Motivational Moments Meaningful Connections
CONFERENCES | EVENTS | OFFSITES
Quick Links: Future of Work. Leadership. Strategic Stories.
We live in a world that rewards visibility, which would be fine if visibility and credibility were the same thing. They're not. And the gap between them is where most of the interesting problems live.
With twenty-five years in executive and senior strategy leadership, including Chief Strategy Officer roles across global advertising networks, David Fish (widely known as Fishy) has seen what makes organisations unmistakably clear in what they stand for. He has also seen exactly what it looks like when smart, capable people perform for credibility instead of earning it. Once he saw that pattern, he could not unsee it in others.
Speaker Bio
His background sits at the edge of two high-stakes worlds: the boardroom and the cockpit. Competition-level aerobatic flying and world records in aviation on one side, global advertising networks and multi-million dollar pitches on the other.
This combination matters: upside-down at 500 feet and in client meetings under pressure, the same truth holds. When the stakes are real, the combination of competence and conviction beats faking it until you make it.
Organisations bring him in when something fundamental is missing, even though everything looks fine. Leaders who are visible but not felt. Teams that are aligned on paper but disconnected in practice. Communication that's polished but fails to build belief.
Fishy’s keynotes cover these three important territories:
Future of Work, Culture and Connection - view keynotes
What's eroding trust, belonging and human performance, and what it takes to close the gap.
Leadership and Influence - view keynotes
How to build authority and influence from the inside out, without performing a version of yourself you don't recognise.
Strategic Storytelling - view keynotes
Why stories don't just happen, and what organisations and leaders who master the craft do differently to build belief that moves people rather than just informing them.
His approach makes science interesting by combining it with lived experience and the study of human behaviour, naming patterns we instantly recognise and bringing them to life in a way that can only come from someone still navigating them.
He doesn't do motivational theatre or hype, but uses his own unique brand of dry English wit to keep the room connected and entertained.
In 2025, he opened trade association conferences and set the frame for company kick-offs across Australia. He opens 2026 at People Matters TechHR in Singapore.
“What an insightful keynote it was! We have been doing these conferences for a long time now, and I have never been asked by so many people for slides after the event. You highlight an issue we all relate to, and you have given us a new perspective to navigate the challenges. I look at myself differently now...”
President FESPA Australia Association
Future of Work, Culture
& Connection Keynotes
We have never had more ways to connect and felt more disconnected. Here's what we can do about it.
We have never had more ways to connect and felt more disconnected. And the gap between those two things is where team performance, trust, and human potential quietly stall.
The teams that will differentiate in the years ahead won't just have the best technology. They'll be the ones that stay connected under pressure, move faster through uncertainty, and solve what others can't.
And yet something is missing, felt across too many workplaces. Highly capable teams that perform on paper and never quite click. Relationships that look solid until they are tested. And the quiet suspicion that even the people we work closest with don't really know us.
Without anyone quite noticing, the devices that give us more ways to connect have slowly eroded how effective we are at it.
This keynote closes that gap. And it turns out that shift doesn't just unlock the human advantage for organisations. It brings out the best in the people around us and the teams we belong to.
Keynote: The Illusion of Connection
Perfect for:
Company-wide annual offsites and all-hands events, association and industry conferences with broad mixed audiences, leadership summits focused on culture and wellbeing, hybrid work and digital transformation forums where human connection, trust, or belonging are key themes, and events exploring the future of work through a human lens.
Audience takeaways:
Understand why connection is a commercial issue, not just a cultural one, and what highly capable teams are missing that no amount of process, technology, or restructuring will fix.
Recognise the patterns creating distance in even your best teams, and finally have the language to name what's been holding things back.
Leave with a practical framework that works the next day and compounds quietly into real competitive advantage over time.
Why organisers book this keynote:
It's a universally important message for every audience, resonating across all levels, industries, and roles. High empathy without being soft or fluffy. Honest without being critical of the challenges we all face, navigating platforms designed to hijack our attention and keep us scrolling. Perfect for diverse audiences navigating the shared challenge of staying human in a world that rewards performance over presence.
Leadership and
Influence Keynotes
How to build authority that people trust, remember, and keep coming back to.
What do iconic brands and the people we can't stop following have in common? It's not budget, reach, or luck. It's conviction. A clarity about who they are and what they stand for that makes everything they do feel consistent, magnetic, and worth paying attention to.
Most of us try to build influence by doing more. More content, more visibility, more performance. The Conviction Advantage is the alternative. A proven framework for building authority and influence from the inside out, so the right people find you, trust you, and choose you, without you having to be something you're not.
When individuals find their conviction advantage, it changes how teams perform, how propositions land, and how organisations compete.
Keynote: The Conviction Advantage.
Perfect for:
Leaders, teams, and organisations who want to build genuine influence without having to perform for it. Works across industries and levels because the gap between showing up with conviction and just showing up is something every professional in the room has felt.
Particularly well suited to leadership summits, industry conferences, professional services firms, and sales kick-offs where how people show up affects everything that follows.
Audience takeaways:
The formula iconic brands use and how to apply it to yourself and your team
A framework for closing the gap between what you're capable of and how that lands
The tools to build influence through conviction rather than performance
Clarity on what you stand for and how to make that felt in every room you walk into
Why organisers book this keynote:
Because the loudest voices in the room are rarely the most influential, and your audience already knows it. This is a different conversation. Funnier, sharper, and grounded in what actually builds authority over time. Commercially credible, immediately actionable, and the debate about whether you are Coke or Pepsi, and why it matters more than you think, carries on well into the night.
Strategic Storytelling
The architecture of influence, and how to build it.
Think about the movies you can't forget, the ads that keep repeating in your head, the brands that made you feel something, and the presenter you kept telling people about weeks after the event. None of that happened by accident. Every one of those experiences was designed.
Most of us appreciate the power of a great story. What isn’t so accessible is what it actually takes to unleash that power.
The difference between a story that lands and one that just fills time isn't talent or charisma. It's architecture. A deliberately built structure that takes what you know, what you sell, or what you believe, and turns it into something an audience can feel, remember, and act on.
This session gives you that structure. Practical, immediately applicable, and adaptable to almost any context, from a sales pitch to a leadership conversation to a company update.
Keynote: Story by Design.
Perfect for:
Sales offsites, leadership away days, and enablement forums where the goal is lasting behaviour change, not just inspiration. Available as a keynote, a half-day, or a full-day workshop.
Audience takeaways:
A new way to think about and design stories that move people rather than just inform them
A commercial story structure you can apply in almost any context immediately
Turn complex ideas into clear, compelling narratives that are easy to recall and stand the test of time
Practical tools to build value through story in sales conversations, leadership moments, and beyond
Why organisers book this keynote:
Most people know stories matter. Very few have been taught how to actually build one that works in a business context. This is the session that changes that, combining the craft of advertising and Hollywood into tools so practical and immediately applicable, you'll wonder how you ever communicated without them.
Book Fishy
Let’s chat about how I can work with you to take your next event to new heights.
