself a coffee?

I recently shared a go to memory system that I have used countless times throughout my life for recalling ‘on the go’ items, things that are thrown at us unexpectedly. It is a centuries old system sometimes called the Journey method, the Roman Room method, more recently called the Memory Palace, essentially it is an ancient Greek method known as the Loci System. (It is also invaluable for recalling presentations without the aid of notes).

Let’s say we need to be able to recall 10 items at any given time. So we first need 10 items or places (Loci), which we are already familiar with. (All memory is based on linking or joining what we wish to remember, to something we already know). The easiest 10 items we ‘already know’ would be furniture or appliances in our home.

This is how it works. Imagine walking through the front door of your home; visualize placing your left or right hand on the wall. Now move your hand along that wall until you hit the first room. This room will contain your first five items ‘you already know’. Write down the first piece of furniture, in my house it would be the living room and a piano. Now continue to mentally walk around the room, what is the next piece or item? In my house it would be a big bay window. Continue until you have written down five. My next three would be sofa, table and picture. Now continuing with your hand on the wall, mentally go to the next logical room and do the same, write down another 5, mine would be the kitchen where I use Coffee Pot, Oven, Ceramic Jars, Sink and Toaster. So we have 10 ‘go to’ items. Now whenever someone calls, or asks us to remember something, we simply mentally attach those items, in a crazy way, to the items in our home.

So you receive a call from home asking you to bring home Bread, Milk and Eggs. We simply link Bread Milk and Eggs to (in my case) the Piano, Bay Window and Sofa. I would visualize a huge loaf of Bread playing my Piano, then a huge carton of Milk being thrown at the Bay Window and my Sofa made out of Eggs, or Eggs being cracked over my Sofa. You need to remember to call the dentist, see a huge dentist drill drilling hundreds of holes into your lovely dining room table. Need to remember to book a tennis court, see your self smashing the picture on your living room wall with a huge tennis racquet. Now we are into the kitchen for another five things if we need it.

I have a 15 item check list I mentally go over before I leave for the road for my speaking engagements. I have used the same 15 items in two rooms where the furniture has since changed, there is no longer a sofa where it used to be and the coffee pot is no longer in that spot in the kitchen, but it doesn’t matter, my check list is permanently attached to those original 15 loci, which is a good thing, because I’d hate to forget to take my Tutu to a presentation, yes, if you haven’t seen my keynote, I do wear a Tutu….which is memorable!

Funny, unique and interactive in his entertaining conference keynotes and workshops, Bob Gray reveals the untapped potential in each of us. His empowering systems and their many applications in the business world give participants immediate ‘walk away’ value. Book Bob Gray today as your next conference keynote speaker.  Watch Bob in action.

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