What Makes a TED Talk

So you don’t want to be a TED speaker.

For starters let’s figure out what actually is a TED speaker.

It’s really just someone who gives a speech or a presentation.

That’s interesting.

When you think about it because after all most speakers in the world at most conventions At most conferences the lecture halls of most universities are boring.

They’re way too long.

They’re way too boring and nobody remembers anything.

Now this course is going to go into a lot of very specific details of things that most TED presentations have.

But before you get into the specifics of how this exact 17 minutes or this walking around the stage you’ve got to really step back and ask yourself do you have something interesting to say.

It can’t just be a really good sales pitch on why to buy my paper for your copy machine.

Now if you’ve got some way of creating paper out of trees and it doesn’t chop down trees and it solves the energy crisis and it’s completely biodegradable in a way that doesn’t cause any landfill problem.

Well then maybe you have the elements of a Ted speech put simply by my product because it delivers a greater value.

That’s not a Ted speech ideas worth spreading.

That’s the slogan Ted.

They do take it very very seriously.

One of the reasons Ted is successful as an organization is they have the discipline to say no because most trade associations most conferences all over the world.

They let people speak because they have political influence or because of their stature in the industry or because they underwrite it or their sponsors or because they have high name I.D.

or because they’re

famous all sorts of reasons people get invited to give speeches at organizations.

Ted is different.

If you can’t actually deliver an interesting speech and deliver it well they don’t care who you are you’re not going to speak because of that they have a better brand a better reputation than frankly anyone I can think of when it comes to a forum just for speakers.

If you’re like me you probably watch a lot of Ted speeches because it’s frankly more interesting than what you see on radio or television and you can watch it on your smart TV on your cell phone on your tablet any anywhere and even if it’s not a topic that you’re fascinated by you always learn one thing.

There’s always something compelling there’s something that kind of changes your thought process and it never goes on and on and on too long you know it’s going to be for a set amount of time and it’s typically going to be less than 20 minutes.

That’s the beauty of Ted.

So if you want to be a TED speaker you’ve got a first step back and ask yourself Do you really have something that’s genuinely interesting.

Do you have something that is an idea worth spreading.

If you don’t have that you can still be a great public speaker.

You can be a great sales presenter.

You can be a good spokesperson you can be a good CEO.

You might not be a good candidate to speak at 10:00.

So that’s the first thing you’ve got to do is really step back and ask yourself do you fundamentally have an idea worth spreading.