How To Give A TED Talk

How To Give A Ted Talk:

The first question to ask yourself is this: What is your perspective?

At a TED Talks the Millionaire Expert is paid for their perspective. We can command the high fees because we have a perspective. The TED talks have been a brilliant example of where this happens regularly – although very few TED speakers are Millionaire Experts, but they could be.

It is new perspectives that drive changes in lives and open our eyes to things that we never knew possible. A new perspective can be divisive or inclusive. It can repel and bring people together.

It is the lifeblood of the Millionaire Expert. It is what sets us apart from experts in their field and, when positioned and marketed correctly, can deliver the lifestyle that most desire.

People want your considered, perceptive perspective

Your market, right now, wants your perspective but how you deliver that perspective can be the difference between a Millionaire Expert and a struggling expert in their field.

Let me be clear, in the Millionaire Expert space your perspective needs to be considered and perceptive. There are many experts who struggle to increase their position away from expert towards Millionaire Expert because of this.

There will always be those who take a different perspective from your own. However, if you are unable to convey exactly what has led you to that perspective it is nothing more than an opinion.

What do you mean?

As soon as you give someone your perspective on something they will try to understand what you are saying and, more rarely, why you are saying it. If your perspective is new or original you must help guide the audience in how you arrived at your perspective.

Remember, they want to you to help them discover it for themselves.

Convince me

Once your market have gained an understanding of your perspective, usually at a high level, in many cases they will want you to reinforce your point. How you convince someone is based upon the psychology of their convincing strategy.

While this is a book in itself, my summary is that you find out how they are convinced of something already and model that strategy.

Some people will be convinced by your perspective. Others will never be.

This might sound a little defeatist; however, the reality of a situation can often be more liberating. The only factor missing is that of time. Over a long enough period anyone can be convinced of anything. If you are unsure look at your own history. Every single experience that you have had has led you to develop your own set of beliefs.

Stand for something

Through communicating your perspective you do two things. You immediately put a line in the sand and say that you stand for something and you stand against something.

You are introducing your market to what you stand for or against or you are reinforcing your existing position. With famous pundits on TV you almost know that if there is a story about XXX on the news that they will interview YYYY.

This is because their perspectives are well known. The television companies know what they stand for and what they stand against.

Your market and audience want to know what you think

As a result your market and clients want to know what you think on issues that affect the Millionaire Expert space that you are the authority in.

This does several things for you and your market. It helps them to feel closer to you, the Millionaire Expert, during these issues. It also lets your perspectives to be adopted by them.

How often have we all found ourselves quoting what a Millionaire Expert has said? I know that I have. When I first got into the Millionaire Expert space I found myself quoting what I had heard from others.

Your market will use your perspectives in one of two ways – they will quote you directly or pass off your perspective as their own. I should stress that the latter way may be intentional or unintentional.

Regardless, your perspective will be adopted by your clients and market, you can use this opportunity to craft something that will increase your influence and market reach or allow it to be used in a non-profitable way for you.

Don’t rant – no one cares.

There is probably no quicker way to alienate a market or your clients than with a rant. Your perspective is very important to establishing your character standpoint and story as we have already discussed, however, should your perspective turn into a rant very few will stick with you, in the short or long run.

One of the biggest problems with ranting is that it is highly emotional and negative. Usually our best work is not produced when these two forces combine.

The rant is what poor corporates put in emails to each other about their bosses, customers and colleagues. Have you ever received an email from someone who ranted about something? It quickly becomes tiresome.

A rant is not to be confused with a strong case that is put forward based upon reasoned thinking and perception. I have seen some Millionaire Experts giving brilliant impassioned speeches about a subject that is highly emotive. The skill is that this communication has been carefully developed with a specific outcome in mind. It is not to simply a tirade to make themselves feel better.

Have a point that people can rally behind.

This might sound obvious. But it is too important for me to leave out and assume that everyone reading this book is aware of this.

Have you ever had someone telling you a story which goes on, and on, and on? You are engaged with them. You are listening intently. Your expectation is that there will be a punch line or a nugget of information at the end. Then without you realising it their story has fizzled out. You politely laugh and change the subject while thinking to yourself “that’s 10 minutes I’ll never see again”.

With any perspective that you are communicating, deliver it in such a way that the recipient will appreciate the payoff of exchanging their time for you.

Build and reinforce on your Millionaire Expert position

Crafting how you deliver your perspective is an art in itself. For this section consider that your perspective must continually add value to the market place and reinforce your position as the Millionaire Expert in that field.

There are several ways in which it is possible to do this.

1. Preframe your message with your position. In simple terms this means to introduce yourself in no more than a sentence before starting your message. This works very effectively in video, audio and longer written pieces.
2. Inframe your message. This technique is very common in conferences and seminars and usually occurs after the attention of the audience is captured by the Millionaire Expert.
3. Postframe your message. Think of this as the sign off that a newsreader may give at the end of a news story. This is highly effective at the end of shorter pieces of information and material.

Select several Millionaire Experts and watch how they use these three frames for their positioning. I recommend that you experiment with different strategies to find what works best for you. A quick way that you can experiment to see what if most effective for you is to trial a number of YouTube videos and use their analytics feature to understand when viewers skip forward or worse, switch off.