Bring this conversation to your community.
Austin speaks to leaders, faith communities, book clubs, executive teams, universities, and organizations about perception, story, and the cost of misunderstanding.
What Austin speaks about.
The Villain in Someone Else's Story
A 45- to 60-minute talk drawn from the book. The Lens, The Story, The Spread. Suited for leadership conferences, faith communities, book clubs, and organizational gatherings. Walk-away: a framework for the moments your community is already navigating, even if no one has named them yet.
Why People Hurt People
A two- to three-hour interactive session built on the Four P's framework, Protection, Pain, Power, Preservation. Best for teams in conflict, board retreats, and ministry leadership cohorts. Walk-away: language and tools for the difficult conversations already on the calendar.
Exploitation in the Family Court System
A sober, research-grounded look at how high-conflict family court proceedings reward the loudest narrative over the most accurate one, and what that costs children, fathers, mothers, and the institutions trying to do right by them. Built for legal-aid organizations, family law CLEs, judicial education programs, and advocacy groups working to reform the system from the inside.
Perception and Our Careers
Most people are not promoted, passed over, or pushed out because of what they did. They are moved because of the story other people tell about what they did. A practical session on the perception gap between how you see your work and how decision-makers see it, and how to close it without becoming someone you do not recognize. Good fit for university career programs, professional associations, and emerging-leader cohorts.
Disagree and Commit
A focused session for executive teams and boards on the discipline of arguing hard, deciding cleanly, and walking out of the room aligned. Drawn from the research on perception, narrative, and the silent stories that form when leaders confuse politeness with agreement. Best for leadership offsites, executive retreats, and founder teams navigating a high-stakes decision.
Custom Topics
If your community is sitting with a question this work touches but the talks above are not quite the shape of it, Austin will build a session around what you actually need. Tell him the audience, the moment, and the conversation you wish you could have. He will write to that.
For the rooms where careers are made.
The same lens, pointed at the workplace. Where the story about you decides more than your work does.
The Story Your Team Tells About You
Every leader has a reputation forming in rooms they are not in, and most hear about it last, after it has already shaped decisions. A practical session on how stories form inside organizations, why feedback arrives distorted on the way up, and how leaders can hear the real story sooner without punishing the people brave enough to tell it. Built for management offsites, leadership development programs, and new-manager cohorts.
Hiring Through the Lens
References, interviews, and promotion conversations all run on secondhand stories. This session looks at how the lens shapes who gets hired, who gets believed, and who gets a second chance, and gives people leaders concrete ways to separate the story from the record. A strong fit for HR conferences, SHRM chapters, and talent teams rethinking how they evaluate people.
The Comeback Conversation
What do you do after the story about you has changed and the room already believes it? A hopeful, practical talk on re-entering a company, a community, or a family with your integrity intact. Not about proving anyone wrong. About becoming someone the story can no longer hold. Suited for professional associations, faith communities, and any audience carrying a season they did not choose.
The kinds of rooms this fits.
The talk shifts to fit the room. The question underneath it stays the same.
Leadership & executive teams
Offsites, board retreats, and founder teams working through a decision where politeness has started to stand in for agreement.
Faith communities
Congregations and ministry leaders sitting with the hard, human question of why people who mean well still end up cast as the villain.
Universities & emerging leaders
Career programs, professional associations, and student cohorts learning to close the gap between the work they do and the story told about it.
Advocacy & legal groups
Legal-aid organizations and reform-minded groups working inside systems where the loudest narrative too often wins over the most accurate one.
Invite Austin on your podcast.
Long-form conversation is where this work lives best. If your show sits with questions of perception, story, and why good people end up cast as the villain, Austin would love to talk with your audience.
The media kit has a short bio, headshot, talking points, and questions you can borrow.
Follow the idea, not just the calendar.
Even if an event isn't in the cards right now, you can still be part of this. Join the early readers and follow the book as it comes together.
- The introduction, before anyone else
- Exclusive chapters as they're ready
- Private notes from Austin along the way
“I picked it up expecting a book about being misunderstood. What I got was a mirror.”
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