Why Most Speakers Can't Land a TED Talk [Brian Miller]

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Remember, ted ted X are all about ideas. They don't
book speakers. They book ideas as the most important thing
I tell people, and it really blows people's minds.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I have one of the world's most elite ted X coaches,
speech writers, and just overall guru when it comes to
getting on thered Dot. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show,
my man, my brother, Brian Miller. Brian, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Oh Robin, thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled
that we can catch up again.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yes, sir, yes, sir, So it's been a while. I
know you have a lot happening, but you know, the
people want the value and I know you are locked
and loaded to deliver, so we won't waste any time.
Just for the sake of the episode, I have to
ask you about your ted X journey as a speaker
before we go into tactical statig you know, points and

(01:01):
nuggets for our aspiring tchech speakers. I want to talk
about your experience. Talk to me about how to talk,
how to magically connect with people and what led you
to that. I know you have a background in magic,
so just give the people a little bit of background
on your tech ex journey.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, for sure. So it was twenty fifteen. I'm still
a full time magician at this point. I've that's my
first career as a full time magician for about ten
years and brought myself up from doing local backyard barbecues,
local restaurants to touring the country and eventually internationally as
a magician. And I remember, I'll never forget. It's late,

(01:40):
it's dark. I'm walking in through a parking lot into
an event venue where I'm going to be doing magic
tricks at a corporate event for the evening. And as
I'm walking in, my phone rings and it's a number
I don't know. And when you're self employed as a magician,
it could be a potential client. You got to answer,
so I answered, But I'm I'm like walking into this gig.
So I answered my Hi, Brian magician, like you know,

(02:01):
how can I help you? And this guy goes, Hi,
I'm putting on a local ted X conference here at
the local high school. I got your name from some people.
Would you be interested or consider speaking at our TEDx conference?
That was like literally my introduction to the world of
ted and I had been watching ted talk since I
was in college because this was kind of still the

(02:23):
early days of the Ted and tedex program, and it
never even occurred to me I could do a Ted talk.
It wasn't a dream, it wasn't on my bucket list.
It was just that seemed like something for famous people.
For like real, I was just a magician. I'm just
in my cloud. She was doing card tricks and so
but I'm walking I literally I go, oh my god, Yes,
I would be so honored. I would love to do that.
I'm actually walking in to do a gig. Can we

(02:44):
talk tomorrow? And he goes, sure, I'll call you tomorrow,
and we hang up and I go in and do
two hours at card Dricks, And that phone call changed
my life.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
I think it's so different, you know, because we've had
the opportunity that the you know, I'm grateful for the
opportunity to speak to so many ted X speakers here
on this show, and most people's stories are very different
than that. I think you're the first that got a call.
People have been tapped, you know, by an organizer that

(03:14):
they knew, maybe, but someone handing your information off to
them for them to reach out to you to kind
of initiate that journey is wild. I want to ask
you a follow up to that. So, how soon in
the ted X journey did you know that you know what, Yes,
I'm a speaker, Yes I'm a magician, but I want
to help people get onto the stage. When did you

(03:36):
have that shift? I'm really curious to know about the
inception of your journey as a coach.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yeah, so that was years.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
The first pivot was I gave this this you know,
ted X talk and it was held at a high
school and it was run by high school students. I mean,
these were fifteen sixteen year olds running this conference. And
when you go watch a VideA, you could tell like
you can tell and like they didn't even level normalized
the audio and post.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
They didn't know.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
So it's like minus eighteen dB audio. It's like so low.
If you crank your speakers, you can barely. So it's
a miracle. Anybody watched it, let alone, you know, three
and a half million people, right, So so it goes
viral and I get asked, all, how did you make
your talk over?

Speaker 3 (04:15):
You don't make talks go viral. I didn't.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
I sent it to everyone i'd met in my entire
life on day one when it hit YouTube. So it's like,
I forget who used this phrase? Someone used it. I
exhausted my rolodex on day one, anyone I'd ever met.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
In the grocery store.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
So what I said I to do eight hundred people
on day one, and it stalled out at about twelve
hundred views. After about two weeks. That was it thousand
views a little over then, and after two weeks, I
was like, all right, gave it my best shot. Worked
for a bunch of months. Cool thing I did, back
to card tricks. And then a week later, my wife
and I are at the airport, were flying to West

