How to Give a TEDx Talk with Rachelle Babler

Full video transcript

Darby: Are we live? Darby, we are live! All right, welcome, welcome everyone. Man, I love doing these live streams to our audience. I don’t know if you’re hopping in today from the Book Patch, or maybe you’re one of our Jarvis Insider or Jarvis Underground members, but welcome, welcome. Say hello in the chat, let me hear where everyone is coming from today. Yeah, great to see you guys, say hey in the chat, let us know where you’re tuning in from.

A couple of quick housekeeping items before we dive in and introduce Rochelle: we are going to be running our last and final seven-day book challenge as Zechariah and I are hosting, starting November 15th. We’ve been running them each and every month of this year, and so if you’ve had a book in your head, you’ve been on the fence about getting it out, and you’re looking for that last little bit of motivation and some help along the way in terms of coaching and just Jarvis support, feel free to reach out to us. Go to jarvisunderground.com, hit me up in the chat, and we’ll talk about getting your book out of your head, getting it taken care of. You guys, this can be the last chance for you to have a book in your hand, your own book written for your own ideal audience, your own ideal customer, in your hand before the new year, so you can go into the new year with a book, with a book launch, and get ready to start building your business for 2022.

So let’s – we had a comment, talk to me about that, Darby. I don’t know, do you want to chat about that? I want to dive into this live, because everything we do with books, is, you know, getting us on stage, and TEDx is somewhere I want to be, I know, in the near future, so I’m excited to be here. I’m super excited to have Rochelle on. One of the biggest things that we see, especially with someone wanting to write a book, is: what comes after? Right, we talk about that all the time inside of our challenges – what are you writing the book for? Is it for your coaching business? Is it because maybe you have this really amazing story that you want to share with the world, and your dream is to be on a TEDx stage? Well, that’s why we brought my friend here, Rachelle Babler, on to give us the ins and outs of TED and TEDx, and what the difference between the two is. So if your dream is to be on a TED stage one day, this is absolutely the place to start.

So Rochelle is a SoCal girl coming from San Diego, and she quit her career of twenty years to pursue her why. During the pandemic she realized her why is to empower people to express themselves with their stories – it’s like what we do, and what I love to do – help people share powerful stories that belong to them. And hers is so that they can heal, inspire, and give others permission to do the same. So Rochelle, it is such an honor to have you on today, I’m super excited.

Rochelle: Thank you so much, I’m excited to be here.

Darby: Absolutely, so just give us the rundown – what was your why, and your switch? I’d love to hear it from your words.

Rochelle: So I have kind of an eclectic background. After high school I went to college and I became a paramedic, and I was a paramedic for six years in San Diego, working – you know, driving code three around the streets of San Diego, helping people with their emergencies. The contract negotiations were coming up and a lot of us were going to lose our jobs, so many of us went back to school. I took a forensics course, got hooked, and I was in forensics for almost twenty years, working for a local law enforcement agency in their lab, analyzing evidence. I did a lot of research, taught all over the country – it was amazing. But in my mid-forties I just – my intuition got really loud, and was like, “you have more work to do, but not in this area,” and I quit my job cold turkey. Gave two weeks’ notice. I had no idea what I was gonna do – everybody thought I was having my midlife crisis, and I was like, “no, this is my midlife awakening.”

I became an entrepreneur, and I haven’t looked back since – it’s been the best decision I’ve ever made. Since I spoke a lot on the forensic platform, I loved supporting speakers and speaking, and I just kind of gravitated towards supporting speakers with outreach, connecting them to events and conferences to speak at. And then that turned into podcasts, and then also – through ALA, which I know you know what that is, Zach, right – I met, in my ALA group, someone who worked for a company that supported clients with their idea for the TEDx stage, and I eventually got hired with them, and I learned everything from him. He’s been in the industry for about thirteen years behind the listening and as an ideation coach for TEDx. So that’s primarily what I do right now – helping clients with their idea for the TEDx stage. It’s super fun, and I’m excited to go through all the moving parts, and then share my recent experience as well.

Darby: That’s so cool, and just amazing. One of the big things I’m always hearing is TED versus TEDx – can you give us the rundown of what each one is?

