James O'Loghlin - Hire Keynote and Guest Speaker

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Key Points for James O'Loghlin

James O’Loghlin was the host of over 300 episodes of The New Inventors on ABC.
From 2002 to 2006, James O'Loghlin hosted The Evening Show on 702 ABC Sydney as well as ABC Local Radio around NSW and the ACT.
James started his career as a commercial and criminal lawyer, but soon moved into comedy and media.
He has been a regular guest on shows including Good News Week, Rove Live, Sunrise and Lateline.
He’s fascinated by the practical things which people can do every day to become more innovative.
James O'Loghlin is the author of Innovation is a State of Mind, illustrating how to identify opportunities for innovation, ways to develop and improve ideas and how to grow those ideas.

Topics for James O'Loghlin

Persuasion and Influence
How do you persuade people? When you have an idea, how do you get others on board to help you turn it into something real? Sadly, lots of good ideas never get anywhere. How can you make sure that yours do?
Being able to persuade is an essential skill. You might have an idea at work, something you want to pitch in a meeting, or a proposal you want to excite clients and customers about. You might want to get your team fired up, persuade your boss, or even harder, one of your kids. To do it, you need to know how to persuade, and how to influence.
In this compelling and informative keynote, James will share practical strategies that will enable people to be more persuasive and influential.
In this session audiences will learn:
- How do you work out who the decision maker is? How do you get to them?
- How to form a relationship of trust with the decision maker.
- The importance of standing in the decision maker’s shoes. What do they want? What do they need? What problem can you solve for them? How can your proposal be valuable to them?
- How to boil a complex argument down to its essence and present a short, sharp and compelling pitch.
- No one wants another problem. The importance of offering a clear, practical solution.
- How to find and enlist influential supporters.
Minding Your Mind
The cost of poor mental health is enormous. Aside from the cost of human suffering, the economic cost has been estimated by the Productivity Commission to be approximately 50 billion dollars a year. However, there are things we can all do to maintain and improve our mental health.
In this entertaining and informative keynote James will discuss the things we can all do to maintain and improve our mental health.
In this session audiences will learn about:
- Dealing with burnout – a growing issue costing Australian businesses billions of dollars a year. Identifying early signs and taking steps to address them is crucial.
- The physicality of mental health. When we feel anxious or depressed, trying to think our way out of it (‘Just stop worrying’) rarely works. Addressing the physical effects can be more effective. For example, if you are anxious, slow your breathing and relax your body.
- 7 practical things, all evidence-based, we can all do to improve our mental health and live happier lives.
- The importance of being socially connected for good mental health.
- The importance of understanding and taking care of our body clock.
- How do we change? We are not set in stone. If we are anxious or impatient or shy, there are specific things we can do to change.
Virtually brilliant
Turn your presentation into a compelling story
It was already difficult mastering the art of speaking to an audience who were directly in front of you. Now, the new world of on-line meetings, webinars and zoom conferences have created a new type of pressure for presenters. It’s much too easy for an online audience to become disengaged and your message to be lost.
With practical and friendly tips for every sort of gathering both in the real world and virtual, Leanne and James take you through each of the stages of presenting and show you how to keep your audience sitting up and eager for more. From researching your topic, to adding humour and interest, from using your voice effectively to conquering your nerves, and using PowerPoint to enhance your message, rather than bury it, the Virtually Brilliant approach will see even the most experienced speaker improve their skills enormously.
It will give confidence to those who have never delivered a speech before and will allow those who have done it many times to hone and finesse their skills in both the live and virtual space.
You will learn how to:
- Learn the presentation techniques for high engagement both online and onstage.
- Construct presentations using our templates and techniques.
- Turn your presentation into a compelling story.
- Use an economy of words to bring clarity to your message.
- Notice your nervous symptoms and channel your fear into excitement.
Overcoming crisis through innovation
We have been living in an era of disruption and rapid change for some time, but never before have we faced changes as rapid and drastic as those caused by the Coronavirus. Suddenly, everything is different. Over the next few months organisations and businesses will face big challenges. To meet them, they will have to find new and better ways of doing things. More than ever before, your people need to be equipped with the skills they need to be innovative, so they can be constantly coming up with better ways of doing things.
In eight years hosting ABC-TV’s ‘The New Inventors’ James O’Loghlin worked with over a thousand innovators, and in his entertaining and thought-provoking keynote and/or workshop he will share practical strategies to equip your people with the skills they need to be innovative every day
In this session you will learn:
- An understanding of how innovation happens; the 3 things innovators do better than others.
- Easy-to-implement strategies to identify opportunities for innovation in your business and take advantage of them.
- How to create an organisational culture that encourages everyone to be innovative.
- How to quickly and cheaply identify the best new ideas and implement them”.
Innovation is a state of mind
How often do you have days when you are so busy you don’t have time to think? Days when there isn’t one spare moment to think about how you can improve the way that you do things? No matter how well your business is doing today, if you keep doing things the same way, in 10 years’ time – maybe less – you will have been left behind. To stay relevant and successful, businesses need to keep coming up with better ways of doing things. In eight years hosting ‘The New Inventors’ ex-Australian lawyer James O’Loghlin met hundreds of people who thought outside the box and came up with new and better ways of doing things.
During this corporate keynote James O’Loghlin will talk about:
- Why every business needs to be continually innovating and how individuals can do it.
- The three things innovators do better than everyone else, and five things every business can do to build a workplace culture that encourages innovation.
Overcoming the barriers to innovation
Many of us want to focus more on innovation and improving our business, but find that it just doesn’t happen. What goes wrong? What factors stop us from being innovative, and how can we overcome them? In this informative and entertaining keynote former host of “The New Inventors” and innovation expert James O’Loghlin will explain what the 6 most common barriers to innovation are, and how to overcome each one and ensure that making your business better becomes a part of your work every day.
Session take-aways:
- An understanding of the factors that prevent us from being more innovative.
- Easy to implement strategies to overcome those barriers.
- Strategies to identify opportunities for innovation and take advantage of them.
Creating an innovative culture
The greatest resource any organisation has is the space between the ears of its people, but many don’t get anywhere near full value from it. It’s more important than ever for organisations to be innovative, but how do you create a culture where everyone knows that part of their job is to think of better ways of doing things, and where new ideas are captured, assessed, trialled and the best ones implemented?
In this enlightening and entertaining keynote, former host of “The New Inventors” and innovation expert, James O’Loghlin, will share:
- How to create a corporate culture where everyone from the CEO to the receptionist is encouraged and expected to be innovative.
- 6 steps to creating an innovative corporate culture.
- The role of leaders and managers in fostering innovation.
- How to create a simple, efficient system to grow, assess and harvest.
- How to embed innovation as an essential part of corporate culture, rather than an ‘extra’ that is always shunted to the bottom of the list.

