Steve Holloway
Roles: Keynote Speaker, Speaker, MC, Panel Host
Themes: Business, Lifestyle & Wellbeing, Motivation, Sports
Steve built New Zealand’s most popular podcast from nothing
No budget. No network. No production. Just a microphone in his garage and one skill he spent six years obsessively refining: getting people - guarded, successful, media-trained people - to say what they actually think. On the record. In public. Every single time.
His guests are founders, executives, athletes, and public figures. People who are very good at saying a lot without revealing much. Getting them to open up, reliably, across 250+ episodes and millions of downloads, isn't luck or charisma.
It's craft. A specific, learnable set of skills. And they work just as powerfully in a boardroom as they do behind a microphone.
Most speakers on this topic are researchers or coaches. Steve is neither. He does this visibly, every week, in front of an audience that would notice immediately if he didn't. Funny, direct, and uncomfortably recognisable. Steve doesn't do theory - he does craft, demonstrated through stories from six years of high-stakes public conversations with people who came in guarded and left saying more than they planned.
-
Asking Questions That Get Real Answers
Listening That Build Buy-In
Handling Silence, Emotion & Disagreement
Feedback That Lands
-
Nobody's Telling You The Truth The craft of getting people to say what they actually think.
The best leaders all share one habit. They've worked out how to get the real answer — not the polished one — in the conversations that matter most.
It's a craft. A specific, learnable set of skills. And it changes the quality of your decisions, the speed of your relationships, and how straight your team is willing to be with you.
Steve built New Zealand's most popular long-form podcast from a garage in Hamilton. No budget, no network, no plan. Just six years of getting guarded, media-trained people to open up — on the record, every week, in front of an audience of 300,000+ monthly listeners, that would notice if he didn't.
His guests are founders, executives, athletes, public figures. People who are very good at saying a lot without revealing much. Getting them to be straight isn't luck or charisma. It's a craft that works just as well in a boardroom as behind a microphone.
This talk shows leaders how to do the same. Funny, direct, practical. One clear idea. Tools you'll use the same week.
Best for: Sales conferences. Leadership offsites. Exec teams. Anywhere the quality of decisions depends on the honesty of conversations.
What you'll leave with
How to ask questions that bypass the rehearsed answer and get to what's actually true
How to read a silence, a non-answer, and a pivot - and know precisely what to do next
How to become the leader people are honest with, not the one they carefully manage upwards
How to have the hard conversation that's been avoided - and have it strengthened the relationship instead of strain it
Why the best leaders, salespeople, and negotiators all share one conversational habit - and how to make it your
