Thanks to the Ubiquity of AI, This is the Last Great Advantage to Build Your Business and Career

You may have noticed a shift in my platform over the last 4-6 months. I've been talking a lot more directly about public speaking. Yes, I always came back around to speaking in some sense (teaching storytelling, premise and IP development, and messaging tends to mean speaking is part of the mix), and of course, my background as a professional keynote speaker certainly provides a lens for my thinking. But over the past half year or so, I've begun creating more resources narrowly focused on all things speaking.

So why am I doing all of this? Why the sudden, concerted effort to teach you these things?

Because in this era of endless advice, infinite experts, and of course (say it with me now) AI, public speaking is the great differentiator and unfair edge.

I'd go so far as to call speaking the last great advantage.

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The other day, I got an adorable voice memo from my friend Jay Clouse. (The cuteness came from his daughter babbling in the background, though Jay does have a certain boyish charm to him. Anywho.)

If you don't know Jay, you should. He's one of the good ones in the creator economy. As the founder of Creator Science, he's become one of the most trusted voices teaching creators to build smarter, more sustainable businesses. Jay's increasingly loud assertion to the creator world is that trust matters more than attention, and I agree.

Along those lines, Jay went down several AI-related rabbit holes, and as he was resurfacing, he sent me a voice note with one major conclusion: the rise of AI also means the rise in importance and appetite for in-person interactions and groups, and along with it, the increasing, critical importance of public speaking as a skillset.

Jay ended his voice note: "Nobody's putting a Claude terminal on stage at their event, know what I'm SAYIN?!"

Yes, my adorable friend. I know precisely what you are say-un.

I've been framing speaking all wrong. Develop your thinking, your stories, your IP, then worry about speaking. That frames the idea as a "vertical." You do the horizontal things, develop the horizontal skills, then apply those things to all the vertical stuff you must do to build a business or improve a career ... including give speeches.

Nay-nay, says Jay-Jay. (Do I mean Jay Clouse? Do I mean myself? Do I mean some weird talking-head combo, blending the scientific method with storytelling excellence? YES PLEASE.) Speaking is NOT a vertical thing. It's a horizontal skill. It informs and enhances everything. It increases your value everywhere. It's one of the most personal and transferable and transformational skills you can develop.

And it just got urgent that we all do so.

It doesn't matter your job function, your seniority, your business's traction or stage of growth. You could be speaking to an audience of one or 1 million. If you're a human, you should become a great public speaker. It will supercharge you, everywhere you go—and separate you from everybody and everything, including and most especially AI.

Professional speakers and world-class communicators (and adorable Jays) understand this. They invest more in developing their speaking skills and their signature material than in learning any tool or technology. They also benefit from using certain repeatable processes and techniques to ensure their speaking isn't a one-off or a lightning strike moment. It's not a vertical for them. To make something a true horizontal, it must enhance everything, which means it must be internalized by you first.

See, it's not just the ability to speak scripted words well. That's not what I mean by public speaking. It's everything that goes into it: shaping tons of ideas and advice into a single, signature idea; crafting and delivering stories; interviewing and telling "my story" reliably and in ways that connect; performance on a stage; charm in the meeting; everything and anything and all the things that go into you showing up in the moment with proven material AND improvised thoughts ... all of which deeply resonate.

When you become a stronger public speaker, it pays dividends in formal presentations of course: keynotes, breakouts, workshops, webinars, team meetings, job interviews, client pitches, and board presentations. But the skill of public speaking also transforms you away from your presentations too: podcast hosting and guesting, conference hallway chats, coffee and Zoom meetings, job interviews and client pitches, internal meetings and external networking—you name it.

It's like an "Enhance Value" button.

Or a supercharged super-suit you're always wearing.

You press it or step into it (pick your favorite metaphor), and suddenly EVERYTHING gets better and easier.

And in a world where people will use AI to do so many things (too many, if you ask me), ain't nobody putting a Claude terminal on stage. Yanno what I'm SAY-UN?!

Master the skill and develop the materials, and you've mastered the ultimate differentiator in your career and business.

You instantly increase your value everywhere you go, and in this moment especially, it's increasingly clear: you preserve that value for years to come.

Sharpen your ideas.

Develop your stories.

Design your signature talk.

Become a stronger public speaker.

It's no longer a nice-to-have thing.

It's The Last Great Advantage.

Jay Acunzo