On 19 October 2026 I spoke at the Vision Club Business Autumn Expo in Chester. My own session, AI for Business, has its own page: AI for Business: Turn Your Expertise into Visibility and Opportunity. This is the rest of the day.
The Day
The Vision Club Business Autumn Expo took place at The Wyldewoods in Great Boughton, Chester. A morning exhibition and networking, then four speaker sessions on authority, sales communication, AI and mindset. The event also supported CMV Action, a charity helping families affected by congenital CMV.
The Speakers
Feray Tunç: The Signals You Send Online and In Person
Feray Tunç, MBA, perception strategist and the organiser behind the day, opened with a Princeton study: one tenth of a second is enough for people to judge whether an unfamiliar face looks trustworthy or competent. Those first signals are not always accurate, but they are fast, and they travel faster than the truth. Her point was that most of us do not have a capability problem. We have a signal problem.
She built the session around her COUNT framework:
- Clarity: can people understand your value in three seconds from your LinkedIn banner, photo and headline?
- Owning your story: what happened, what you learned, and how it shaped the way you work.
- Uniqueness: your appearance, perspective and way of working, not being louder.
- Narrative: showing up as the new version of yourself, not the old one.
- Trust: what you earn when all of the above stay consistent.
She closed with one question: do you have a signal problem or a capability problem?
Charlie McIntyre: Sales and Sales Leadership
Charlie McIntyre, Sales Training Director at CM Services (UK) Ltd, was blunt: make the money first, and if something is not making money, stop doing it. He asked why so many managing directors hire salespeople without any sales training themselves, and shared his test for a good hire: humble, hungry and smart.
His margin exercise stuck with the room. If one order goes at 25% gross profit and your target is 40%, another order has to go at 55% just to get back to target. Every point of profit is precious.
- Gross profit is king, not the headline sale.
- Keep a bank of 100 questions, not the same six every buyer hears.
- Two questions that always made him money: “Where did you used to work?” and “Who do you compete against?”
- Know each customer’s year end, so you arrive while there is still budget.
- Pass the “so what” test: tell them what you will do for them.
Paul Ryazanov: AI for Business
That is me. I showed how I use AI to turn my calls, talks and articles into content without hiring more people. Then I did it live: a 20-second video recorded on stage was captioned and on all my channels, and on this website, within about seven minutes. The full write-up is on my session page.
Cat Williams: The Stallion Mind
Cat Williams of Building Your Confidence, author of The Stallion Mind, closed the programme. She started with a story from when she was 15: a teacher told her she did not have the confidence to be head girl, and she only rediscovered that moment years later in hypnosis. As a clinical hypnotherapist, she sees the subconscious mind as a powerful horse. It runs about 95% of our thoughts, it is wired for safety, and it is happy to keep us stuck in what is familiar. Same horse, different rider.
Her four rules of the mind:
- It gives you what it thinks you want, so watch what follows “I am”.
- Imagination is as powerful as reality.
- It wants to keep you safe, which is where anxiety, procrastination and people pleasing come from.
- Anything becomes familiar through repetition.
She finished with a short guided visualisation: meeting your past self and your future self, the only two people you are accountable to.