Rochelle: Yeah, so TED is the global parent company. TED stands for Technology, Education, Design, or Entertainment Design, depends on who you talk to. It was designed for thought leadership and for people that would create change, so as you guys are probably aware, the slogan for TED is “ideas worth spreading.” TED was – I think conceived around 1984, and every year they have a global conference. So they have TED, they have TEDMed, which is like health and wellness, they have TEDWomen, TEDEd, and TEDYouth. Those are global conferences, but those are invite-only, so they’re really people that are at the top of their niche or their field, and they get invited. It’s an event they have once a year.

So about ten, fifteen years ago, TED wanted to expand the opportunity for other people to share that TED experience, so they created TEDx, which the “x” stands for “independently organized events.” So if you’ve seen TEDx, you’ll see TEDx San Diego, there’s TEDx UCSD here in San Diego, there’s TEDxSDSU, and then there’s like a TEDx Youth down in Chula Vista and the South Bay down here. Different cities have TEDx events, and those events are independently organized – anybody can apply for a license through TED for one year to host a TEDx event. I believe there’s over 1,400 in the US, and then globally there’s over 2,500 events, so you really have the opportunity now to apply to these TEDx events to get accepted to one of them to do your TEDx talk.

So the difference: if you’re applying for an event, it’s going to be a TEDx event versus TED, which is the global parent company that has their major conference every year, their event once a year. It’s really great that they created TEDx so that people can have the opportunity, because as we know – and I’m going to use Brene Brown, because everybody knows Brene Brown – she did her TEDx first, TEDx Houston, and that went global, that went viral, and all of a sudden everybody knew about Brene, shame, vulnerability, and eventually she was asked to do a TED talk. I think she’s done three – two TEDx and then one TED talk. So that’s the difference between the two.

Darby: Amazing. And so other than Brene Brown, what have you seen – what sorts of TED talks do you see? Are they all supporting people that are supporting their business with it, or what sort of applicants are you seeing?

Rochelle: So the TEDx stage is not to promote your business. It is really for the idea you’re spreading that’s going to help others take action, feel differently about something, or have a different perception on something that was maybe around a stigma or something like that. So TEDx is really not for promotion – TEDx frowns on that. It’s really about: what idea do you have that you can get others to take action, get others to look at something differently, and create human impact?

Darby: Okay, and are you seeing a lot of people come in fresh off the streets, or do a lot of people have a background in speaking?

Rochelle: Yeah, so there’s several clients we’ve had that have had zero speaking experience, none at all, and the first time they ever spoke was on the TEDx stage. So there’s this fallacy, or this myth, that you have to be a professional speaker, or you need to have speaking experience, to actually be on the TEDx stage, and that’s not true. Many of the events, when you go through the application process, will ask you if you have speaking experience, and it’s absolutely fine to say “I have none, zero.” The big thing is that you have an idea, and that you’re coachable, and that you make the commitment to do what you need to do to get on the stage, because once you do get accepted to a talk, it’s a big commitment.

Darby: Yeah, what does that process look like?

Rochelle: So the first thing you want to do is get clear on your idea – what is your idea for the stage, because everybody’s got stories, we all have great stories, but a story isn’t really what the TEDx stage is for. It’s really about what is your idea, and a lot of times when we go through our ideation session with clients, the idea is rooted through your storylines, so we go through the stories and we get your stories, and the idea comes from those stories. So you get really clear on your idea, and then you start applying. If you go to TED.com you can see all the TEDx events – I started in California, because that’s where I live, and I just looked at the ones that were open and started applying. Many of the TEDx events will have a theme, so you obviously don’t want to apply to something that doesn’t relate to your idea – you want to apply to the ones that relate to your idea.

Then once you start applying, you just apply, apply, apply, until you hear from somebody. Sometimes you’ll get an email saying you’ve made it to the second round, and then they do interviews with you. For mine, it was, “you’re accepted to do your talk.” Then as you go through the process, when you land a talk, you have a timeline – I had seven months to get ready for my talk. Some people don’t have that much time, some longer – everything is totally different because all these events are independently organized by different people, so it’s not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all thing – they’re all very different.

