Let’s start with the bad news. Not everyone does.
Sorry, to be brutal but sometimes we speak to clients wanting to give a TEDTalk and mutually conclude this might not be the best route for them increasing their personal or business credibility.
The fact is, sometimes people can be inspiring, brilliant at their job, the best in their field and still, have absolutely nothing new to say.
The TEDtalk stats are tough. Sure, there’s examples of speakers videos getting millions of views (currently, the top rated is ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ by Sir Ken Robinson with 74.6m views) and there are dozens of examples of TEDTalks transforming the speakers into global phenomenons (such as Simon Sinek, Brene Brown, and Amy Cuddy) but the chances of you getting to that level of exposure is, to put it bluntly, highly unlikely. And, yes, even with our help!
When clients come to us, many don’t understand how the process works so let’s be clear, it’s a long and tough one. Before you have a hope of getting invited to the holy-grail-stage in Vancouver or get your talk uploaded to Ted.com, the audition begins by delivering a powerful and innovative TEDx Talk.
Tedx are independently organised events run by volunteers, often within universities. There are now 50,000 Tedx talks around the world but even then, getting invited on stage is still a highly selective process, often involving months of work and commitment. And then, if you do manage to deliver a talk the chances of it being uploaded to Ted.com – is about 1 in 18,000. Danny Dyer has better odds of becoming the next James Bond.
So, as well as asking yourself if you have something interesting to say, you also have to ask yourself, do you have the stamina to put a lot of time and energy into something that may only be witnessed by a hundred students and viewed by a thousand folk online. Is saying you’re a TED speaker that important to your LinkedIn profile or could your marketing efforts be better utilised elsewhere? Speaking at a business-related conference, for example?
Ask yourself, are you genuinely wanting to give a TedTalk to ‘spread ideas, foster community and create impact’ or is your motivation simply an ego boost?
The latter will get weeded out in the TedTalk process, but the Speechy team is happy to help innovators, leaders, and founders develop their speaker goals to ensure they align with your goals; whatever they may be!