The Run Within 11: What happened after my keynote reminded me exactly why I became a speaker.

There is a moment just before I walk on stage where everything goes quiet inside me. The preparation is done. All that is left is to go out there and give the room everything I have got. I live for that moment. Two weeks ago, closing the ASTMA/GMA national conference with the final keynote, reminded me all over again why I love what I do.

Closing a national conference is one of the most significant opportunities you can be given. You are the last voice the delegates hear. The last impression they take home. I did not take that lightly for a single second of my preparation.

I worked relentlessly to get this one right. Because that is what the moment deserved. And because that is just who I am. Whether I am preparing to run around Australia, preparing to stand in front of a room full of leaders, or preparing one of the runners I coach for a race that means the world to them, the application does not change. I want to give everything I have got, every single time. That standard is non negotiable for me regardless of the arena. Total commitment to the person or the room in front of me.

The brief was clear. A highly story driven keynote touching on ownership, pressure and resilience. Three themes I have lived deeply and am genuinely passionate about sharing. They are not just concepts I talk about. They are the way I have approached every challenge of my life.

What I love most about what I do is getting to walk into a room full of people I have never met and share something real with them. Not a performance. Not a rehearsed word for word script designed to impress. A genuine story. Honest moments, the hard ones and the triumphant ones. And somewhere in the telling of that story, along with the frameworks that go with it, something shifts in the room. People start connecting what I have lived to what they are living. That connection means everything to me.

I am not the finished product as a speaker, but I am growing every single week. I believe the moment someone thinks they have it all figured out, they have lost, so that will never be me. I am working with Warren Tate on my communication and craft, and with Chris Fudge on bridging my endurance world with the corporate one. I prepare for every keynote with the same obsessive attention to detail I brought to running around Australia. Not only because the opportunity is a privilege, but because the standard I hold myself to as a speaker is the same standard I ask of the leaders and teams I speak to.

That is The Run Within in action. Voice two showing up in the preparation long before it shows up on the stage.

A comment from an ASTMA/GMA delegate on Instagram, following the keynote.

What I experienced in that room reminded me exactly why I do this.

After my keynote, three people came up to me separately and told me they had set a new goal during the talk. One was going to get back into running 10km regularly. One was going to run a marathon. One was going to complete a triathlon. I want to be clear about something. I never encouraged the room to set a fitness goal. I encouraged them to text a personal goal to their partner, a friend, or someone they love and trust, whether in the realm of fitness, relationships, or anything else. The only rule was that it had to matter deeply to them. But those three delegates chose a physical challenge, and I think I know why.

Somewhere in my story they saw what movement had done for me, and they felt a pull toward, or perhaps a reminder of, what movement can do for them. Physically and mentally.

It didn’t stop there.

One delegate told me that averaging two marathons a day for nearly five and a half months straight had completely opened his mind to things he had been putting off in his own life. He said he was done waiting and was going to take the steps to level up. Another delegate came up and told me they were going to have a difficult conversation they had been avoiding for too long.

That one hit differently. Because we have all been there. It is hard. It is a battle. But it is about showing up and having the hard conversation anyway. The Run Within is the battle between the two voices we all have, and that is voice two winning in someone’s real life. In their relationships. The place where it matters most. Knowing that a story about running around Australia gave someone the courage to have that conversation is why I do what I do.

That is the moment that gets me every time. Not the applause. Not the feedback forms. It is the person who walks up afterward with something lit up in their eyes and says, I needed to hear that today.

That is why I love what I do. That is why I pour everything into every keynote. And that is why I am so grateful to be on this journey.

I want to say a massive thank you to Mark Unwin, the CEO of The Australian Sports Turf Managers Association and Paul Vardy CCM, the CEO of Golf Management Australia for selecting me as the closing keynote. It was a genuine honour to be involved in this incredible event, and one I will not forget. And to the Saxton Group for facilitating everything so seamlessly as always. I am grateful for every opportunity you help make possible.

I’m just getting started, and I can’t wait to see where this goes.

If you are an event organiser or a leader looking for a keynote that will leave your audience with something real to hold onto long after the event is over, I would love to have a conversation about bringing The Run Within to your next event or organisation.

Reach out directly. Let us make something great together.

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