For my particular TEDx, we got a timeline of milestones that we had to hit. My two-minute idea that I had to share to apply to these events became four to six minutes, and then it became twelve minutes. So when you actually land a talk, they will tell you how much time you have. TED actually looked at the neuroscience and strategy for how long a talk needs to be for a speaker to flesh out an idea, but short enough that a listener can digest it – that’s why TED talks and TEDx talks are eighteen minutes or less. So when you land a talk, it could be five minutes, it could be eight, fifteen, or eighteen – mine was twelve minutes.

A lot of times we share with our clients: don’t write out your talk until you actually land it and know how much time you have, because if you wrote out an eighteen-minute talk, now you have to condense it down to six, which makes it really difficult. There’s a framework that we use to help people with the structure of their talk, and then once you land a talk, you know how much time you have – they tell you.

Darby: That’s so interesting.

Rochelle: Yeah, so once you get accepted and they’ve picked all their speakers, that’s when we were told how much time we had, and then from there, again, it’s the milestones you need to hit before you actually make it to the stage. We had a private Facebook group where we shared with each other as we kept expanding on our talk. When we got to the event, we had a speaker’s dinner on a Friday night – the event was on a Saturday afternoon – and we got there around ten and did sound check. They told us where to stand, where the green room was, where we wait, where we “sweat it out” before we get on. Once you’re done with your talk – I asked to go first at mine, because I wanted to get it done and be able to enjoy everybody else’s talk, so I went first. After that you’re done, and the event coordinator gets a private, secure link to upload each speaker’s video for TED to view. TED views those, they approve them, and then once they approve them, they go live – they don’t tell you when it goes live, you have to just keep checking. So mine’s in the process of post-production edits, and then upload, and then TED does their thing, and then I’ll find out once it’s uploaded – you just start checking.

Darby: So what was your talk? Tell everyone what your talk was on.

Rochelle: So my talk was on advocating through music. My sister unfortunately passed away from colon cancer at the age of forty-eight, and I’m a musician, as you can see, my guitar’s something I love to do, and I wrote a song the day after she passed away – it was my interpretation of her cancer journey. Last year, during the pandemic, I was trying to decide what ways I wanted to continue her legacy, and I ended up creating a lyric video out of that song and incorporating colon cancer statistics and facts. I just started sharing that with a bunch of colon cancer organizations, to share her story, to get people to – a lot of people skip their colonoscopies, they’re feeling good, but colorectal cancer – a lot of times you don’t feel any symptoms until it’s in the later stages, so I wanted to bring awareness to her story, to help others see how important it is to get screened. Prevention is key for beating that disease, and so my idea was really on how to advocate through music in a different way.

Darby: Wow, what a powerful –

Rochelle: Yeah, I actually played my guitar and sang a little part of her song in the very beginning.

Darby: How is that, getting on – have you done any performing in front of people?

Rochelle: Yeah, so I have a band and we play at local dive bars here in San Diego, so I had performed before, but the TEDx stage is so different, because even if you’ve done keynote speaking or speaking before, on the TEDx stage your talk is such a condensed version of your idea and stories – very small – and you have to memorize it. There’s no teleprompters or anything, so you got to memorize your talk – that’s another thing. It’s very different. It was one of the most challenging things I’ve done.

Darby: You mentioned that they don’t give you the time you’re going to be allotted until after you apply and get through the process.

Rochelle: Yeah, so once you get accepted to a talk, and they’ve accepted all their speakers, that’s usually when they’ll tell you how long your talk is.

Darby: Is that just for scheduling and the purpose of running the event?

Rochelle: Yeah, it’s different for all events, because it depends on how many speakers they have – if you have a lot of speakers, then your time might be shorter. We had sixteen speakers, so our event was from one to five. I believe most people had around eight to twelve minutes for their talk, and we had sixteen speakers do their talk that afternoon.

Darby: Makes sense. I guess my follow-up question is: you don’t know your time yet, but you mentioned a framework that it kind of follows into – could you elaborate on what that framework is, and what’s the thought process you need to be thinking of in terms of these talks, whether it’s eighteen minutes or two minutes?

Rochelle: Definitely. The thing about a TEDx talk is that you’re taking a condensed version of your entire life, kind of, and squishing it down into a time frame to really make your impact with your talk. The framework of my talk really was rooted a lot in my stories – the story of my sister, how she got diagnosed with cancer, and then how my idea evolved, which was I wrote that song, I took it and used it to share and bring awareness to colon cancer, and what could this do for others. TEDx is based in story and rooted in idea. It really depends on what your talk’s about, too – it’s different for everybody, what your idea is and how you’re gonna frame that. But brevity is one of the biggest things you can have, making sure that every piece of your talk is going to make an impact in some way, because it’s such a short, condensed version.

