Alex Merry, Public Speaking Coach @ TedX

that communication was made up of 7% words, 38% tone of voice, and then 55% body language. And this, of course, was music to the ears of public speaking coaches across the world. Do not worry about what you say, just worry about how you say it. And this— the result has been this illusion that public speaking is for extroverts. This Tony Robbins-style beating your chest delivery, the screaming on stage, the wooing, getting the crowd to do crazy things. That's not what public speaking is really about.

Welcome back to The Garage Guide. Today I'm joined by Alex. Alex, if you could just start off by giving us a quick run-through of your career journey so far.

Sure. So when I was I was studying sports science at the University of Birmingham. I was sitting outside the library, should have been revising. Some guy comes up to me and says, "Have you got a job sorted for this summer?" And I hadn't. It was my second year. I knew my dad was gonna kill me if I didn't have a job. So I go along to this meeting, and a few months later I find myself becoming a door-to-door salesperson, fundraising for charity, living with a load of strangers from across the country. And learning how to sell direct debits to people to raise money for charity. So that's how everything all started. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was at university, and then everything since then, the key milestones being running one of TED's local conferences in London, TEDxClapham, and then going into the world of public speaking coaching and now running a community for leaders who speak. It's all just been a series of unfortunate happy coincidences, and I wouldn't change a thing.

Yeah, and it often is that way of careers. And obviously your main sort of space right now is that public speaking, as you mentioned. And I wonder, was it something that's always come naturally to you, or like at university, was it something you were doing often?

God, no, I hate public speaking. I still hate public speaking. I find it a bit uncomfortable. When I was at university, I still have, like, anxiety dreams about some of the presentations I had to give at university because I wasn't actually that good at any science. So then having to stand up in front of people who were good at science and have to present as though I knew what I was talking about, it still fills me with absolute terror. I fell into this. I got into public speaking because it was the primary growth mechanism for this charity fundraising business, which I ended up becoming COO of. It was how we grew. We'd spend 3 months on the road delivering talks at universities across the UK. Students, by the way, students, you lot don't, you don't hold back. We have people walk out of meetings like 3 minutes in. We were trying to sell our business and like, you know, recruit our students for the summer. We would have people heckle you. I used to promote the business. When we were promoting the business on campus, we— no one knew who we were, and it was before the days of social media. So we'd rock up on campus, we booked a room. Sometimes the careers department didn't even know we were there because they were a bit skeptical of us. We'd find a way to book a room, either through a student or maybe it was the more official path. And we'd then have to spend the morning telling everyone, telling as many people as possible, we've got this meeting. Where you can get a job for the summer, you get your first ever job. Come along. And the most effective way of doing that wasn't flyering, it was going into a lecture hall at 9 AM, convincing the lecturer to let us do a shout-out, and then speaking to a room of 400 people. And what we'd do is, we don't have any like cards now, but we'd have these like flyers that we'd hand out. We didn't call them flyers, we'd call them tickets. Like, if you want to come along to the meeting later, 'Gonna need one of these tickets. Put your hand up if you want a ticket.' And sometimes no one. 400 people just stare at you and you're like, 'Oh, this is so awkward.' So what we'd end up doing was building a huge amount of resistance for how you might come across in front of a lot of people. Like, that is brutal rejection, social rejection, all of that stuff, professional rejection. But that was how it started. And the more you practice these lecture shoutouts, the better we ended up getting. And sometimes it's like this Mexican wave of law students, students in finance and economics, suddenly considering knocking on people's doors as a viable way to start their careers. So it was a really interesting process. So do I like public speaking? No, not even now. But I've seen the impact, A, on what it can do to grow a business. Within 7 years, we had 250 people working for us, so we really grew it. But I've also seen running TEDxClapham, what one presentation done well, it can go on and just— it can change your life. It can have a phenomenal impact on, on your career.

