Confession -

I don't really like TED talks.
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Given my profession, I know I'm supposed to. And sometimes I do. But frankly...for the bulk of them, the tone flies in the face of what I want speakers to sound like.
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My whole thing - and if you've heard me on a podcast, you've probably heard me say this - is I want a speech to not feel like a speech. I want the audience to forget they're watching someone mic'd up on a stage. The whole thing should feel like friends having a top-tier dinner conversation.
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It's tough to feel you're having a dinner conversation when a dressed-up person is strolling to the middle of a red circle, pausing for a two-Mississippi count, then delivering some theatrical first line like the candle stopped burning and my soul turned inward, ne'er to be whole again. ​
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Okay, I made that one up. You get the point: if you're in the audience for a speech, I want you to feel like there's a friend on stage. Not like you're sitting in a dark theater wondering if you're allowed to cough.
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Of course, there's a problem: people pay me to help with TED talks. Which means at some point I need to stop complaining about them. So when someone asks me for help, I take the money and try to make it not feel like one of Those TED talks.
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Which brings me to last fall. I helped a licensed counselor named Mandy Morris with her TEDx talk. Given that it was her first keynotey thing, I wasn't expecting it to break the internet.
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And with good reason. Months earlier, I’d helped a well-known speaker with his TEDx. Great venue, great production value, and a title that made me think the talk would pop. Nope. 50,000 views.
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By contrast, Mandy is not a famous speaker. She’s not even the most famous Mandy Morris.
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I figured if we could put together a talk she’s proud of, that's a win. Maybe if the algorithm likes her talk, we can reach 10,000 views.

Instead it was the most watched TEDx in the month of February.

Most watched
...on
...all of
TED

250k views in three weeks. Shows what I know.

Thing is, I wasn't wrong about what makes a good talk. What Mandy did was take a heavy topic (trauma) and somehow sound like herself the entire time. Not like a speaker. Not like a therapist giving a lecture. Like a person who had lived something and wanted you to understand it on a human level. That's the dinner conversation. It just happened to be on a stage with a microphone.
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I still don't love TED talks. But I love what happens when someone forgets they're giving one.​
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Well done Mandy!
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Cheers,

600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246
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