(04:52):
Palm Beach to visit my grandparents. I'll never forget and
bring it to visit my grandparents. And we're at the
airport waiting for the flight, and my wife goes, you
didn't tell me your talk at two thousand views, and
I was like, I didn't, What are you talking about?
I opened up YouTube. It's at two thousand views. By
the time the plane lands in West Palm two and
a half hours later, it's at four thousand views. By
the end of that weekend, it's at ten thousand views

(05:13):
and a few weeks later, within a month of hitting YouTube,
it's at one hundred thousand views, and then within six
months a million, and then it climbed to three and
a half million. So it just took off, took a
life of its own, and I started getting invited all
over the world to speak instead of do magic, like
do some magic in your speeches, but can you give
your TED talk but for like an hour? Like it

(05:34):
was like that. And I wasn't a speaker. I wasn't
dreaming of being a speaker. I had no training as
a speaker, and they wanted me to talk as an
expert on human connection, which I wasn't. I had fourteen
minutes and eleven seconds to say on that topic, and
I said it in my TEDx talk, you.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
And so I just started reading everything you could read
and learning everything you could learn, talking to anybody who
knew anything about the psychology of social interaction anything. And
because I was so nervous about looking like an idiot
when I was starting to accept these really high fee
speaking engagements, I just didn't want to disappoint anybody. I
accidentally became the expert people thought I was from obsessing

(06:11):
over that content for years. So to your question, when
did I shift to coaching people on doing their TEDx talks?
That was also effectively a cold call that I got.
I got a cold email from somebody three years later.
So for the next three years I transitioned into speaking slowly.
I kind of slowly moved out of magic into speaking.

(06:33):
About twenty eighteen, I got an email from a woman
who said, Hey, you've never heard of me. We never met.
I just got invited to give my first ted X talk.
You gave one of my favorite ted X talks I've
ever seen, totally different topic than yours, But can you
teach me how to give a talk as good as
the one that you gave on my talk?

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Wait? Wait wait wait wait wait stop stop the press,
stop the press. So you're telling me, Brian Miller that
you got a call that initiated your TEDx journey as
a speaker, and then you got another call that initiated
your journey as a coach.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, that is wild.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
It's it is. It is wild, and and there's there's
a there's a lot to unpack there. That's maybe for
a different follow up conversation. I I talk about the
role of luck in success a lot. I don't think
enough successful people talk about the role of luck. Luck
is plays way bigger role than people let on. People
like to tell these perfect hero's journeys in reverse where

(07:40):
they pretend as if they always knew what they were doing.
Just bs. Most of the time, success you gotta work
really hard. You gotta nurture your talent, make connections, build relationship,
got do all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
Absolutely, work your ass off and get lucky.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Right, people forget and get lucky and so yeah, both
of these situations were luck. And the key to a
lucky moment is do you know how to leverage it?
Do you know what to do with it? Are you
willing to take it? Are you willing to say yes?
And I gotta tell you, I don't speak to students
as often as I used to it. I used to
speak to hundreds of college campuses. I only do a

(08:18):
couple of year now. But when I speak to students
so often, when they're confused or lost, or they don't
know what to do with their life, they haven't found
their passion, I tell them so often we are staring
up into the sky hoping for a lucky moment to
fall into our lap. When we're missing the actual lucky
moments because they're right in front of us and they

(08:38):
look like other people. Lucky opportunities look like people. That's
why we miss them. You have to talk to people,
you have to say yes. So this woman asked me,
can you coach me on a ten X talk? Have
you ever done that before? I had never done that barely.
I didn't even know how I gave mine.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
It was luck.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
But I say yes first and figure it out later.
That's my game plan. That's always been. That's what I
do in life, you know, I do whatever's next. And
this seemed like whatever's next. So I said, uh, sure
we could do that, and I charged her what is
now a laughably small amount of money, but I was
so nervous. I think I charged one hundred dollars a session,
like an hour or whatever, you know. And I did

(09:17):
six sessions with her, and I just said, here's what
I did, and I just took her through what I
did to write mind. She gave her talk. A few
months later, I hit you too. It gets three hundred
thousand views, which is still proper viral back then, like
millions was nuts. Three hundred thousand views in the early
days that this is still proper viral. She ends up

(09:37):
quitting her consulting firm, founding a boutique consulting agency that
now employs something like twenty plus people full time. She
completely transformed her life and went on a big mission.
As a result of that, she handed my name to
somebody else. They hired me, and after a couple of
years of that, I went, maybe this is actually a