Yeah, I think it's really interesting with my journey of public speaking I remember being at school and, you know, getting asked by your housemaster or whatever to deliver a speech on, you know, really like a prayer or, you know, or just say something about the sport results or anything. And I found that just the hardest thing in the world. You know, I've always felt like a confident person in conversation, like with my mates or whatever, but then getting up on, you know, getting up there and actually speaking about something that you don't really know much about or aren't particularly passionate about was just super difficult. And And now, like, fast forward to having done a podcast for a year, whatever, like, I think people assume that my ability now to be better at public speaking is because of this on-camera presence and, you know, the confidence I might gain from speaking to people. But I really think it's actually just related to I know what I'm talking about, I'm passionate about. Like, these, these are things I don't even need to necessarily prepare much. Like, I used to, you know, speak into the mirror like, oh, get myself psyched up for it.

The cliché.

Yeah, and now I don't even prepare, I'm just like confident in what I'm saying and can deliver value to people, and that's the real thing that makes it easier for me. Like, is there any sort of advice on how a student who, you know, just sees himself as maybe a history student, like, you know, they don't know what they could even deliver to somebody of value, how they could start that process to getting more confident?

The first thing is, you alluded to it with what you were just saying there, Speak about something that you care about. I think the first step isn't to start speaking, it's to find out what you care about. If you can work that element out, you know, I work with lots of entrepreneurs who end up either delivering something about their business because that is what they really care about, or sometimes you work with entrepreneurs who, they've been in their business so long, not really that passionate about it anymore. And when it comes to working out, they know they want to give a talk. What do you want to talk about? They don't really— some of them don't even want to talk about their business, but they've got this other thing that they really care about. And that is where some of the most interesting talks can come. It starts with passion for sure. And what I think is really interesting about what you've just shared is your passion was the tipping point for you to be like, who cares, I'm going to do it anyway. And that is where I find a lot of reluctant speakers start. There are lots of people who are actually very, very good speakers, but they don't necessarily enjoy it. You don't have to enjoy it.

Yeah, I think if it's not passion, I think equally as powerful is addressing your own pain points, something that you really are annoyed that the problem to your— the solution to your problem does not exist. So maybe even as a student, it's like finding that thing that is going wrong in your experience that others could relate to. You know that already through maybe assessing your mates they're going to be on board with your talk before you even start it.

Do you know what a really good example of that is in, in my life? It's taken me much longer to realize this. When I became a public speaking coach, my relationship with speaking changed even more. I didn't particularly like it back then. I got into it through frustration of seeing these people with amazing messages not be able to land them with their audiences. When I became a public speaking coach, I felt like the expectation on me to be very, very good significantly increased to the point where it became a little bit crippling. I ended up getting therapy as a public speaking coach on how I manage my own nerves when I have to deliver a talk. I mean, that is crazy. And the truth is, is that was a real source of shame for me for quite a long time. It's something I never told anyone, but I've come to realize that that is actually a source of strength. I'm far more relatable to people who perhaps have found public speaking a challenge. Like, I've really been there, you know. If you, if you're getting therapy on it, it's a problem, right? It's, it's, it's having a big impact. So You know, this idea that some of the things that you would never tell anybody, these can often be huge sources of strength. We've just got to reframe the way we see them.

Yeah, another strength that you might have gained when you started teaching public speaking is that there's a good chance if you're able to teach someone that, you know, you'd know it yourself, or at least you're like reinforcing those points while teaching them, you're actually learning. You're almost relearning it and consolidating in your mind. What was that step to actually going like, okay, I've done a lot of public speaking, I'm now going to teach it?

Arrogance, to start with. We grew the business really quickly. So we were 4 people starting this thing, really. I didn't start it, but I became one of the co-founders. And we grew it to 20 people, then to 40, then to 100, 150, 250. That's kind of the growth trajectory. And people had to listen to me because I was the COO, you know, I had this sort of arrogance around my job title and I think that's one of the areas where the therapy was useful. It helped me highlight that I was, like, all my confidence was attached to the title that I had. But ultimately I think that if I hadn't had that job title, I don't know whether I would have been as confident. As, as I was, you know.

