Ben Hanlin

Why organisations work with Ben Hanlin

• He has spent twenty years professionally holding the attention of audiences who did not ask to be entertained, a craft most keynote speakers approximate and never master.
• His engagement and rapport techniques are not theoretical. They are the working methods of a magician adapted for sales teams, client conversations and conference stages, and they were sharp enough to win Best TEDx Speaker at The Speaker Awards 2024.
• He is one of the few speakers who can credibly anchor a full conference day, opening with a keynote, hosting the agenda, and closing with the awards, without changing register.
• Major brand audiences including Google, PwC, Coca-Cola and Amplifi book him for the same reason: he reliably resets the energy of a room and gives an audience something to remember about it the next morning.
• The Speaker Awards 2024 triple, Speaker of the Year, Best Newcomer and Best TEDx Speaker, was judged by industry bookers on content, delivery and bookability. That combination of recognitions in a single year is rare.

Biography highlights

• Creator, writer and star of ITV2’s hidden-camera magic series Tricked, three series broadcast 2013 to 2016.
• Presenter of Breaking Magic on the Discovery Channel.
• Series 12 finalist on ITV’s Dancing on Ice (2020), finishing fourth.
• Speaker of the Year, Best Newcomer and Best TEDx Speaker at The Speaker Awards 2024.
• TEDx London speaker, “How to Create INSTANT Engagement and Connection” (2024).
• Combined online following of two million plus across YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

Biography

Most keynote speakers learn to hold a room by stepping onto a corporate stage. Ben Hanlin learned it on the street, in pubs and on prime-time television, where the audience has not agreed in advance to pay attention and the speaker has roughly four seconds to earn it. Twenty years of working as a professional magician is, among other things, twenty years of solving that problem.

That craft moved onto television with Tricked, the ITV2 hidden-camera magic series he created, wrote and presented across three series between 2013 and 2016, followed by Breaking Magic on the Discovery Channel and a fourth-place finish on series 12 of Dancing on Ice. The work travels: his combined audience across YouTube, Instagram and Facebook now sits above two million.

The keynote work is a translation of the same discipline. Hanlin teaches the working methods a magician uses to create rapport, hold attention and make a message stick, applied to sales conversations, client meetings, leadership presence and the inside of a conference room. In 2024 his TEDx London talk “How to Create INSTANT Engagement and Connection” was named Best TEDx Speaker at The Speaker Awards. At the same ceremony he was also named Speaker of the Year and Best Newcomer, judged by industry bookers on content, delivery and bookability.

Organisations including Google, PwC, Coca-Cola and Amplifi book him in three modes: keynote on engagement and human connection, full-day conference facilitation, and high-energy awards hosting. The common thread is the same craft applied at different scales, the ability to walk into a room of distracted people and leave it as a connected audience.

Key speaking topics

• Engagement and human connection
• Instant rapport and audience attention
• Communication under pressure
• Innovation and creative confidence
• Resilience and dealing with failure
• Conference hosting and awards facilitation

Ideal for

• Sales conferences, kick-offs and national sales meetings
• Awards nights and gala dinners requiring a host who can also deliver content
• Leadership and client-facing teams working on rapport, presence and communication
• Full-day conferences needing a single anchor across keynote, facilitation and after-dinner roles

Audience outcomes

• A working set of rapport and attention techniques drawn from twenty years of professional magic, usable the next morning in client meetings.
• Sharper instincts for reading a room and recovering it when energy drops.
• A clearer sense of how to make a message land and be remembered.
• A shared, high-energy moment that resets the tone of the conference or sales event.