Public speaking isn't a special talent
reserved only for the most extroverted leaders,
actually, anyone who has an idea where sharing is capable of giving a powerful
talk, by the way, pretty much everyone has ideas that others should now.
You simply have to pluck up the courage to try
what I decided to share was an idea that anyone who felt passionate about kids
and education or revolutionizing education on the continent could get behind.
So it was quite a broad message around,
you know, what if we made learning fun for millions of kids on the continent?
I focused on sharing about my journey, my personal learning experience and what
was missing, what I wish I had growing up and learning and promoting the arts.
So storytelling is just a fabulous tool for introducing an idea.
Getting people connected to our ability
to follow along with a story is really deeply ingrained.
And that means it's a really wonderful
tool to use because you just bring people with you.
Just getting it right
actually requires vulnerability, but it also requires authenticity.
I think what really worked out for me was
I really internalized the message and I wanted to bring it to life.
I wanted to bring everyone to life.
And so even as I was practicing, I was practicing in front of people.
The key is just to build a human connection with them.
Now, that might be as simple as sharing an anecdote, just letting them know
something about you, about perhaps why you got interested in this topic.
It might be showing some vulnerability.
And yet I was at a 30 year old
talking about finding my passion and turning it into a career.
Any humor you can do.
That's really great for building that connection.
Literally, people told me you don't talk
about passion until you've made enough money.
I decided to go with a line or topic, but if
that is that hard for me,
something that I was very competent with, I did not want to gamble with that.
I didn't want to gamble with that number, but I did not.
So I went down the line of sharing basically what I do,
the stories of the young people I work with and how this is my life.
How do you speak when you're talking to a friend?
How do you feel when you're talking to your family?
You have that conversation?
Of course, I invited a lot of my friends
and people that I knew, and I had them sit on the front row
because I had my friends sitting on the front row.
I every time I got nervous.
So I forgot something.
I just looked at them and I just pretended to like I'm talking to my friends.
It's a total trap that people fall into when they've got 20, 30 minutes to speak.
They want to cram in everything that they're excited about right now.
Who wouldn't I see?
If somebody wants to tell me to give a 60
minute talk, that would be much easier as compared to giving a 10 minute talk.
The number one key is to be disciplined here.
It's to cut out everything that does not relate directly to that idea.
Taking the time to know what you don't have to tell
the story always has is a means towards
the end, which is the call to action or which is
the the rewiring that you're going to do in someone's mind.
The story itself can't be the product.
It has to be a very directed idea, something that you can write with a few
words on a page instead of it being something that's all over the place.
When you've planned your talk, cut it in half,
cut out half of the topics that you plan to talk about and just make yourself off
again. What is the key thing I'm trying to say here?
You know, if there was a headline
after your TED talk the next day, what would it look like?
What would those words to?
Sometimes you can make your point.
You can communicate your idea not so much
by explaining, persuading, telling stories, just by showing,
just describing a picture, your picture of an alternative future
that you think is exciting or inspiring in some way as far as you think about
unlocking potential for ourselves, for young people, for our children,
let's not condition them to look outward, but conditioned them to look inward,
to tap into who they are and bring that self into what they do every day.
OK, what are the what are some
of the innovative solutions out there that are trying to address this,
these problems currently and and then just kind of brought people to this place of,
you know, what are the possibilities if we need more?
And if you can get someone excited about
a different future like that, that is so thrilling.
That is really thrilling to see. And that is, again,
that is how change happens when enough people share a common vision about
a different world than the one that we're in right now and act to achieve it.