Yeah, and not directly related to a career, but let's talk a little bit about therapy because it's interesting. When I was at school and potentially at times I really needed like to actually confront my own demons or whatever, and I probably needed it most, I just refused it completely. And the time that I did therapy was actually in my final year when I was probably the most motivated and ambitious I've ever been, but it— I found that quite crippling to I was very competitive myself, and like, I learned through that process of how the UCL counselor on this podcast as well, where there are different kinds of therapy for different purposes, right? You know, some could be like, you know, childhood trauma, dealing with that, everything. But it can also just be like, you want to achieve a lot, but there's mental blockades in you doing that. So what did it— did it help? And slash, is the reason you went to it because it was like came from yourself, or was it someone like, okay, you should probably do that if you're struggling with this?

No, it came from me. It came from me. I think one of the biggest realizations I got from therapy, I was asked a question, and I think this might be something that people can relate to with their own public speaking experience, which is, how important is it that your audience likes me? And I thought about it for a minute, and I was like, well, actually, quite important. A huge amount of my self-worth was tied into that, an understanding that actually helped me realize that it's a huge blocker in what it is that I'm doing. My job when I turn up on stage and to give a talk or a presentation isn't to be liked. Actually, I think the best presentations will challenge your audience. They've got to take your audience from somewhere to somewhere else. And if I look at the presentations and the talks that I've worked on that have gone on and had the biggest impact, it's where they're asking some really tough questions and they're provoking the audience to really think about the subject in a completely way.

Yeah, and you mentioned that this project where you scaled it up massively, tell us a little bit more about what that company actually did, and also in growing so rapidly, there's challenges in that, like who are the people you're bringing on, how are you vetting they're the right people to join it, like what was that whole process like?

Chaos, but a huge amount of fun. To be Doing that sort of thing at 20, 21 years old was possibly the best experience, you know. I was getting experience that people in their 40s often aren't getting, you know. So it was a real mess, there were problems left, right, and center, huge number of— huge amount of fires to fight, but the people who I was working with made it really fun. And actually leaving that and having some time away from it, it's also made me realize how much better we could have done had we had our time again. The truth is, is we grew the model. We had, I think, one of the biggest mistakes that we made, we, you know, at the very top level, we were a charity fundraising agency. So we take on a charity as a client and they pay us to produce a return on their investment. And we produced an amazing return on their investment. You know, our USP as a company became, well, we aren't a quick sort of spray and pray door-to-door sales fundraising agency. What we do is we'd knock on the door, we'd speak to the person for about a minute, and then we'd hopefully get invited inside the house and we'd talk about the charity for 30, 40 minutes. And what we found, rather than just kind of trying to turn it over in 5 minutes, move to the next door, turn it over in 5 minutes, me, it's next door. What we found is that the donors that we had ended up staying way longer. So we ended up breaking all sorts of industry records. We were brilliant for charities, but as a business model for us, terrible. We didn't make any money. So we measured our success— because we were getting bigger and bigger each year, we sort of measured our success on the number of people that we had as opposed to the, the foundations of what a good company has, which is some money in the bank. So we dragged it through a hedge backwards for 4 years longer than we should have done before we eventually called it quits.

And TEDx was your next venture then, I guess?

