How to be Brilliant

Talk Like TED: The Nine Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds – Carmine Gallo (St. Martin’s Press)

What started out as the cult of TED, a group of folks who got together at an annual conference to hear/see presentations on a range of topics that fell into the broad categories of technology, education and design, as morphed and grown to be a worldwide phenomenon that has generated tens of millions of online video views. Along the way it as spun off regional organizations (TED X) that host their own conferences/speakers.

Bestselling author and business coach Carmine Gallo has studied not only the growing impact of TED presentations, but also spent countless hours dissecting what it is that makes some of the most viewed TED speeches so impactful in his latest effort, Talk Like TED: The Nine Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds.

While some of the most viewed videos fall in to a wide range of topics, Gallo focused on what elements these presentations had in common that made them so impactful. Along the way he uncovered 9 common things, secrets if you will, that make them stand out from the pack, and how you as a presenter can include them in your presentations to increase your impact.

The “secrets” include:

1.   Unleashing the master within

2.   Mastering the art of storytelling

3.   Having a conversation

4.   Teaching something new

5.   Delivering jaw-dropping moments

6.   Lightening up

7.   Sticking to the 18 minute rule

8.   Painting a mental picture with multisensory experiences

9.   Staying in your lane

Gallo explores the business value of TED presentations. I found that it was very useful to read the book with a notebook close at hand and a laptop dialed into the TED presentations Gallo was detailing, to see firsthand the examples he cites.

Even as an experienced public speaker and business presenter I found a variety of new and useful tips throughout the book. One common theme that Gallo hits on was that successful TED presenters clearly spend plenty of time practicing and refining their craft before they ever set foot on the stage; while this may seem like common sense, but it’s winning advice on how to be brilliant.