Darby: I’d love to chat about coming up with the idea for a TED talk. What – maybe how it relates to us in books is: what we teach people when writing a book is, you’re the guide, and your reader is the hero of the story – is that similar to TED? And then also, we try to teach our students to take their reader on a journey, right, so there’s a specific – who that person is when they start reading, and who they are when they finish, or a specific problem that is solved for them in their life when they finish. I’m interested to see if that relates at all.

Rochelle: Well, again, I think I mentioned earlier – how do you know if your stuff is good for the TEDx stage, and it’s really: is it a story, or is it an idea? Stories make for great content, they can inspire others and elicit emotion, but that idea is something that’s going to create a theory of change, and that goes beyond the story. When we go through our sessions with our clients, it’s really important to go through the back stories – everything from where they were as a child till now – because a lot of their idea will come through that, and it’s a process that we go through, and we really don’t know where it’s gonna go sometimes. Usually at the very end, our clients will be like, “I had no idea that that would be my idea.” It’s really cool, because your stories really are kind of like the backbone of your idea, because your experiences are like no other. Some people will say, “oh, I want to do a TEDx talk,” but this idea or this type of talk has been talked about so much, like mindfulness, say, or whatever it might be – but your experiences are so different than anybody else’s. So that’s why it’s important to go through all those experiences and see how we can come up with that idea for the TEDx stage, because again, it’s about making a big impact on people, to get them to think differently, take action, and make them feel a certain way.

Darby: Can you give us some examples of maybe some of the more powerful ones you’ve worked on – maybe not using names specifically if you can or can’t, but I’d love to hear.

Rochelle: I can share some clients that we had in the past that I didn’t particularly work with, but were in the company. There’s quite a few that had done some talks – one had done one on intermittent fasting, and that – you know, intermittent fasting has been kind of a big thing the last five years, and her talk went viral, and she has, I believe, over seven million views right now. As a result of her talk she was offered to do certain things with certain companies – it really can change someone’s life overnight if it does go viral, and it can make a big impact on others, as far as the messaging, like I mentioned before with Brene Brown’s – we all look at shame and vulnerability very differently because of her talk.

Darby: That’s amazing. So you work with people, you help them with the application process, then they get selected. I’m trying to think – do most TEDx stages have hundreds or thousands of people watching? How is it selected, from TEDx, to then promote it on the TED YouTube channel?

Rochelle: So right now, because of Covid, TED is limiting the audience to a hundred people – when I did my TEDx event, I believe they had sold a hundred tickets, but I would say there was probably fifty to sixty people at the most that I saw there. But your audience is not the people sitting watching you – your audience is the people at the camera, because your TED talk and your TEDx talk is going to be a digital thing, so really you’re speaking to the people that are going to be watching it. That’s as far as I know right now, because of Covid it’s very limited. There’s also some TEDx events that aren’t doing live, they’re doing virtual, so if it’s virtual then you’re going to be setting up your own place to do your TED talk. I’m really glad I did mine live – I wanted to be on stage, I wanted to have that whole experience, so I’m glad the one I went to was live, but it’s not to say you can’t do a virtual one. I do know, from talking to some people, that the spirit of TED really is being on stage and doing your talk, so they’re really trying to do what they can to make those talks live.

Darby: And what is the process if someone wants to work with you guys – if you have questions, audience, please post them, and I’d love to hear other people’s insights, takeaways, and questions. But if someone’s interested, how long does it typically take, from start to finish, with you?

Rochelle: So when we first start, what we do is we have our ideation session, which is a ninety-minute session, and we do a deep dive into your stories, everything, get clear on your idea. From that we take all that content and put it into an application – basically, you have a template of questions that are commonly asked for TEDx events, and you can take that information and put it into all the applications that you do for TEDx. That process probably takes for us, to do the messaging, about three weeks – we can be done with your application. Then, from there, a lot of TEDx events will ask you to send a one- or two-minute video on your idea, so you have to squish everything back down even a little bit more, and you do a video and share with them what your idea is, in a very short time, because they’re looking at hundreds of applications, so they want to know what’s your idea. We’ll coach our clients on the script for that, we’ll review their videos, and then once they’re done with those videos, they can start applying. We have some people we can refer to for application support, and then once they land a talk, the guy I work with, Tucker, who was behind things for TEDx San Diego, taught me everything – he’s a coach and can help with the framework of the talk.