So luckily, I was— I'd started TEDx Clapham as a side hustle. When I was doing these university tours, someone saw me speak and asked me if I wanted to speak at a TEDx event. I was like, yeah, yeah, sure. And I'd been asked to speak at a few universities outside of the business, like, so a bit of speaking was starting to happen. And I didn't know what TEDx was at the time. It's sort of 2012, so still in its relatively early stages. About 3 or 4 weeks before, I look up TED Talks, like, ah, I probably shouldn't have been asked to do this, I'm totally out of my depth. Didn't say that, but I started sort of creating the talk. And then a few weeks before, or a few days before that talk was meant to happen, they cancelled the event. And for my reputation now, thank goodness they did, because that talk would have not been very good. But from that experience, I was bought into the concept of these talks. It was an amazing source of education. It made me learn about the world, maybe learn about influence and other people. And these skills that we'd been helping students with— sales and management and leadership— I was now looking at it with a completely different filter. And I thought, wouldn't it be cool to run my own event? I lived in Clapham at the time. Clapham is this place that lots of graduates move, flock to straight after university, have a lot of fun on the high street, but there's not a reputation for lots of amazing do-good projects around there. So I thought that, you know, this amazing opportunity to highlight that. So I thought, right, I'll apply to run an event. So I send off my application. Within, within like under 12 hours, I'd received my rejection letter. And it took me 2 years of applying again, applying again. I think this is where my door-to-door experience came in. It took me 2 years to convince TED to let me run one of their events. I think by the end they were like, oh, just let him do it. He doesn't get it, but just let him do it. And that first group of speakers who I had speak, based on the experience that I'd had with just my sort of just lived experience running Champions Life Academy, the charity fundraising agency, I started to say to people, "Why don't you just put this part of your talk here and tweak this bit and delete this bit?" And those talks ended up doing really well. You know, one of the people we had at that very first event, her name's Isabel Chapman, and she was 2 years out of university. I met her at a party, I was introduced to her, and the person who introduced us was like, 'You have to have Isabel speak on your stage.' And I was like, 'Here we go,' because when you tell everyone you're a TEDx curator, you just get pitches left, right, and center from everyone wanting to speak on the stage. And I said, 'Okay, so what do you want to speak about?' She goes, 'I want to change the perception of sexual assault.' Doesn't say anything else. It was the very, very first pitch that I'd heard that had nothing to do with ego or making yourself look good and everything to do with this bigger purpose. And I was like, that is what we want on stage. On paper, she had no right to be delivering that talk. She should have passed it off to her boss who's got way more experience. She'd only been in there for a couple of years. Then anyways, I didn't care. Isabel was the person. She, 6 months later, she gives the talk. It's not done that well online, 10,000 views, like nothing crazy, you know, tiny in comparison to some of the talks that you end up seeing. But 2 years later, I'm at Clapham Junction station and I get a call. She goes, 'Alex, we've done it.' What have we done? And her talk has played a part in changing sex and relationship education legislation. It's become compulsory in schools. Her talk's played a part in that. She's since gone on, done loads of really cool projects, was awarded an MBE last year. I mean, what a journey. Amazing. And that is really what great public speaking is about. And it doesn't always have to be on a big stage, but it's about creating some sort of change.

Yeah, I think— I mean, one thing I find really interesting about TEDx as a concept, right, is that you get all these people on their LinkedIn, like, you know, they'll use it as PR saying, I'm a TEDx speaker. And there's so many of them, it's almost like just saying you have a LinkedIn account. It's, it's such a big entity with so many people doing talks in it that just being invited to the TEDx speech is not like the big, like, well done, applause for that. It's the— you're still competing within your own algorithm on that. Um, and you mentioned what made that one particularly good, but I guess it's a bit like standing out as a business in that it needs to be a bit innovative. And, you know, the titling, that everything to just stand out to you. What, what's some advice to someone thinking, okay, I want to, I want to have an impact, I have this idea, how do you actually go from that into a TEDx talk?

Well, first off, get really clear on the shift that you want to create and have a deep knowledge around that subject matter. I think that's, I think that's really key. But there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. I mean, the truth is, is TED is the Instagram of public speaking. Right? We watch these talks, they're just perfect. All the good ones, just perfect, annoyingly perfect. And they actually set very unrealistic precedents for how most people speak. I've been to one of the events, the speakers are making mistakes on those stages all the time, the big stage, like TED stage, they're making mistakes all the time. But you'd never see it because they're edited. And they're edited to be made to look perfect. So, as a general rule, I think, It's got to be about something bigger than you. People don't care about your business, they don't care about your story. So if you're going to pitch a TEDx event around those two elements, certainly don't do that. I think it is an amazing achievement to land a TEDx Talk, for sure. But as you said, I think around now, I think it's something like 120,000 talks have been delivered, maybe more. Most of them end up in what I call the TEDx graveyard. They don't get seen. And actually, there's a huge amount of— a lot of these speakers you have, TEDx speaker on their LinkedIn profile, which is, you know, it's a— they're doing it to try and establish a sense of credibility. Well, a lot of them aren't that happy with the TEDx talks that they've delivered anyway. That's the— if you're really honest, a lot of them aren't that happy with them. Um, but it's got to be about something bigger than you. Ultimately, it's got to— you've got to be trying to create a shift on a bigger scale.