(09:57):
real company or a real program, and then I and
then I found it conquered the Red Dot.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
That is such an inspiring story. So let's talk about
soon to be ted X speakers getting on the red Dot.
Let's do it from two different aspects. I'd like because
anytime we have a coach, we've had the pleasure of
having a couple of coaches on the show. I want
to attack it from both ways. Independently. I'm a speaker

(10:25):
who wants to get on the red dot on my own,
and then later on in the episode, I like to
talk about what it looks like with coaching services or
support services like your company. So I'm a soon to
be tech X speaker. Where do I start? Just give
me the fast and dirty breakdown of where they need
to start.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
Totally.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
So the first question I'm going to ask you is
you're thinking about spending the next eighteen plus months and
two hundred hours of your life working on a ten
minute talk that you're going to give once Why? And
that's enough to scare most people away. And the people
who are scared by that question should not do a
TEX talk. Don't hire a firm, don't invest your time.

(11:08):
It's not worth it. Most people should not do a
tech talk. And this is not me being elitist. It's
me saying the investment forget money if you decide to
hire proper coaching. And it's almost impossible to do a
great job these days without real support, whether you pay
for it or not. But you need support these days.
But forget that for a second. Even if you're gonna
do it on your own, the investment of time and

(11:29):
energy is not worth it to most people. What most
people who want to do a TED talk are looking
for is one the logo on their website. There's other
ways to get there's other ways to get authority, right.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
You don't need to do a tech talk. It's nuts.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
A lot of people they want to feel seen, they
want to tell their story. They've been through something really
hard and they've come out the other side and it
inspires people, and they think ted X is a platform
for that.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
It is not.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
It's a platform for spreading ideas. There are lots of
platforms for sharing your story and finding like minded communities.
Ted X is actually not one of them. Ted X
organizers they don't book speakers, they book ideas. So if
what you have as a story, go to speaker slam,
go to the moth, go to Toastmasters. There's lots of

(12:17):
places to do that that are built for that. Don't
do a ten X talk. And of course, if you're
just looking to get more clients, like again like just
get better at sales and marketing, why do it teedextalk?

Speaker 3 (12:28):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Like, it's just it's a long play. It could take
you twelve, eighteen, twenty four months to end up on
that stage. Then you're going to wait for it to
come out, and then you need to learn how to
leverage it. It's a long game. So the first question
I asked somebody who's thinking about the red dye And
I know this sounds harsh, but like I think there's
too many people in my position blowing smoke just to
get people to sign up for their programs, Like, no, man,

(12:51):
this is not the right platform for most people. But
if you heard me say that, if I went, hey,
eighteen mons two hundred hours, why are you going to
do this yourself? And you felt this urge to dig
in your head and defend your decision, like, let me
tell you, eyebrows, let me tell you why. If you're
just listening to this, you can't tell I have giant eyebrows.
So if you're ready to defend that, this might be
for you.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Right.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
It's kind of like when I was a magician and
I was doing stand up comedy and I was in
comedy clubs. People get up and try stand up once, right,
They try to do a five minute stand up at
an open mic and they bomb right, silence, booze, no
one laughs. The people who can't wait to get on
stage next Tuesday and try it again, they're gonna make
it as a comedian. That's why I ask that harsh question. First,

(13:36):
it's are you even in the right mindset? Is this
the right vehicle for you?

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Love that? So, yes, this is the right vehicle for me.
I'm a specialist in modular music, artificial intelligence, and I
have to share this idea. I want to do a
TECHX event close to my house. What do I do?

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah, okay, so I want to do a TECHX event
close to my house. So in that case, if you're
looking at geographic location, you're not willing to travel much
or too far, then obviously the so this may not
be obvious. The first step, honestly is figure out the
ones that are within driving distance, that are that would
be considered local. Reach out and ask how you can volunteer.

(14:21):
Volunteer for this year's one hundred percent. Don't even think
about your idea yet. Volunteer. Get on the other side,
contribute if you have, If you have the benefit of
having money sponsor an event, get the same thing it
put you know, help out, get on the other side.
That's also not like I did. What I did not
just say was pay to play. That is not paid
sponsoring it hoping that someday that you'll be able to

(14:44):
get on that stage. That's not pay to play. That's
putting yourself in a situation where then you can be
useful and be helpful and build the relationships and learn
about the system. But one hundred percent, do that first,
and start to understand what the organizers, what they're looking for,
what great tech talks look like, what applications are obviously bad.

