How to prepare for a TED Talk (or any ten minute presentation)

I've been lucky enough to give two TEDx Talks. In this article, I want to share with you five tips on how to succeed preparing a ten-to-thirty minute talk.

My goal is to provide you with actionable suggestions that will help you focus on what's important. Following these steps will increase the likelihood of being clear, memorable and even inspiring.

The five tips are:

• choose a novel topic,
• structure your content around three ideas,
• make it relatable,
• incorporate stories, and
• practice.

1. Choose a novel topic

You need a topic that has the potential to be useful, inspiring, and memorable.

Here are the suggestions from Chris Anderson, TED's global leader, on this topic:

• Focus on a single idea
• Give the audience a reason to be interested
• Build your idea using familiar concepts
• Make sure your idea is worth sharing

Think about your life. What is something unique that you've learned? If you believe this insight is relevant enough for others, follow that path.

If one week later you discarded the insight, then it wasn't relevant enough. Start again!

2. Structure your content around three ideas

Once you have your main idea, it's time to structure it around few ideas. My suggestion is three at the most.

One way to do this is by using two tools we designed at Astrolab. I used them in both my TEDx Talks and was very satisfied with the results.

The first tool is called Audience Profile Canvas. This framework will help you decide your goals by thinking of your audience.

The second tool is called Key Ideas Canvas, and it helps you choose the three ideas you'll share on your talk.

So, to synthesize: decide what do you want to achieve in your audience, and them choose up to three ideas that will give your talk a structure and a cadence.

3. Make your topic relatable

In INSPIRA, our persuasive communication workshop, we talk about the four doors you need to open in your audience's brain to increase the likelihood of persuading others. The four doors are: attention, understanding, memory & judgement.

In this journey, making your content relatable is crucial. How could you redirect your topic to your audience? If you fail to do this, you'll loose them.

When I sent one of the early drafts of my second TEDx Talk to óscar, my business partner, he said:

I think you're not considering your audience enough.

That made me change the order and tone of several of my points.

In this sense, I worked hard to turn the concepts of the talk into easily visualized images and moments that, I'd like to believe, we've all experienced, even if in an analogous way.

A few weeks before this TEDx Talk, a pharmaceutical company reached out to Astrolab for help with the launch of an oncology product.

We want you to assist a group of doctors in crafting some TED Talks-style messages.

I volunteered to handle it and made sure the doctors supplemented their scientific explanations with personal stories, narrating their experiences treating real patients. That project reminded me to do the same in my talk... and it's an excellent way to connect with the next suggestion.

4. Include small stories

Once I felt comfortable with the order of the ideas, I created an initial transcription of the entire talk in a Google Doc. I did this for the first time two weeks before the event.

Then, I looked for stories that could help illustrate some of the ideas, just as I had done with the physicians.

I found stories from others as well as my own, and gradually incorporated them.

In the end, I included nine stories in my eighteen-minute talk (about one story every two minutes). None of them were particularly emotional—unlike some I shared in my first TEDx Talk— but all of them were relevant to my main theme:

• A personal story, when I saw an AMEX billboard announcing that you could now use those cards at 7-Eleven;
• A personal story, where I recounted how I came up with an idea for a marketing campaign, and how a manager disregarded my idea;
• A personal story about when I read "Thinking, Fast and Slow," and how I came to believe that all the answers about organizational behavior were in there;
• A personal story, from when I heard Salvador Alva talk about his book "Empresa Admirada";
• A personal story about when a friend recommended a book to me... which I didn't buy;
• A personal story about when I suggested something to the company's culture director where I worked, and the excuse he gave me for rejecting it;
• A story about a neuroscientist who proved that rats stop playing when they're afraid;
• A story about when a Canadian psychologist discovered what he believed to be the pleasure center in rats' brains... and how a neuroscientist contradicted it thirty years later;
• A personal story about a survey I posted on LinkedIn.

Here is a framework that will help you design four different types of personal stories.

5. Practice, practice, practice (and prepare for the worst!)

Tim Urban wrote an article where he details how he prepared for an official TED Talk. One of his recommendations is to dedicate the necessary time so you can deliver it while doing something else.

I could never do that, but I came close.

What I do know is that I spent over thirty hours preparing for my TEDx Talk, including research, writing, and practicing. I know this because I kept a journal of every hour I invested in this talk.

In the days leading up to the event, I filled up my phone recording different versions of my TEDx Talk.

This helped me immensely because it forced me to measure the time, compelled me to listen to myself over and over again to identify inconsistencies or gaps in the flow of ideas, and made me realize that I needed to smile more and modulate my voice.

Now, what if the microphone, the presentation, the light, or the monitor fails you at the moment of the talk? Give a few seconds to allow the staff to resolve the issue, and then continue as if nothing happened.

In my second TEDx Talk, the microphone failed just before I started.

A few minutes before my TEDx Talk, I approached one side of the stage. Everything was ready to begin.

Then, I heard the speaker before me saying goodbye. Applause. The presenter stepped up and began introducing me. Finally, I heard the following words:

Please welcome Andrés Oliveros and his talk, 'Why Do We Love or Hate Our Jobs?

I stepped onto the stage, almost running. From the very first second, I was blinded by the spotlight. I positioned myself in the middle of the red circle and saw the following numbers on the red clock in front of me:

18:00

17:59

17:58

I took a deep breath.

We all have two typ—

Echo.

I made a small pause.

It's okay, I'll start again, I thought. I smiled and launched myself again:

We all ha—

More echo. At first, a lot. Then nothing could be heard.

It's okay, I'll wait, I said out loud. This is when I tell a story to ease the tension.

Seconds of awkward silence.

OK, hello, can you hear me?

Apparently, the sound was good now. I smiled, took a breath, applauded, and started again:

Ready? Here we go. We all have two types of days at work...

Bonus: enjoy the ride!

I gave my first TEDx Talk in 2016, and the second one in 2020. Can you spot the differences in my execution?

First one:

Second one:

For me, the main difference between them is my self-confidence and how confortable I felt the second time.

So, my last suggestion is: smile and enjoy the ride! This will improve your overall delivery and connection with your audience.

Let me know if this article was useful!