This is something I can only relate to in a very small way, but when I first started this podcast, there was— everything was outreach, outreach, outreach, just me reaching out very much like your door-to-door sales, just online. Yeah, way more rejections than people said yes, but all that really mattered, as you alluded to, was that, that those few people that said yes and gave you that opportunity, and, and then they're the most integral people to the the future success of it. And then for me now, like, there obviously is still a lot of outreach, there's still loads of growth that I need to do, but in terms of business opportunities and other things like that, I'm beginning to get inbound. So, you know, there's now a process of actually needing—

How satisfying is that, by the way? Yeah, that first inbound must have been like—

Yeah, I know, it's crazy. And I think like Yeah, for so long you don't believe it's going to happen, but then you actually need to learn to say yes and no to the right things. And one thing you've gone on to do with all this knowledge that you've developed in the TEDx world is start coaching people on how to do public speaking. And, and I guess, like, you know, having done so much outreach, this is now like the thing where you're getting probably a lot of inbound for your credibility that exists. Why do you think it is that so many people are looking for that kind of help in public speaking, even if they're the most capable businessman anyway?

Because deep down there is a worry that they're not going to do themselves justice when it matters. I think when you have to stand up in a high-stakes environment and deliver something in front of a lot of people, you know, a fight-or-flight response of course is going to be triggered, particularly if it's something that really matters. And we worry about how we're going to look in front of the audience, we worry that our audience is going to think we're not credible enough, or we don't know what we're talking about, worry about all those things. But deep down, every presentation you do is a test, right? And there is something really confronting about if we don't meet the expectations we've set for ourselves, something very, very confronting about that. So for some people it's fear, for other people it's that niggling feeling that they could be doing better. I genuinely believe that public speaking is your greatest asset and it doesn't— you don't have to have all of the traits of a great public speaker. Elon Musk is a great example. He's someone who often mumbles, is quite monotonous, doesn't always display passion when he speaks. Yet would Elon Musk be where he is today if he hadn't been putting himself out there speaking? And secondly, because he's got an unconventional style, he adds a completely different quality. It separates him from everyone else. You know, a lot of people who are intro— there's this assumption that introverts make for— find it harder to deliver great talks. I think the opposite is true.

So what one thing that you do in your, your coaching as well is not just for those people that are getting up on stage deliver TED Talks or anything. It's also that ability to do a business pitch really well or present to your team really well. That's another thing you focus massively on. How do you think that also elevates you as a leader and a CEO in a company, the ability to deliver to your team really well?

Well, the world of work is not meritocratic. The people who do the best in careers inside organizations are the ones who can talk about their work in a way that gets them noticed. So, so a couple of years back, I decided to interview some of the most intimidating people I've ever worked with. Some of them are in politics, army, government, senior entrepreneurs, corporates. And I asked them, what are the, the biggest frustrations you have around public speaking when other people have got to present to you? Because I've seen you, I've worked with loads of companies, there are a lot of people have a deep-rooted fear of presenting to management and to leadership. So what are the biggest pet hates? And that was really what inspired me to, to write this. I wrote a whole book around this, partly because if you look online and search, search for public speaking books, you'll get How to Talk Like Ted, 'How to be a great TED speaker.' Well, not everyone is doing that, and if you go into an organization or you go into your work on a Monday morning and try and deliver a TED Talk, everyone's just going to think you're loopy. So I wanted to create something for everyday conversations and everyday presentations so that people can— who are delivering good work that's getting overlooked— they can talk about it in a way that gets them noticed and gets and makes them come across as very credible to to senior leaders too.

