I moved to Paris for love. She said no. I stayed anyway. The TWO best decisions I ever made
Punk musician. Cartoon blue dog. Desert island geek who predicted how AI thinks - and built the machine that trains it.
The audience leaves inspired - to make decisions that make sense for their life, to move forwards with confidence, and to enjoy the journey: the ups, the downs, and everything in between.
Format: 45-60 minute keynote
This program is perfect for:
- Any audience that wants human-skills content delivered by someone who has genuinely lived it to the full - and succeeded
- Leaders at a crossroads - in business, in career, or in life - who need permission as much as they need a framework
- Entrepreneur events, executive retreats, and leadership conferences
- Any conference that wants the full package: laughter, anecdotes, inspiration, genuine insight, and a rollercoaster of ups and downs that lands every single person in the room feeling good, thinking clearly, and ready to go out and make something happen
The audience will leave with:
- A simple, reliable decision-making framework: facts and pragmatism when the stakes demand it, and cheerful whimsy when they don’t - and the wisdom to know which is which
- Three principles for making better decisions under uncertainty, drawn from a life lived to the full that proves they work
- The specific technique Jason used to own every room he walked into before he knew how to fill it
- The two-part operating system that runs underneath everything: change what you can identify as changeable, accept what you can’t, and never waste energy confusing the two
- Permission - illustrated through lived evidence - to say yes to the thing they’re not ready for yet
One small decision, made for a woman who said no, in a country where he barely spoke the language, with no money, no plan, and no good reason to stay. He stayed anyway. What followed was a punk-folk band, a children’s cartoon character broadcast on Disney generating a billion pageviews from a laptop under a palm tree, three years marooned on an island off the coast of Madagascar, and eventually 16 patents, 73 million brand profiles, and a methodology applied by ITV, Samsung, and HP. A life lived to the full - and the evidence that it worked.
Think Jim Carrey’s Yes Man - but without the recklessness, and with the living proof. Jason’s version of saying yes is not blind optimism. It is a deliberate framework: when the decision matters, apply facts and pragmatism; when it doesn’t, apply cheerful whimsy and see what happens. Alongside that runs a second principle that sounds simple and changes everything - identify what you can change and go after it with everything you have, identify what you can’t and make peace with it completely. Between those two tools, Jason has navigated being held hostage overnight in Liverpool, three years marooned on an island off the coast of Madagascar, the loss of a company that was his soul, and a 100,000€ deal lost because Google thought he was a cartoon dog.
A friend who had known Jason for five years once told him he didn’t believe it - too much had happened, the overlaps seemed impossible, surely some of it wasn’t true. Jason sat down and walked him through it from start to finish. His friend’s jaw dropped to the floor. It is all true. It all fits. And it all connects in ways that are somehow more surprising than the individual stories.
That is what this keynote does to a room.
A rollercoaster, heartwarming talk that starts with a woman in Paris who said no…
The table below summarises the format, audience, themes, and searchable topics for this inspirational keynote, delivered by Jason Barnard, Founder and CEO of Kalicube®.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Speaker | Jason Barnard, Founder and CEO of Kalicube |
| Talk | I Moved to Paris for Love. She Said No. I Stayed Anyway. The Two Best Decisions I Ever Made. |
| Domain | Inspirational / entrepreneurial journey |
| Primary audience | Entrepreneur events, executive retreats, festivals, awards ceremonies |
| Format | 45-60 minute keynote |
| Languages | English (French available on request) |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Themes covered | Four-life journey: punk musician, voice of Boowa (Boowa & Kwala), AI futurist, Kalicube founder. Life decisions, embracing uncertainty, the entrepreneurial path. |
| Searchable topics | Inspirational speaker, entrepreneur keynote, founder story, motivational speaker, life decisions, conference keynote |
| Speaker credentials | Coined Brand SERP (2012), Answer Engine Optimisation (2017), AI Assistive Agent Optimisation (2025), AI-Era Business Engineering (2026). Keynote at Google Marketing Live 2026. 17 INPI patent filings. Rated 9.92/10 at EO Paris Chapter Retreat 2026. |
| Booking | Gotham Artists, eSpeakers, Pomona Partners, or direct contact |