(15:05):
If you don't know what a bad application looks like,
you'll do one, and you'll do it one hundred times
in a row too. I get people that go, I
submitted one hundred and twenty seven applications before I got accepted,
and I just go, how did you make it past five?
How did you even say? Didn't you learn anything from
the first five rejections? Like you got to learn what's

(15:26):
not working? Don't do one hundred and twenty seven?

Speaker 3 (15:29):
What are you doing?

Speaker 2 (15:31):
That's good? Brian? You know I have an episode early
on in my journey with this show, and some of
the things you pointed on just because of my own
personal journey, you hit it right in the head, especially
the volunteering as well as the sponsorship piece. And I
find that so many of you know, you know how
it is like someone doesn't talk now. Everyone wants to

(15:54):
talk about the talk or whatever it is. And some
of the conversations that I've had, especially with aspiring speak
or aspiring ted X speakers, they're always like, you know,
I don't want to like I'm just applying blindly, Like
I'm just putting them out there, and some teachers and
maybe people in the coaching space might encourage that, you know.

(16:17):
And for me, I like the idea of honing in.
One of our guests came on and told me that
he reached out to his school that he graduated from.
That was one of and I thought that that was
something that people maybe don't speak about enough. It's like, hey,
try to find the alignment with whatever the chapter that
you're interested interested in speaking at. Find the alignment and

(16:41):
then start there first. And I think that that's powerful,
that sponsorship and volunteerism are things that you teach as well.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, and so I mean here's the thing, right, So
there's a huge amount of stuff, like we haven't even
talked about the idea itself and how to build what
an idea even is, how to build a great idea,
what what should go on a teex application, the way
to frame it. We talk about all that stuff, but
first and foremost, like the speaking industry itself, the world
of ted X is a relationship industry. Organizers have an

(17:13):
incredibly First of all, they're full time volunteer volunteers. People
don't realize they sometimes lose money out of their own
pocket putting these events on. It can take nine ten months,
nine ten months to put on one of these events.
They're giving virtually no support by TED like ted TED,
they aren't given monetary support. They have to bootstrap or
find sponsorships or find whatever.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
So make these people, the people.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Organizing these events are going through a tremendous amount of
stress for free to put on this awesome event. Make
their life easier man like first of all, So of course,
if they only have eight or ten spots, they're going
to want to give most of them the people that
they already trust to do a good job. They can't
trust you if they don't know you. It's a relationship industry.

(17:58):
People don't get booked for or you know, twenty thousand
dollars keynote speeches because the event planner googled for speakers. No,
they're asking colleagues and people at other conferences for trusted speakers.
Same withx TETCHEX. Organizers are going to ask around, who
do you know, Who do you trust? Who could do
a great job, Who's not going to be a pain
in our ass?

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Right?

Speaker 1 (18:19):
So when speakers are applying blindly, what they don't realize
often is that the applications are optional. Techex organizers are
not required to have open applications. They're actually encouraged not
to have open applications, by the way. They're encouraged not
to precisely for this reason, because open applications encourage people
who are just trying to get a ted talk to

(18:41):
stick the logo on their website or sell their next book.
And if they do have open applications, they're not required
to choose anyone from them. I know an organizer that
used to get over five hundred applications every single year,
and something like eight years in a row never chose
a single speaker for their conference from the open applications,
not one in eight years, And I said, why did

(19:02):
you even have it? Then they said, we're hoping to
find a diamond in the rough, someone we'd never heard of,
but we never did, so we finally just stopped having
open applications and went directly to curation. So this whole
like people get depressed sometimes they go, it's you know,
it's all who you know, and I don't know anybody,
and I'm like it's not who you know, it's who
you meet. Go meet people like that, go connect with

(19:26):
people and volunteering. If you don't have a direct connection,
like if you're if your alma mater isn't putting on
a conference, if the town you grew up in isn't
putting on a conference at the time you live in
or work and isn't putting on a conference, find the
nearest one to you and volunteer. You now have a
connection to that conference you're looking for. A connection doesn't
mean you can't apply to one across the other side

(19:46):
of the world and get accepted. We have clients who
do it, but most of the time they get into
those conferences across the world, it's because one of us
on my team knows the organizer and facilitated the introduction,
and the organizer trust because of the quality of the
talks we've produced. Therefore, they're willing to have a conversation
with our client. It's still an introduction.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yep, great, so let's do this. Let's go right into that.
So we talked a little bit about if they do
it on their own. Now that person is like, you
know what, my music artificial intelligence talk is just not
getting any traction. I've applied in twenty places, I've volunteered,
I've been a sponsor, I want to hire you. What

(20:28):
does it look like for an aspiring speaker to pay
for services to help them along their journey?

