In this episode of the Engaging Marketeer here I’m looking back at one of my goals that I successfully completed yesterday. I’m recording this on the 5th of April and yesterday (on April the 4th), I successfully delivered a TEDx talk at the University of Chester. It was absolutely fantastic; it was more than I ever thought it would be.
I’d always wanted to do this; it’s always been a goal of mine to deliver a TEDx. I had tried a few times to do TEDx talks, I’d applied to a couple of different TEDx events, but I didn’t quite make the final selection, but yesterday for the University of Chester I delivered my TEDx talk, and it was brilliant. I can’t stress enough how cool it was. I am really excited to see the video when it eventually gets edited by the university, sent over to TED and goes live on the TEDx YouTube, because they’ve got something like 30/40 million subscribers, which is a frightening concept.
On the morning of the day, I had to go along to be there for the start because I was second up; I was due to go on to do my talk at 10:20. But the guy on before me was one of the professors from Chester University and he told me the day before that he wasn’t going to be taking the full 18 minutes, so they knew I was going to be basically going on early, they were going to be ahead of schedule. So I had to be there extra early and prepared and get mic’d up to be ready to go on.
I was going to say it was really nerve-wracking being backstage, but actually I don’t think I was that nervous. I genuinely don’t think I was that nervous, because as I’ve always said before, I’ve done stand-up comedy mainly because when I had public speaking gigs to do that I could always say to myself ‘look you’ve done stand-up comedy, how bad can this be?’ So I don’t think I was that nervous, but I was always concerned about the impact that I would have. I was never worried about going on the stage for the TEDx event and actually delivering something that people would find entertaining; I was never worried about my delivery being funny or making people laugh; I was never concerned about any of that because I knew it would be good. But what I was concerned about was it having value, it having impact, not just being frivolous me making jokes and doing a bit of singing because yes I did sing at the beginning, and it basically being a lot of comedy when I’m side by side with professors and PhD students talking about things such as the extinction of species and how to live your authentic self when the social norms tell you that you shouldn’t. You know, really deep subjects like that, and I’m just going on talking about a TV ad that I was bullied with when I was a kid, and how I tracked a fake Facebook profile who was behind it for my son a few years ago.
So I was concerned about the impact I would have. However, the best thing about it was afterwards I got talking outside with a couple of students, and talking about them to them about the hold that social media has on us. It was like I was having this really highbrow discussion with these two students, and I felt like a student again myself. Then the geography student said to me “are you a professional speaker?” When I said, “What makes you say that?”, he said because the delivery I gave was so powerful, he thought I’d gone around different places, different universities, different seminars delivering that exact talk because it was so polished. it’s I cannot stress how good I felt about that, how brilliant I felt about that, it was incredible. Even better, afterwards this female student came up to me and she said to me that that was really powerful what you said, I really felt that because all throughout my school life I’d been bullied as well. I was worried about it having an impact; I needn’t have worried because it really did land with people, it really did resonate with people. My own aside thinking about whether I was going to be worthy to do a TEDx talk was just insecurity, because what I went through a lot of people go through.
So, anyone considering doing a TEDx talk, do it. Absolutely do it. Every single area has a different TEDx event, and they do them once a year. So, for example, around where I’m based there’s one in Manchester, there’s one in Northwich, there’s one in Warrington. To get onto a TEDx event you have to apply for it, you have to fill in quite a lot of detail about what you’re going to talk about and the impact it’s going to have on people’s lives. Make sure that you are putting in all of the passion and the heart and the meaning and the big idea into your application, because somebody needs to review that and then come back and give you the go ahead.
Let me tell you, standing on that red circle and delivering that event in in that kind of environment is one of the greatest things I’ve done. It genuinely is one of the greatest things I’ve done. As soon as I got off, I was literally shaking. I said to them “Can I go back on? Can I do that again?” and that’s the same kind of experience I had when I did stand-up comedy. It just made me feel like I belonged as a speaker, and I just wanted to share that with you on this very quick podcast about my TEDx journey. Don’t worry, when the video does come out, I will share that high and wide across social media, I will share that everywhere so everybody can experience it and I would love people’s feedback on that as well.
Thank you very much for listening to this podcast. Please leave me a review if you can, leave me leave me a five-star review, leave me some ratings, just tell me what you think about it, I would love to hear your feedback on this as well. I will catch you on the next podcast.