When I was 18 years old, I was a ski instructor in Canada, and it was a really interesting experience. I taught adults who, a lot of them, you know, obviously skiing is quite an expensive thing, and a lot of them were very astute businessmen and people who are incredible at what they do, coming to me as an 18-year-old ski instructor, just learning from completely nothing. Like, they were stripped back, didn't have any of the sort of prestige that they would have maybe in an office or whatever. And it was really interesting for me having to like overcome that imposter syndrome to tell somebody who was, you know, in my eyes like just so much more capable, whatever, what to do. And I guess that with you, there's an element of like some of the people, your clients now, are like incredibly big businessmen and, you know, achieved so much and like Is it a difficult thing for you to overcome? Granted, you know the importance of public speaking and what you're delivering, you know, will give them value, but like actually telling them what to do, is that a hard thing for you?

Not anymore. Certainly used to be. I think the irony is, is most of my clients do more public speaking, bigger public speaking engagements than I do myself. But I've been in enough scenarios and I've worked with enough people now that gives me a sense of credibility around that particular element. I learned to work and help people who were better than me at things really early on. In fact, while I was at university, the plan was actually to go into football and to become a football coach. I was doing my badges at uni, ended up running one of the football teams, and it was a good football team, you know, some of those some of those players gone on to get scholarships in America, play semi-professional, flirted with the odd training session with people who turned professional and ended up turning professional, people who were older than me. So you just, when you throw yourself into that environment, you find that you've got to find a way to to, to swim. And I think one of the things to remember is if people are asking you in the first place, they've got that openness and curiosity and understanding that they need to take themselves somewhere. I think one of the things that's really interesting about working with any kind of coach, or even listening to any presentation, there just needs to be one sentence, one sentence that changes the way someone thinks in your 15-minute talk or in the coaching session that you have. It's not about the full hour, it might just be about this one thing that changes the way they think, and that's the thing that unlocks the return on investment and the impact that they can go on and have.

Yeah, I found that really interesting that you were able to identify very early on, like, your love for coaching. And I feel like there's a, you know, a page out of that book that people can can take with them as a student. It's like sometimes it's not the most obvious thing that you can actually make a career out of that you maybe did all your life. Like, it's like that identification of— in the education system, you were just sort of taught like to measure your success on what grade you get on this or what trophy you get given for that. And I feel like you don't really get told enough to just like really absorb and keep on doing what you would just do as a default, like, passion, right? And yeah, and it's awesome that, you know, even though it's not coaching football now, that, that learning you made so young, you've been able to carry through. Is there any sort of overall advice that you'd give to people at university that are looking to resemble a career path like yourself?

Actively seek opportunities that most people wouldn't choose to do. I mean, door-to-door is not a glamorous job, But I would not be where I am today had I not started there and what it taught me and what it gave me access to and understand— it gave me the fundamental foundations of influence and communication, how to do it right. Most people would never say yes to a job like that because from a status perspective, you know, our society is so tied up with status. What do you— what— first question we ever get asked at a networking, so what do you do? Sizing each other up all the time. Imagine going to a networking, oh, I'm a door-to-door salesperson. All right, people turn off, right? Yeah. But actually, it's deep-rooted skills like that that can teach you so much and provide a really solid foundation for your career. I think the other thing to note is that we are all still learning. One of the reasons I wrote this was because I didn't totally understand the business presentation, and the only way to learn it is to write it and to articulate your thoughts. And if I could give a habit to, to younger people, it's probably as much the importance of writing regularly as it is speaking regularly. Your— the quality of your clarity will improve significantly when you can learn how to articulate your thoughts, and that can only really come through writing. Like, it's like this jigsaw puzzle. I used to hate writing, I didn't have any patience for it. It's now something that I absolutely love doing and will continue to do.

And the book's called Make It Count, and why did you call it that in the first place? And why do you think it's something that anybody should read at any age, at any position in their life?