It depends – I applied to mine, and it took a couple months to get accepted for that one. A lot of times we don’t know when they’re going to accept speakers – they’ll usually give you an email and say “we’re in the process of reviewing, we’ll know by July or something,” and then you’ll at least know, and you keep track of everything on a spreadsheet. There have also been clients of ours who’ve gotten accepted to multiple talks – multiple events have wanted them to speak – and one thing you have to know is, if you get accepted to multiple, you have to do a different talk at each one, you can’t do the same talk twice.

Darby: Oh wow, okay.

Rochelle: So then you come up with another idea, or you say no and decline, and just pick one – it’s totally up to you. I had a client I worked with who got accepted to three TED talks in three months, so she did one each month. The one thing is that when you do a TEDx, your social proof just takes it to the next level, so when you’re wanting to become a paid speaker, or get on podcasts or things like that, just having “I’m a TEDx speaker” really puts you to the next level.

Darby: I know, there’s a couple TEDx talks in us, Darby, that we gotta get moving on, get those ideas down. Question from the crowd: do these talks, or applications, require any kind of fees to apply, if someone were to just go and do this on their own?

Rochelle: No, there’s no fee at all to apply. You have to anticipate that you’re going to pay for everything – some events, if they raise enough money, may give you a travel stipend, but just plan that you don’t get paid for them, and you are going to pay for all your expenses. But there’s no application fee to actually apply to these events.

Darby: Is there – do seasoned speakers get paid for coming on TEDx stages?

Rochelle: No, no one gets paid, not even on TED. If you get asked to do TED, you’re gonna be – it’s a global platform, and to be asked to be invited to do a TED talk – no, I don’t think anybody would turn that down. I know I wouldn’t.

Darby: A great question from Patrick: what does it take to work with you and Rochelle and your team?

Rochelle: So you can go to my website, www.rochellebabler.com, and you can contact us there, and we can set up what’s called the clarity call, to see if the TEDx stage is a good fit for you. We can go through some stuff and just see what your ideas are, what are some of your stories, and then you can decide whether you want to go through the ideation process, and we’ll create the messaging for your application, and then help you get on your way to make it toward the TEDx stage.

Darby: That’s so cool, and I think Patrick, if I’m not mistaken, is coming on to our next challenge as well. Look forward to having you, Patrick, and that’s a good segue – again, November is our last challenge that we’ll be doing for the year to get your book done, so if that’s something you want, to have a book done by the end of the year to start off 2022, make sure you join us at writingwithjarvis.com. And then, if you’re interested in working with Rochelle – Darby, do you have any more questions?

Darby: Yeah, a couple, because we’re mentioning the TED stage being virtual – I think I would get a lot more of an adrenaline rush being on a stage at a TEDx talk, but given the state of things and the situation, everyone’s had to make the pivot too, like, okay, how do I now present myself on Zoom, do I need to upgrade my camera, how does my background look – any tips for preparation in advance, even if you were never to get on a TEDx stage, what are some just really fundamental basics that anyone that’s a speaker in this kind of state can just – it’s just good to know?

Rochelle: I would say, make sure you have really good lighting – lighting can be an issue when people are doing virtual talks, they’re too dark, you can’t see their face, and a lot of your talk comes through your expressions, your face, and how you’re moving. Always have a good microphone and a good quality Wi-Fi system, so that things don’t get broken up and you go in and out. I know that the ones that have gone virtual, I think they give them some instructions on things they should probably have in place to make sure their virtual talk is good.

Darby: Cool. How many applications does someone need to put in before they end up hearing back? Is it a hundred, two hundred, three hundred?

