How to get a TEDx Talk (and leverage it to grow your business)

Want to know how to book a TEDx Talk? Listen in on a conversation with speaking coach Megan Hamilton — who's been the speaker advisor at the second largest TEDx in Canada for 12+ years and has coached TEDx talks around the world — to break down exactly how to book a TEDx talk, even if you've never set foot on a stage before.

We're covering everything from what the TEDx organizers are scanning for when they pick speakers (hint: it's not your business pitch), to  why 'selling from the stage' is majorly against the TED rules (and a BETTER way to leverage your talk to grow your business).

Dreaming of being a keynote speaker? Tap play because in this episode, we get into:

• 3 steps to take right now if you're dreaming about speaking on a TEDx stage some day
• What TEDx organizers look for when they choose speakers (and why "I want to grow my business" is the wrong energy to bring)
• The TEDx audition process 
• Rules that get your entire talk rejected from the TEDx YouTube channel
• How to start building relationships with TEDx organizers near you, before you're anywhere near ready to audition
• Strategies for leveraging a TEDx talk into bigger stages, press, and business opportunities

GET MEGAN'S  TEDx BUCKET LIST CHECKLIST (it's free!): 

https://www.impactwitch.com/tedx-bucket-list-checklist 

The takeaway: Booking a TEDx talk isn't about waiting to get discovered — it's about treating it like any other visibility strategy: relationship-building, positioning, and being ready when the door opens. Megan lays out exactly where to start, today, even if your talk is still just a spark of an idea.

If content and visibility are part of your growth plan (they should be), grab my free Instagram training: https://www.videoask.com/f7xjzo38p 

New to the show? Welcome — hit subscribe so you never miss an episode, and go binge the back catalog while you're at it. There's a lot of good stuff in there.

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Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

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Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

Speaker 0: Jenna Harding:
When I was in my early twenties, I was invited to do a keynote at this really fancy private school near the town I grew up at. At the time, I had a barely known Canadian TV show on the air. And so I was invited to come speak to that as this, you know, person who went out there and and did the thing and made it happen. I had no idea what to talk about. It was really like, they're gonna give me money and also a mug that I still have, really great mug, high quality mug.

they're gonna give me money and I get all of this prestige of being a keynote speaker. Yes, I will do it, but I had no idea what to say. And so I got myself a speaking coach and we put a piece together. The only part I remember of it now was announcing with my full chest that I had never pooed in the woods before.

I think I blacked out guys. What did I say in that keynote? I have no idea. The kids were laughing, the parents were not, and that is a piece of Jenna lore that now you know.

Speaker 1: Megan Hamilton: (01:03)
That is incredible.

speaker-0 (01:05)
Today we're talking about how to book a TEDx talk. How to be a keynote speaker invited upon the prestigious TEDx stage.

So I've brought in a speaking coach, Megan Hamilton, a fellow Canadian, to give us the ins and outs and some of the lesser known behind the scenes things that go into how the whole TEDx ecosystem works and how you can take steps right now to get up on that stage to stand on the little red dot if that is your goal. Good day, Megan.

speaker-1 (01:38)
Good day to you, Jenna. I would really like to know what Canadian T V show you were on that you were asked to give the keynote for.

speaker-0 (01:46)
Happy to. So it was called Cash Mob. Wait. Yes. my God. I don't even remember. And it was on CMT And I played the girl in the sparkly green dress. And it was basically a flash mob game show. So we would flash mob workplaces with a game show that's falling apart. Like that was the idea. Like it was all very ironic. And I would be like not the host, but basically the co-host, like the ironic Vanna White. That was kind of a clown of a character.

And we would genuinely be flash mobbing businesses. So we would how have I never talked about this before? the cameras would not stop running. And I was allowed to do whatever bananas stuff I wanted to do. So if you take my quirkiest reels on Instagram, that is the energy I brought to this character. I always wore a floor-length green sparkly dress. And like one time we flash mobbed a trampoline studio, like one of those places where all the kids go for birthday parties.

And I hopefully left set and started jumping twenty feet in the air in the background. There were other times you'd be in offices and I would just like get on a wheelie chair and start rolling myself around and no one would ever yell cut. So anything I did was just fair game.

speaker-1 (02:54)
I mean, think there's a lot of opportunity for you to use this in current reels. But also that like reminds me of a time when that was done more where like we did this weird stuff. Like Tom Green would just kind of catch people. Do you remember those days? Like he would catch people on the street and just like ask them the weirdest questions and catch everybody off guard.

so funny. I once walked by him on Queen Street,

speaker-0 (03:21)
my god, I'm obsessed. What a Canadian icon.