So I was on a call with the head of HR at Starbucks And I've been doing some work with Starbucks for a while, and it was at the point where I'd basically written the book, had no idea what the thing was going to be called, and she says, "Yeah, I need you to work with this particular leader because they're not making their presentations count." I was like, "Oh, there's something in that." And then I realized make it count links with Mike. I have a brand called Mic Drop, Suddenly it all came together. So it was just complete happy fluke. As to the tagline, "How to deliver high-stakes presentations to people you need to impress at work." Not great. I'm not that happy with it, but yeah, I'll probably, for the second edition of this, I'll probably work out how I can tidy that up. But really, any kind of presentation, this is, this will help people. I think particularly when you're presenting up, when you've got to present to people who perhaps got more knowledge than you, I think a really simple trick that I can give people, you know, if you're presenting to people who've got more knowledge than you, you know, the worry is sometimes it feels like a credibility test. They actually don't need to be taught what they already know. What they're interested in is your experience, and where you can stand up and deliver confidently is no one can take your experiences away from you. No one. So as long as you're talking from your experience about a subject that they know and understand, you are enlightening them and giving them a fresh and a new perspective on that topic.

When you do a speech, right, especially back in the day, you're in that room delivering it to those people there, and obviously, like, I think, yeah, back in the day, that was really— you do that speech and then that's it, like, the people that were there, they gained the value from it, maybe they'll ask questions after, but it doesn't really go any further than that. Whereas now, especially with TEDx and everything like that, it's almost the smallest part of it. Like, you're doing it so you can deliver it to a wider audience after. And what's some, yeah, advice to people when, you know, transferring it from that room into a, onto a bigger scale?

I think you've got to be conscious of Oh, when you put something on the internet, you're competing with a minefield of distractions. So the talk you're really writing when you create a TEDx talk is not for the live audience, it's for the people who watch it online, which means that first minute is absolutely critical. The talks that get seen the most have— that first minute has connected with them. I think the most watched talk of all time is Ken Robinson's talk on how schools kill creativity. And within 20 seconds or so he's made everyone laugh, and you can't help but laugh. It's like, I'm going to listen to this person, you know. So you've got to deliver something really interesting from a speech perspective, but there's also a huge amount that plays into around the talk, how you promote the talk, what you call the talk. You've got to put some research into how can you position your talk in a way that's most likely to get it seen. Which involves, unfortunately, it involves clickbait. You know, I look at some of the talks that I think are brilliant that have not quite hit the number of views that they should have done. It's one of the biggest reasons, because we let the titles be too clever. They didn't need to be clever, they just needed to be researched.

And the question that I like to ask all my guests as we come towards the end of the episode is, when you first were at university, you started doing a bit of public speaking, and you you joined onto this charity, you would have had an idea of what a successful career would have looked like to you.

Not this.

Fast forward on, you know, with all you've learned, all you've done, all you've achieved, what is your definition of success now?

I think fulfillment is really important, you know. I think we all have— we all— our levels of fulfillment fluctuate with the type of work that we do, for sure. And autonomy is a really, for me, is a really big one. We've just come back from Portugal, we've just spent 6 months, I work with my wife, just spent 6 months in Portugal, and we can do that because of how we've set the business up. And I look at a lot of, you know, we're lucky, we're in a minority, we've created a business that allows us to do that. The world of work is certainly becoming more fluid, you know, we're seeing flexible working and companies are far more receptive to some of this stuff now, We can do that whenever we want. The paradox is we always think the grass is greener on the other side, always. And we can look at that from a, you know, there are entrepreneurs, me included, that wake up sometimes in the morning, we think, God, it would be nice if someone could just tell us what to do so we didn't have to think about the problems we've got. God, it would be nice just to have a salary that's consistent every single month so we just don't have to worry about money anymore. And the same goes with where you work, right? So we moved out to Portugal thinking it's going to be sweet, and it was, don't get me wrong. But when it boiled down— we're back in the UK after 6 months because we want to— what it— for us, what it really boiled down to was what's more important, consistent brilliant weather every single day or family, friends, And family and friends win, unfortunately. So that's why we've ended up back here. So this idea that, oh, you're amazing, digital nomading, all that stuff, that's great, but it's not— it comes with its own problems. Like, not knowing where you're going to live every few weeks, it takes a huge emotional toll, makes it harder to run the business, makes it harder to stay enthusiastic about what you're doing. And so there's something to be said for some comfort as well.

Alex, it's been amazing. Everyone check out Make It Count and look out for your next book.

Awesome, thanks for having me.

Thank you, mate.