The Facilitator’s Edge in a $3.7 Trillion Market

Why your hosting skills might be the most underrated sales skill of the next decade

Feb 19, 2026

Here’s what’s on my mind this week:

Why the future of selling belongs to hosts
How to stay visible when AI becomes the search engine

1. Why the future of selling belongs to hosts

Have you heard about live social selling? Live commerce is already worth around US$1 trillion globally. By 2030, it’s projected to hit US$3.7 trillion, growing at 24% annually.

And in China, their live streaming e-commerce market hit nearly 5 trillion yuan in 2023 (that’s around US$695 billion). “Going to the shops” in China increasingly means opening a livestream with your favourite host, not walking to the shops.

Buying behaviour is shifting.

It’s so weird because growing up as a kid in Australia in the 1980s, I remember the famous Tim Shaw Demtel Home Shopping infomercials (“But there’s still more!”). That’s basically what live social selling is, only this time watching it on TV and phoning a 1800 number, you watch live hosts on social media (like TikTok or WhatNot) and click the ‘Buy Now’ button directly from your phone.

I’ve been watching TikTok live sellers for the past few weeks and what they’re doing is exactly what we do as hosts in a room.

And I keep thinking... I already know how to do this!

For example, these hosts run a show, they have great segments, product demos, stories, Q&As. They co-create with the audience. Viewers ask questions, request demos, challenge claims.

In China, those billions in sales are driven by charismatic hosts and key opinion leaders. Your ability to hold a room, build trust in real time, and make complex things feel simple. The best live sellers behave more like TV presenters or workshop facilitators, than traditional sales reps.

Anyway, something to consider if you have this skill set. You don’t even need to store products, you can dropship items, sell through affiliate marketing, etc.

The key question of course is, "What would I sell?”

I’m thinking something along the lines of endorsing my favourite travel products or tech tools. Anyway, watch this space, I might run a mini experiment with it (after I’ve submitted my book manuscript!).

2. How to stay visible when AI becomes the search engine

This week while I was meant to be at a solo writing retreat shaping up my manuscript, I got slightly distracted.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made a ton of progress on the book (progress = deleting 11,000+ words which is a good thing. You do NOT want to read the early version, it was terrible).

“Punch the point” is my book-writing criteria

Anyway, while I was away, I ended up spending about 30 mins each day quietly rebuilding parts of my website.

I actually enjoy tinkering with websites. I built my first site when I was 14. It was a fan website dedicated to my favourite Socceroo, Harry Kewell. Total Football UK ended up reviewing it, too, which was kinda kewell…

Anyway, let’s get back on topic:

This post is about why I’m renovating my website a little, and the shift in how people find expertise online.

For paid subscribers, I’m sharing the exact step-by-step process to build each page.

But first, some context

The way people access information has changed. When you want an answer to something, you do not always go to Google and click through ten blue links anymore. You might ask ChatGPT.

Or you might still use Google, but the answer appears at the top of the page in an AI-generated summary before you click anything. How does it know what to post in the summary?

In an ideal world, my work is referred in conversations, or someone hears me speak, reads my book, listens to the podcast, reads this newsletter, etc. I still want that to happen (Plan A).

But making sure I’ve optimised my online presence means I need to renovate HOW my content is delivered online (Plan B).

Two concepts worth knowing

I’m not jumping on the “I’m an AI guru” bandwagon but I do recommend getting familiar with these two terms:

GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) is about making your content visible to AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude so they reference you when someone asks a question in your area.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) is about structuring your content so it gets pulled as a direct answer in Google’s AI Overviews and featured snippets.

You create content that is specific, authoritative, and genuinely useful because AI systems favour that kind of content because it is easy to extract, cite, and trust.

Often, you already have the information on your site, it’s just about restructuring it in a way that is AI-friendly.

A page that says “Hi, I’m Leanne, book me” is not going to get cited by anyone. A page that thoroughly answers “how do I design a two-hour workshop?” with a named framework, clear steps, and practical examples? That has a real shot.

Why am I telling you this?

If you read my stuff often, you know that I love being the guinea pig and trying out new things…But also?
Because this applies to more people than you might think.

If you run your own business (consulting, facilitation, coaching, speaking), your ideas probably live in scattered places right now. The fix is to get your frameworks onto properly structured pages on your website.

If you are a founder/leader inside an organisation, think about your product or service.

When someone asks AI “what is the best tool for [the problem you solve]?”, does your product show up in the answer? If your team has a genuine methodology, a unique process, or a framework that your best customers already use to get results, that is your content.

👉 Explore my new frameworks page here.

If you are a paid subscriber, I’ll send a second email to you shortly, sharing exactly how I built each framework page, step by step, including the process, the tools, and the prompts I used.

Have you heard about GEO and AEO? What are you doing differently?

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