Rochelle: So when we work with clients, our job is to position them in front of an organizer, so we’re really positioning them so that out of hundreds of applications, they’re going to want to look into this one a little bit more. And that’s the great thing I’ve learned about Tucker and him working behind the scenes – he’s reviewed thousands of applications for the TEDx stage, so we’re really positioning you for success, to get accepted to one of the stages that you apply to. When I worked at the last company, the average application amount that we saw for somebody to get accepted was eighty. But some people got accepted within ten applications, some fifty – I think I applied to almost forty before mine got accepted. So it really depends. But again, if your idea is clear and it stands out, then you’re probably gonna stand out a little bit more than some other people that don’t really know – they got to make sure that their idea is really clear, and what idea is it that they have, because that’s what TEDx is – it’s really about the idea, it’s not about the stories so much, it is part of the stories, but it’s really about the idea.

Darby: And so someone comes to you with that idea, and you’re coaching them through it – do they, if they have a terrible idea, are you telling them it’s bad? I’m so interested to know, like, if I came to you with just the worst idea, how do you kind of lead me to water?

Rochelle: Why don’t you want to choose some smoothies, let’s see some of your ideas, Zechariah. So what we really do is we dive deep, and then we dive deeper and deeper, because I think everybody has an idea based on the through-line of their stories – they have some sort of thing that they’ve done in their life, or they’ve recognized, or something that they can share to help others. It’s really like going through that ideation session and seeing – let’s look at the big picture and see which way we can go. Now sometimes we’ll have clients who have three or four ideas, and we’re like, “wow, you could talk about this, you could talk about this,” but what is the top one, the one you’re so passionate about that you want to share to create the biggest impact – and then if they get picked for multiple talks, they can talk about these other ones as well. If someone gets picked on multiple, and they want to do more than one talk, then we can help them with a different idea that they might have.

Darby: Gosh, that’s amazing. And then inside of that talk, do they – are you allowed to have slides, show video? Is it pretty open to what you can actually do once you’re on stage?

Rochelle: Yeah, you can do slides – the slides can be a distraction, I think, sometimes, if you use too many. We were told that if you do use a slide, make sure it’s something that is really going to be useful for your audience – if it’s not, then don’t use it. I had two slides for my entire talk – I had one picture in the beginning, and then I had the video of the lyric video I did, playing in the background when I was talking about it, just so people could get a visual of what it was like, and that was it. Some people didn’t use any slides, some people used a handful of slides. That’s part of where, when you do get accepted to talk, they’re gonna coach you on what their suggestions are. We had coaches for ours, and they would give us suggestions on what to wear, what not to wear – you know, it’s that shaggy red carpet, the dot, and so for women, like heels, you got to be careful you don’t want your heel to get stuck in the carpet. They tell you to bring two – for us it was two colors, because one color might look better on stage than the other. You might spill something, so you want to have a backup plan just in case. So things like that – we got coached on those things throughout that time frame, until we actually made it to the stage.

Darby: Wow, there’s so many things that you don’t think to think, to even know. Going through the process would be transformational in itself, just by learning through everything here – even if you were just to practice preparing for a TED talk, I imagine it would have a lot of positive effects for things outside of just the status of getting shown up on stage.

Rochelle: Yeah, and I talked to people who’d done TEDx talks and asked them what they learned, or what they would have done differently. One of my good friends who’s done a couple TEDx talks said that when you go out and you walk and get on that red dot, just stop for a minute and pause and ground before you start talking. I did that, and it was really something that just kind of set the tone for me when I started my talk. Somebody else had suggested: go first, you’re going to want to go first and get it done with, so I asked to go first, and I’m glad I did, because then I could enjoy the rest. So there’s little things like that – you talk to people who’ve done it, what worked for them, what didn’t work for them. Preparation, too, and then the commitment – it’s a big commitment to do a talk, and if you don’t hit those milestones and aren’t doing the work, an event coordinator can say you’re not going to do it. So you have to be committed to that process, show up, do the work, and be ready for it.

Darby: Can you maybe – I missed it – what are some of the milestones from once you get accepted? You said there’s a couple interviews.

Rochelle: So we didn’t have interviews for ours – some events do, they’re trying to narrow down the speakers, maybe they’ve picked like thirty and now they need to narrow it down to fifteen, so they may have interviews. I think some people at my event were interviewed. So we expanded on our talk – it went from what’s your two-minute idea, to a four-to-six-minute talk, and then a twelve-minute talk, so we really started building and working on the framework of it, getting feedback, making adjustments. And then there comes a time where there’s no more adjustments, and you gotta start memorizing it – that was probably one of the biggest things for me, I would do the talk and want to tweak this, tweak that, and change this, and at some point you have to just stop and start memorizing it and be done with it, because you could always change it, right – like your book, you tweak that at some point, but you have to be okay with what you have and just trust it and go with it.

