Keynotes & main-stage talks

No canned speeches. Ever.

Every talk Rick delivers is custom-built from the ground up through his trademarked Deep Customization™ process. He treats each engagement as a consulting assignment designed to move your team from where they are to where leaders need them to be. The frameworks below are where we start. Your talk is built from there.

30 yearsOn stages worldwide
2,000+Keynote speeches delivered
12 booksIncluding a WSJ bestseller
Fortune 500To founder-led rooms
The method

Deep Customization™

Most speakers give the same talk a hundred times. Rick has never given the same talk twice.

Every engagement is treated as a consulting assignment: understand where the room is, understand where leadership needs it to be, and build a talk from the ground up to move it there. The frameworks Rick has developed over thirty years are the raw material. What your audience hears is built for them, and only them.

  1. 01
    Diagnose the room

    Rick learns your audience, your goals, and the gap between where they are and where you need them.

  2. 02
    Select the frameworks

    He draws on the frameworks that fit your situation, the starting points, never the finished product.

  3. 03
    Build it from the ground up

    A talk engineered for your event, your industry, and the exact shift you're after.

  4. 04
    Move the room

    The audience leaves changed, with the frameworks understood, and the actions required of them on Monday locked and loaded.

Below are the frameworks Rick builds from, grouped by theme. They aren't off-the-shelf talks, they're the raw material for a keynote engineered around your audience. Think of them as the starting line, not the finish.

Theme 01 · Strategy

Strategy & Growth

5 frameworks

The talks Rick is best known for: how to design a business that grows on purpose, dominates its market, and sees what's coming before your competitors do.

Framework

Strategic Business Design

Most existing businesses were not designed. They emerged, then evolved with bolt-ons and patches and fixes. Design is a process for creating something on purpose, for a particular purpose. There are nine elements to great business design, and creating or redesigning each one with purpose, alignment, and connection to every other element produces a business that flows, where natural acceleration is the norm and stepping on the gas makes it soar.

Framework

Overpromise and Overdeliver Bestseller

How to design and deliver extraordinary customer experiences that build unshakable loyalty.

Framework

Alignment Book

How aligning three critical customer touchpoints can create a world-class brand and the shortcut to marketplace dominance.

Framework

Fast Forward Flagship

The ten key strategies driving sales, marketing, and customer service for the foreseeable future.

Framework

Our Exponential Future

Everything is now exponential. How to wrap your mind and your business around the rocket, and not just survive but soar.

Theme 02 · Leadership

Leadership

2 frameworks

How leaders put the we before the me, and lead an organization through real change.

Framework

We Before Me Book

How to eliminate selfishness in the workplace and lead your team to achieve more than you ever thought possible.

Framework

Leading Exponential Change

Leading rapid change takes a different point of view and skillset than leading in normal times. The pace, the communication, the way you support your team, the dynamics, the emotions, all of it is different. This framework shows you how to design the systems to structure and manage it all.

Theme 03 · Sales & Marketing

Sales & Marketing

4 frameworks

Selling that builds lifetime partners, sales leadership done on purpose, and the deep listening that underpins it all.

Framework

Collaborative Selling Book

Selling today is about partnering for results, not pitching and persuading. It takes a mindset shift and real changes in behavior across the sales team. This framework lays it all out in a logical, implementable way.

Framework

Intentional Sales Leadership

Sales leadership is one of the hardest jobs in any company, and most sales leaders were never trained for it. Integrating with marketing, designing the right team structures, coaching, support, inspiration, operations, it is all part of the role. This framework helps sales leaders design their teams, roles, and department to win.

Framework

Revenue on Demand

The beliefs, design, systems, and structures that must be in place to grow revenue on demand, because any company that cannot grow revenue on demand is at risk of extinction.

Framework

Deep Listening

Most of us listen at a superficial level, when we listen at all. Yet truly understanding what is being said to us is the most critical skill any of us can possess. Customers, teammates, and the people we love are talking to us. We just have not learned how to hear them. Rick has been developing this framework for thirty years, and learning these skills will be life-changing.

Theme 04 · Customer Experience

Customer Experience

3 frameworks

Designing an experience customers can't stop talking about, from the boardroom strategy to the frontline moment.

Framework

Customer Experience Transformation

What do your customers really want? Most companies do not know, and some do not care as long as the revenue flows. What if you could deliver what they truly want at really fat margins? Would it change the direction of the company? The value of the brand? The careers of your teams? There is only one way to find out.

Framework

Intentional Customer Engagement Design

Customer service does not even mean the same thing across companies. What do the words mean? Who is responsible? What are the goals and the metrics? What is the mindset? This framework answers those questions so you can design a way to consistently exceed expectations, and get paid to do it.

Framework

Seven Simple Rules

Most frontline employees have never been taught how to think about or take care of customers. This framework delivers it all in just seven simple rules.

Theme 05 · Personal Development

Personal Development

2 frameworks

For all-hands and association audiences: the patterns behind peak performance, and becoming the champion of your own story.

Framework

Patterns of Peak Performance

We all have a human operating system designed for greatness, but most of us were never handed the instruction manual. Rick shows you everything in just 90 minutes.

Framework

Becoming the Champion of Your Dreams

Do you know how to consistently set and achieve your goals? Do you have a system for doing it every time? If not, you could. Just ask Rick.

Theme 06 · Team Building & Theme 07 · Entrepreneurship

Teams & Entrepreneurship

2 frameworks

Building teams from every kind of person, and the case for why entrepreneurship is the imperative of the moment.

Framework

It Takes All Kinds

What if everyone in your company were just like you? Sounds appealing, until you realize our strengths overused become weaknesses. You need teammates who are not like you, and those differences create natural conflict. It Takes All Kinds is a humorous, powerful framework for getting the best out of every member while enjoying the ride.

Framework

The Entrepreneurship Imperative

Rick believes entrepreneurship is the backbone of a free society, because the power and the money are distributed rather than centralized. Creating your own wealth and controlling your own destiny is the very definition of freedom. This framework is about how everyone can, and should, be an entrepreneur in control of their income and their livelihood.

Substance

Frameworks and real strategies the audience can use Monday morning, not a highlight reel of platitudes.

Built from scratch

Not tailored. Designed from the ground up for your company, your team, and your specific challenges and opportunities.

Memorable

Stories from thirty years in the trenches that stick long after the lights come up.

Let's build the right talk for your event.

Tell Rick about your audience, your event, and what you want them walking out believing. He'll craft the perfect keynote to transform your team.

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