Testimonials for James O'Loghlin

Thank you for working your magic as MC last Monday at the NSW Premier's Awards. We've received an overwhelmingly positive response regarding the awards ceremony with many mentioning just how much they appreciated your work!
NSW Department of Health

We were thrilled with James and the way in which he facilitated the panel discussion. He understood the brief, the aims and the target audience. He made the panellists feel incredibly comfortable and kept the discussion on track and on time. And he injected his wonderful sense of humour!
Communications and Marketing Manager
The Law Society of New South Wales

Thank you for a great presentation - absorbing, thought-provoking and energetic. You were singled out as one of the conference favourites.
Meetings and Events Australia

Thank you for your great keynote – we got great feedback and you really helped the event focus on how 'the individual' in an organisation can make a difference.
Kraft Foods

Feedback from everyone I talked to afterwards was fantastic and you were entertaining without taking away from the significance of the awards, so thank you.
Safe Work Australia

What a great day and there has been such great feedback about you. Thanks for your flexibility, energy and humour. Look forward to working with you again.
The Benevolent Society

James demonstrated a unique passion for innovation and invention. His passion is infectious and lifted the energy of the room after a full day conference.
Fuji Xerox

James has the ability to capture you through his witty humour and "think outside the box" approach. One specific thing I have taken away from James is to "always value your ideas", he would be wonderful for your next think tank forum or any event that requires an MC with a twist.
EA to Chief Risk Officer
ING DIRECT Australia