Darby: Yeah, we tell our students, “stop editing, stop, just” – excuse me – I’m kidding.

Rochelle: At one point the coach came on our Facebook group and said, “okay, this is the time, no more edits, you are done. From here on out it’s memorizing the talk.” I literally had my talk on autopilot for probably about two weeks after it was done, because I had said it so many times, over and over and over.

Darby: What makes a good – is there a structure that you see that makes a really powerful talk?

Rochelle: I really think it’s when someone speaks from their heart, and they’re not up there to self-promote, not up there for different intentions – they’re there really truly to share from their experience, and their idea that’s going to help others live a better life, be inspired. I think those are the talks that really resonate with people.

Darby: So that’s maybe going being raw, right – like really sharing, going deep.

Rochelle: Very, extremely vulnerable – there was a point in my talk where I started to cry, because it was very personal to me, my sister died, and sharing a lot of her story brought up a lot for me, the grief, and we’re vulnerable, and that’s okay to share, and that’s what connects with people. I told myself I would try not to cry, but if I did, I did, and that’s just part of the journey for me. But yeah, I think it really is what makes a great TED or TEDx talk – you can tell people that are just really speaking from their heart, and they just want to help and support others, and share something that changed their life or can help others live better lives, and create that human impact.

Darby: Yeah, and we see that in books too – I mean, the way you connect with your reader, we call it your ideal customer avatar, but the way you connect with your reader is by sharing, going where you don’t want to go, right – going, “oh, that sounds too personal” – but that’s exactly how you connect with your reader.

Rochelle: Yeah, the more vulnerable you get, the more you’re going to connect deeply with people. Chris Anderson, who’s in charge of TED right now, he kind of runs the whole thing, wrote a book called TED Talks, and in there he talks a lot about how being vulnerable and sharing your experiences is what really connects with people.

Darby: Yeah, wow, so powerful. I’m interested to hear some of your favorite TED talks, I know I have mine – I’d love to hear from the audience too, what are some of your favorite TED talks?

Rochelle: Yeah, well I love Brene Brown’s, but hers is like a very popular one. The one I really liked is by Elizabeth Gilbert – you guys know her, she wrote the book Eat, Pray, Love – it’s called “Your Elusive Creative Genius,” and I like her talk because she talks about how it’s not just Picassos and certain people that are these creative people – we’re all creative people, we all have it in us, it’s not just these really big names of creative people who are so special, or have this rare talent – we really truly all have that, and I think it’s so true. I like hers. There’s one I can’t remember, was a kid that did one that I really liked, he started a non-profit to help homeless and feed homeless people, and some of these talks that these kids have done are amazing – if you look at TEDx Youth, I think it’s like seventh graders to twelfth graders that can speak, and there’s a lot of TEDx Youth events in different cities where these kids can talk.

Darby: My favorite talk that I remember, I was making sure I got the name right, was Tim Urban’s “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator” – he was so on point with me being a master procrastinator, he illustrates it really funny, it was a really entertaining talk.

Rochelle: Yeah, I just realized he has 44 million views on YouTube for that.

Darby: Wow, that’s incredible.

Rochelle: Yeah, that’s a lot.

Darby: Mine is – I love, I think my first introduction to TED was, was it Ken Robinson’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity” – what’s my dog doing – that was one of my favorites, but I also love “The Rise Before It Arrives, 4 AM,” where it’s kind of more of a comedy that talks about 4 AM and how it’s in media everywhere, and he connects all these dots, but it’s not as impactful, just a funny one.

Rochelle: Yeah, and there’s – you know, that’s a common question that’s actually asked on applications, what’s your favorite TED talk, so we usually suggest that they pick something that’s not so popular, not like the top five or top ten, pick one that’s a little bit – maybe doesn’t have as many views, or is around a topic that you really like – and share that one with them.

Darby: Yeah, that’s cool, so know your unique favorite TED talk.