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, and I'm going to actually answer that with an
anti cell So let me stay on the path of it.
If you're doing this on your own, because there's just
so many things that you can do on your own.
The first thing is if you're hitting brick walls, even
if even if you have a connection to a conference
and you're still hitting a brick wall, what that tells
me is you don't have an idea. You've got something else.

(20:57):
Remember ted t X are all about ideas. They don't
book speakers, They book ideas. That's the most important thing
I tell people, and it really blows people's minds. So
the speaker's got to be the vehicle for the idea,
but not the idea itself. So they don't care if
you're a professional speaker. In fact, they most tech organizers

(21:17):
actively discourage people like me. Now like today, it would
be much harder for me to book a tech X
talk because I'm a keynote speaker. They don't want perfect,
polished speakers. They want experts or leaders, community activists. They
want people with ideas. Okay, so what is an idea?
An idea is not a topic. A topic is not

(21:38):
an idea. A topic would be something like the science
of balance.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
That's a topic.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
If I ask you what's your idea and you say
the science of balance, you haven't even answered my question.
So it's obvious when I say it like that, right,
But most people on their applications they take whatever topic
they want to talk about and they put that on there.
If that's going to get them booked. It's like, that's
not even an idea, it's a topic. The second thing,
an issue is not an idea. So if the science

(22:10):
of balance is a topic, an issue might be, you know,
falls are the leading cause of death in the over
sixty five population, right, that will be related to the
science of balance. But falls are the leading cause of
death in the over sixty five population or whatever something
like that. That's an issue. It's a problem, but it's

(22:31):
not an idea. If I say what's your idea and
you say falls are the leading cause of death in
the over sixty five population, you haven't answered my question.
It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
A story is not an idea. This is the one
that gets people upset because, as we talked about it earlier,
many people want to do a ten XT talk because
they've been through something really tough, either Rex to riches,
trauma to triumph. Right, they've got something really deep, and
they'll they'll get on the Discovery call with me and
they'll tell me their story through tears, and I can
feel it and it's powerful.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
It's moving.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
At the end, I have to wipe away my own
tier and then look them in the eye and say,
I've heard that story seventeen times this week already, just
with different details. Your story is not as unique as
you think it is. It's meaningful to you because you
went through it, but there's not that many different stories.
And you know that once you start hearing people pitch

(23:22):
you the way that we have, the way that TEDEX
organizers do. So a story is a vehicle through which
you help somebody understand an idea. You will tell your story.
It will be engaging, it will be powerful, but it's
there to support the idea. It is not the idea itself.
You won't get books simply because you have an amazing
or tragic story.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
So the question is what is an idea?

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Like?

Speaker 3 (23:48):
What actually is it? Then?

Speaker 1 (23:49):
An idea does two things. An idea proposes a solution
and moves people to action. That's an idea. So what
would we say an idea is, let's talk about it.
Here's the framework that we use. If you can't fit
what you want to talk about into this framework, it
might not be an idea.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
And here's the framework. Two.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Action, sow that impact. Action, impact. Let's break that down.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Action.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
What do you want someone to do, think about or
rethink as a result of hearing your talk? What do
you want someone to do, think about or rethink as
a result of hearing your talk?

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Impact?

Speaker 1 (24:33):
And once you've taken that action, what's the positive benefit
in your life or your world having done that? So
to actions sow that impact. Let's go to our balance
expert again. Right, science of balance is a topic. An
issue is you know falls out a leading cause of
death in over sixty five, that's an issue, it's a problem.

(24:54):
We're going after their story. This is a client of
ours who gave a talk earlier this year. So it's
why it's freshman mind and had a story about watching
their mom, who used to be graceful and a dancer,
slip and fall break something which led to a spiraling
effect where she continued to get weaker and weaker and
now is hunched over and can even keep up with
a walker or without falling over, and it was really

(25:16):
sad for her. That's a story that is a vehicle
to help understand the idea. What was the idea we
put on the application that got her into one of
the most prestigious tech conferences in America that she had
no direct connection to. It was, if you don't want
the last years of your life to be the worst
years of your life, focus on balance. Now that's an

(25:36):
action and an impact. So the impact is basically, don't
if you don't want the last years of your life
to be the worst year. So we just inverted the framework,
but we went impact first. If you don't want this
terrible thing, in other words, if you want the last
years of her life to be really fun and enjoyable,
then action, work on balance. Now, focus on balance. Now,

