How to CONQUER TEDx | My 10-Minute Journey

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Unlocking Lily. It's always been my dream to be a speaker, which led me to quit my day job to work and mentor under Evan full-time. And all of you are coming along for the ride with me. In every episode, I take on a different challenge to really help me grow as a speaker. In this video, I'm going to be taking on the biggest challenge yet. I'm going to be doing my first TEDx talk, and all of you are coming on the road trip with me. Matter of fact, I'm leaving right now, so I'm going to see you guys on the road very, very soon. We just arrived in Michigan. It's about 11:30 at night. We're going to go check into the hotel. The lovely people at TEDx actually offered to pay for our hotel stay, which was really nice of them. Quite surprising since it's a nonprofit organization. So super nice coming out of their pockets. We're gonna go check out this hotel and catch you soon. Have checked in. This is our room. It's quite nice and comfy. Tomorrow's a big day. We're gonna have a dress rehearsal. It's getting kind of late, so we're gonna change and go to sleep. We're just getting— I'm gonna honestly, I'm gonna find this place by using the sun. We're trying to figure out how to get to the TEDx place because we have no GPS. We have no GPS. None of our internet connection is working, so we're going to try to get there by following the sun. By following the sun. Yes. Use the sun. Yes. Sundial. Yes. Hopefully we get there soon before my dress rehearsal starts, but it's going to be interesting. We have no idea what we're doing wrong. We'll see. We'll see. Ah, TEDx, here we go! So we finally made it to the Livonia Civic Center Library where the TEDx event is going to be taking place. I'm feeling good, I'm not feeling nervous quite yet, maybe because it feels surreal, it doesn't feel like it's real. So we're going to go in and maybe the nerves will kick in, or maybe I might not get nervous at all. Hey everyone, I just finished my dress rehearsal. I was so nervous, oh my God. I was speaking really fast and I couldn't figure out the clicker thing. Oh my goodness. And I'm so glad that I had this rehearsal because I feel like I got all my nerves out of the way and now I know how I'm going to do things differently. Yeah, I just didn't expect it. I was just kind of sitting back thinking that, oh yeah, I got this. I practiced it about 200 times and it's so different when you're up there. Gosh, I think it's going to be a lot better tomorrow though. I think so. But, but people are super supportive. They were so nice and they did the exercises I asked them to do and it was all good. But Yeah, tomorrow's gonna be a lot better than today. So today is the day. I'm just getting ready to leave. I'm really excited. I'm really, really excited. I'm not nervous. I am excited. And this morning I was just listening to some music that makes me feel, you know, pumped and ready to go and feeling extraordinary. And I'm just thinking about when I'm gonna be on stage and how it's gonna be, and I really don't want it to end at all. I feel like they have to pry me off the stage at the 18-minute mark. We'll see, we'll see. I'll try to linger as long as possible. It's, you know, something that I have been working on for such a long time, and it's finally here. I don't want it to be over so quickly. I'll catch you guys soon when I do my speech. So it's 9 minutes before showtime. I'm gonna be taking on the stage very, very soon. I have to be quiet because it's quiet here. Hello everyone! So it's about 8 o'clock, we wrapped up TEDxTalk, the first TEDxTalk ever that I have done, which was amazing. It went really well, it went better than I thought, which is quite amazing because I thought I would be pretty awesome, and it actually went better than I thought. I'm gonna try to digest everything that has happened today. I'm gonna think about it tonight, think about it tomorrow morning on our way home, and we're gonna go back to the hotel, catch some snooze, and we're going to be heading back to Toronto very soon. Oh, this is Evan, I believe. So I am back from my TEDx talk. I'm just thinking about All the great things that happened during the conference, the organizers working so hard, tirelessly around the clock to make sure that everything ran smoothly. The speakers were awesome. They had such great things to share, and I feel like I learned a lot from them. And we also made a connection, so we're going to keep in contact with each other for a while. And the audience, the audience, they were so supportive, and they came up to me after my talk and we had conversations, and I made some connections there as well. Well. So I'm super grateful in all the things that happened during the talk. And now thinking back to my own talk, I thought I'd share 3 things that went really well for me and 3 things that I could improve on. So I'm going to start off by telling you 3 things that I did really well. Number 1 is I maintained within the time limit. As a speaker, you're always going to be given a certain amount of time that your speech is supposed to be. So in the TEDx world, your speech cannot be longer than 18 minutes. So for me, I was particularly nervous because weeks leading up to my talk, my speech was still about 20 minutes long or so. So it took a lot of practice and editing it down and cutting it back and back and back and practice, practice, practice to finally get it down to 18 minutes. Number 2 is engaging the audience. I wanted to create a talk that was more conversational and more interactive, so I got them to do stuff like hugging each other. I got them to raise their hands when I asked a question. I even got them to answer one question for me. It was really high risk because the potential of it going wrong was highly likely. There could have been a complete dead silence and nobody answering my questions or everyone reluctant to raise their hands, but I went in with so much conviction because it's something that I really wanted to do to kind of draw the audience in to kind of be part of my talk versus just observing that it ended up working out really well for me. Number 3 is my emotional commitment. Whether it was sadness, frustration, happiness, all of that, I committed myself fully into it. This is the part that I struggle with the most, when I was going through the practice sessions. I was telling the stories, I wasn't feeling it. And I'm so glad I put in the extra time to really practice over and over again that I was able to get all the emotions out as well. Now the 3 areas of improvement. Number 1, PowerPoint. Oh my goodness, I totally underestimated the power of PowerPoints. It really captivates the audience if you have a nice a visual presentation to go along with your voice as well. I didn't spend nearly enough time as I should have practicing with a PowerPoint as well as investing into making the PowerPoints visually stunning. So definitely next time around, practice, practice, practice with a PowerPoint for sure, for sure, for sure. Number 2 is my voice. I didn't realize how quiet I was being on stage until I saw the video of myself when speaking. I could have definitely projected my voice a lot further than I did, and also the variation of my voice. I could have played around with the speed and the tempo of it, which could have made it more interesting for people to hear. So lots and lots of vocal lessons for me to get my voice up there for my next talk. Number 3 is a stronger ending. There wasn't anything wrong with the words that I used, but I could have brought way more conviction than I did for the call to action in the end. The whole reason why I want to be a speaker is to spark a change in people and for people to take action after hearing my talk. So if I brought way more confidence and way more conviction in the end, I feel like more people will be willing to go out there and take action. So I had quite a few people ask me how I got my TEDx talk. So for my next challenge, I'm going to share with all of you how I landed my first TEDx TEDx Talk. So the question of the day is, what is your one big goal that you're working on right now? Write in the comments below and I'll join in on the discussion. I have a special shout out for Donna Osborne. Donna Osborne wrote, "You're amazing, Lily. You inspire me to work on making my own magic happen and move away from playing it safe." Yes, Donna, thank you so much for writing that beautiful comment, and that's what we want. We want you to make more magic happen. Thanks again, Donna. So thank you so much for watching, and more importantly, being on this journey with me. Some of you have been with me since day one. It's crazy, and I really hope that I get to meet you in person one day so I could give you like a big giant hug to thank you for all the love and the support you've been giving me so far. And I will see you very, very soon.