Rochelle: Yeah, and even like some cities – I know San Diego has one – they have TEDx ones and TEDx lounges, where people just come together to watch different talks and discuss them, so if you’re really wanting to get into the platform, get involved in the community, see what’s in your area, see if you can volunteer – some events will ask, “have you ever been to a TEDx event or a TED event,” so if you show that you’re involved in it, it could also help.

Darby: Oh, and where do people go if they want to find these local events? I know you said city by city – is there a directory?

Rochelle: So if you go to TED.com, you’re gonna see TEDx events and TED events, and you can go through and put in a filter – you can put in a filter for California or different areas, you can see all the ones globally where the TEDx events are, but if you go to like San Diego, you can see all the ones that are in San Diego. A lot of them will have websites, some of them don’t, but they will share who the coordinator is, and then you can reach out to the coordinator through social media, or if there’s an email, you can reach out to them and just ask about the event, if you can volunteer – a lot of times they need volunteers for different things, so just get involved in the community.

Darby: That’s great insight. Any parting words, or last final things that we might not touch on that our listeners can get some value from?

Rochelle: I would just say, if you are looking to make a big impact in this world, the TEDx stage is there. It’s a global brand, it’s been around for quite a long time, it’s a prestigious stage, and it can change your life – some people have had their lives changed completely by doing that one TEDx talk, or that one talk that can make a big global impact and human impact. Don’t let it intimidate you because it’s a big global brand – you don’t have to have experience, again, we’ve worked with clients who have zero speaking experience, and some of them have been some of the best talks. You don’t have to have – people think, “oh, it’s TED or TEDx, you have to have this big idea” – it could be a very simple how-to, it doesn’t have to be something very elaborate, it could be something that you’ve just been doing that you found really helpful to you, that you want to share with others.

Darby: And I know working with you, we’ve talked already, working with you is fairly affordable too, so I would say that if you guys are interested, Rochelle is accessible and doable for most people that really want it – so I don’t know if you share pricing now, but definitely reach out to her directly. Darby, do you want to put her link, her website link?

Rochelle: Yeah, share it again – you can contact us, and again we can have a clarity call to see if TED is a good fit for you, because it isn’t maybe for everybody, but having been through it myself, I think everybody should do it, only because it’s such an incredible experience, and it’s a very different stage, it’s very focused on – but it’s just such a – I don’t know, I’m not affiliated with TED in any way, but I support their mission and their cause, and we’ve seen TED and TEDx talks that have really inspired and changed things for people, so I love what they do.

Darby: It’s amazing. Well, any final questions from anyone in the audience? Would you have a comment earlier for you, Rochelle?

Rochelle: Oh, the Fretboard Journal – oh wow, that’s really interesting, thank you.

Darby: Yeah, there we go. And any – just anyone out there have a key takeaway that they learned, an insight that you got from tuning in today, live with us? Thank you everyone who did show up, drop your comments, it’s great to have you here, and everyone watching the replay, thank you as well. I’d love to hear kind of what insights you’ve gotten from Rochelle, and if anyone here is going to go pursue – I’d love to hear about your idea inside of either Jarvis Underground, or obviously reach out to Rochelle at rochellebabler.com. Cool, looks like we got a shy crowd today, thank you so much.

Rochelle: Oh, here we go – makes me less nervous, because I feel it’s more about my desire to share than a biz promo, absolutely – yep, if you are going to speak from your heart, just help others think differently about something, take action, like – my whole thing was sharing my sister’s story so that people would get screened, because colon cancer is one of the most preventable, treatable cancers out there when it’s caught early. When it’s caught late, it’s a problem, and my sister’s was caught stage four, and she fought it for two and a half years before she passed away. So I had a mission to share, so that I could impact others to wake up and get screened.

Darby: That’s amazing. And Dr. Shania said he got here late, but is looking into whether it’s a fit for him, or fit for them – so the best way, Rochelle, is just to get in touch with you directly, and that call is free, to get fit?

Rochelle: Yep.

Darby: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, you guys, let us know in the comments, give us a like, give us a subscribe, and we will be seeing you – we’re doing these now kind of weekly, so next week is another really great talk. But Rochelle, thank you so much for coming on and sharing, I know I had so many questions, and I just knew absolutely nothing about the TEDx stages – really insightful.

Rochelle: Good, I’m glad, and thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it.

Darby: Absolutely, all right. All righty, we’ll see you guys, see y’all.