(25:58):
Now that sounds too simple. When I tell people that,
they're like that, that's the big fancy idea that got
them book. Yeah, I didn't say it was sexy. I
said it was an idea. Right, that's that's the system.
So that's the first step I would tell somebody if
you're dreaming of the red knot what you should definitely volunteer,

(26:18):
you should do all those things, but start thinking about
what you want to talk about and see if you
compare down an action, what do you want them to do,
think about or rethink after hearing your talk and impact
what positive result happens in their world or their life
as a result of doing that thing that'll get you
on the right path.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
That is good. That is good. So, Brian, it seems
as if the process to work with you is like
an almost like an interview process to qualify people. So
you don't work with everybody. You make sure that if
you work with someone, you can get them the results
that they're after and that they actually have an idea.
So as we wind down, I want to make sure

(26:57):
folks know how to get in contact with you. I'll
also share all of this information in the description of
the YouTube version of the episode as well as the
show knows. But I want to make sure they hear
from you how to connect with you and maybe who
should reach out and who shouldn't.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Yeah, so if if all that made you nervous, So
I have a habit of making people nervous because because
I really don't think most people should be, and I
think many people go into the ted style coaching programs
based on outrageous promises of fame and fortune and you're
going to book talk it's gonna be amazing to billion views,
and then they just get really disappointed because the claim

(27:38):
was so outrageous and they don't realize how much work
really goes into it. So first thing is, can anybody
do a ted X talk? Yes, anybody could do a
ted X talk, But how long it will take you
to end up on that stage and how much you
can leverage it depends a lot on your circumstances, your

(27:59):
available time, your willingness to work through this stuff and
flesh it out right. And it's just something most people
aren't willing to deal with. And so we're looking to
only bring people into our program that are absolutely ready
to do the work required, because that's what keeps our
success rates so high. So I'll give you this, on average,

(28:23):
across the industry, ted X conferences only except between one
and five percent of all applicants. It's pretty from most
of those conferences, it's close to one and two percent.
And our private clients have somewhere between an eighty five
and ninety percent success rate, like eighty five to ninety
percent of all clients who've ever worked with us have
booked to ten x stalk right, So there are no guarantees.

(28:47):
We have an anti guarantee. We explicitly guarantee nothing because
you can't. You're not allowed to guarantee someone to spot
on a tech stage. TED explicitly forbids it. You see
a guarantee from any coaching firm just for what it's worth.
I don't know who else you've had on this podcast.
It is a red flo It explicitly violates the terms
of TED. Just for what it's worth. We don't guarantee,
and you can't anyway. These are people, they're conference organizers.

(29:09):
I can't guarantee you getting in there. What I can't
tell you is we have about as close to a
guarantee as you.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
Could reasonably hope for. We really know how to do this.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
So first step is think about what I said, try
to build your one sentence, and then go to road
to the red dot dot com just like it sounds,
road to the red dot dot com. That's our free scorecard.
It's a little self assessment, takes two minutes to answer,
and it will actually give you a percentage likelihood that

(29:36):
an organizer will accept your idea at this moment in time.
And it breaks down by three categories by message clarity,
emotional resonance, and persuasive power a percentage as well where
where you fit in each of those three categories, so
you'll know which one you need to work on most
with a few tips for that and a bonus free

(29:58):
mini course on the other side of it to at
you there. So if you're just curious where you stand,
you go on there and you get sixty two percent
likelihood and it goes, hey, you're really high in message
clarity because you did the filter framework from listening to
Robins podcast with Brian, So you get higher message clarity,
but you get low on persuasive power because you have
no idea how to build an argument that moves people
to action. Well, you now know where your gap is,

(30:21):
and so do we. If you then decide to make
a call with us, and then the first call we
have before we even offer you an invitation to the program,
if at all is going to be where's the gap
in the persuasive power? Because we know that's your gap.
Let's talk about that. So Road to the Red dot
dot com is a great place to start.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
I love it, Brian, Thank you so much for joining us.
And I'm I'm and I'm gonna do a season two.
We're going to do this as a seasonal show. Would
you come back and join us because I feel like
we I would love to have this discussion, another layer
of discussion, of discussion.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
With one hundred percent I'd love to do cool.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
So we're gonna get you booked up as soon as possible. Brian,
I appreciate you. Happy holidays, all of that good stuff,
and I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Thanks so much for having me. Happy holidays.