Many thanks again for making it work and for engaging so closely with us and with the speakers. The feedback we received from audience members was overwhelmingly positive, which is especially remarkable I think for such a difficult topic. It was an absolute pleasure to work with you, and to see you work!
Senior Policy Lawyer
The Law Society of NSW

It was wonderful to work with you, thank you for making my job easy!
Events Manager
Australian Food and Grocery Council

We had very good feedback from the Chairman down about the dinner and your presentation, so thanks for the usual high standard.
CEO
Australian Food and Grocery Council

James was a dynamic MC who thought on his feet and was able to work well with the crowd. The audience loved him and we have received lots of positive feedback on the evening.
Diversified Exhibitions Australia

It was a pleasure having you at our Dinner! We have also had some fantastic feedback from our members and it is great to hear you were well received!
Australian Institute of Company Directors

Well done. I had several people tell me how they were going to put some of your suggestions into action at work today, so you are officially an inspiration!
Executive Officer
Local Government Information and Communications Technology Group

Your keynote address was very insightful and entertaining and we have received much positive feedback from those present on the value they got out of the morning...we are now thinking about new ways we can be innovative not only in our day to day work but in all that we do.
Human Resources & Strategic Planning
Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education

It was a pleasure to work with you. It's my first experience of working with a 'professional MC' and I have to say - it was great! We all agreed it was the best extra spend we could have done so I was thrilled.
IBM Australia & New Zealand

Thank you so much for yesterday! It truly was a pleasure working with you and thank you for making the day run so smoothly.
Project Coordinator
George P Johnson Australia

It was an absolute pleasure to have you MC and guest speak at our IBM SmartCamp event yesterday. It was the best decision we all made – a professional MC took our event to a new level. We all enjoyed the friendly but firm approach and the jokes to lightened up a long day!
IBM Australia & New Zealand

A million thank you's for Saturday night. I was told many times that James as our MC really set the scene. He was highly professional, well organised and fun. I couldn't have asked for anything more.
Get the Message Pty Ltd

Many thanks for your work on the 2013 Awards for Excellence – your material was witty, clever and the right tone for the awards.
Chief Executive
Exhibition & Event Association of Australasia

James really resonated with our sales teams and the challenges they face every day and made them think differently about ‘thinking’ - I could not recommend him highly enough.
Commercial Marketing Director
Dell Australia and New Zealand

Thank you for such an engaging and thought-provoking presentation; you really bring together your media personality, comedic background and extensive knowledge to the stage in what was one of the best key-notes I have seen.
National Seminar Manager
NewsCorp Australia

You were fabulous and the audience absolutely loved you. The feedback has been superb.
Marketing and Communications Officer
Australian Security Industry Association

It was a delight working with James. He listened, he was flexible and he very quickly grasped our objectives for our conference. As an MC, James kept the whole day running perfectlyand as a keynote received the most highly regarded feedback out of any of our speakers. It was a pleasure working with James and I'd be delighted to do so again.
Event Manager
BT Financial Group

Every single attendee rated your presentation a 5 out of 5 – except one, who rated you a 10 (out of 5) – fantastic result!
Marketing Manager
MYP Corporation Pty Ltd

Everyone loved James and continued to speak about and refer to his keynote all day. He was also a very polite and approachable person, it was a pleasure having him at the event.
Marketing Assistant
Adloyalty

James was wonderful at our Awards Night. He put a lot of preparation into his role as MC – he made sure he understood our needs prior and on the night he was instrumental in setting a fantastic atmosphere for the event.
Employers Mutuals Awards

We just wanted to thank you for your time and energy yesterday. It was a fabulous presentation. Very inspiring!
RDA Hunter

James was fantastic. He tailored his speech perfectly to our particular event demographic and stuck to our brief. All participants at our event commented on how James was funny, relatable and very practical. I was extremely pleased with the result and will highly recommend James in the future.
Legal Counsel
Stockland

Such a positive, successful morning of thinking about innovative thinking!
Principal
Emanuel School