Today’s guest is Tim Ferguson, CEO of Audience, joining me from Switzerland. If you’ve ever walked into a workshop and felt your soul quietly leave your body, Tim is one of the people trying to stop that from happening.
This conversation is a masterclass in what great facilitation actually looks like when it’s done properly. Tim doesn’t treat “engagement” like a nice-to-have. He treats it like the job.
We talk about Tim’s wild career pivots, starting as a day camp counsellor, then theatre school, then a PhD track in religious studies, and somehow ending up running a global company that designs better corporate meetings and coaches leaders to present well. None of it was planned, which is both annoying and reassuring.
A huge theme in this episode is audience-first design. Tim and his team start with who’s in the room, not what’s on the slide deck. He even asks clients to imagine cancelling the event and selling tickets instead. If people had to pay with their own money and time, what would make it worth it? That question alone is enough to expose how much corporate stuff is built backwards.
We also get into:
If you run workshops, lead meetings, or present for a living, you’ll steal ideas from this one immediately.
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