Megan, you help people book TEDx talks and speak and keynote speaking jobs in general. What should we start doing now? What do we need to think about? Where do we even begin?

speaker-1 (03:35)
one of the things that I think is really important to know ahead of time about doing a TEDx is that they're often talked about as, you know, a really great visibility step for business owners, a really great way to get your thought leadership out there. And all of that is true. I've been the speaker advisor at the TEDx Queens U since 2020. So I've seen tons of them on the and then I've coached

TEDx talks around the world. The thing is, if you're coming at it from the idea of growing your business, it's just not that's not the right energy to bring to the situation. Ted's big thing is ideas worth spreading. So you want to be coming to it passionate about an idea.

your version of whatever this thing is is the thing that's gonna be getting you on that stage. So your passion, your your brilliant take on this particular idea is what a TEDx programmer is gonna see and say, Yes, I want that person.

Because they have to program, you know, anywhere from eight to upwards of 10 or 11 talks in any given conference. They're gonna wanna have variety, they're gonna wanna have passion, they're gonna wanna have people who are really good at speaking, and they're also gonna have programmed some of the people already. So they're going to choose people before there's even the audition process.

speaker-0 (05:02)
You know what's interesting is some of that is similar to Instagram. Like when people show up and they make content, but the secret mission is to sell, that's not the type of content that's typically gonna go viral and take off because it's it's too self serving. you need to think about the audience first and then the sale comes later.

speaker-1 (05:22)
Yeah. you want to have the energy of leaving that stage, hoping that all of the people in that room take your call to action, have a transformation and go and essentially change the world. That's the kind of energy they want people to bring to a TEDx stage.

speaker-0 (05:40)
So would you say the very first thing is kind of deciding or figuring out what your passionate, different idea worth spreading is?

speaker-1 (05:48)
Yes. let's say you're a small business owner and one of your goals is to build a speaking career. TEDx is a great way to really kernel your thought leadership, let it condense, let it like come up with the sort of the hook, I guess, of of where everything comes from for you.

You're gonna want to be flexible because every TEDx has a different theme and every TEDx is run differently. all of the different TEDxes are run differently. They are franchises of TED. There are a ton of rules that you have to adhere to. There's a ton of different protocols in place

I was just talking to somebody else about this earlier. One of the things that sometimes the speakers can get frustrated with is you have to keep submitting your drafts. And every time you amend your draft, you have to submit a new one. And when you have your final draft, it has to stay final. And people get frustrated by that because they're like, well, I came up with a new idea or whatever. however, it is the TEDx.

Organization, that particular franchise's job to make sure that your talk adheres to the TED rules so that it'll get posted to the TEDx YouTube, which is where you want it to go and which is where it can start to accumulate views and you can get a much bigger audience than you might otherwise have access to. But if you don't, let's say you use a fact that isn't verified through you know their standards.

They won't publish your TEDx talk and you have done all of that work and it goes nowhere.

speaker-0 (07:21)
Okay, so I thought that the goal is just to get up on that stage for the people in the room and then say you did it and then be known as a TEDx speaker. But you're saying that a huge part of your strategy here is to make it onto the TED YouTube.

speaker-1 (07:36)
Yes. And and you will make it onto the TEDx YouTube as long as you keep strict adherence to their rules and listen to the folks who are organizing who tell you like

speaker-0 (07:48)
But

that is like the the viral the viral social media reach, then sending people over to your website to see more of you. Like that's where the real bang for your buck is coming.

speaker-1 (07:59)
That and so I have a strategy for how to leverage a TEDx talk to make even more opportunities for yourself. So the the work on that actually starts well before you've even finalized your script. So it involves reaching out to people, it involves keeping in touch with folks, like who needs to know that you're doing a TEDx talk? What are the stages you want to be on? How can you start developing relationships with them right now so that the minute the TEDx comes out?

you have a whole crew of people that you've been sort of nurturing and saying, I need you to go and watch this over and over again and tell everybody you know to watch this so that your views get up. And then once your views are up, you send it to people that you like stages you want to be on and say, Hey, I just did a TEDx talk. I'd love to chat.

speaker-0 (08:47)
and then in those other rooms we might be selling a little bit more. We might have a sales call to action from the stage. Like by leveraging it.

speaker-1 (08:53)
Hundred percent.

Mm-hmm. And then they have the opportunity to be able to see you and see that, you know, how you perform, how you are with the audience. so Glory, whose TEDx I just coached earlier this year, she had a huge standing ovation at the end. And so that looks amazing if you send that out to people and say, you know, this is what I can do with the crowd. I can get them off their feet and cheering for this idea.

speaker-0 (09:22)
You know, you know what I found out only recently, how gritty book launches are in the same way. Like even when you have a big publisher, there are so many micro steps like send the book to all the influencers you know, send them packages that they'll open on camera,

get all of your friends to buy the book and then give it five stars on Amazon because we want to get number one on Amazon within the first week, and there you want to hit certain thresholds so that you can get certain accolades. And like there's a whole strategy to launching like any of these. so it shouldn't surprise me that you have a strategy for leveraging a TEDx talk.

speaker-1 (09:55)
the thing is, once you're done the actual TEDx talk and you walk off the stage, you think, I'm done. There's such a world. You've got like a year after to be able to use that to the fullest extent that you can. It's kind of like, you know, I'm a musician as well. And so once you get the CD out there and it's launched and you've done the first tour and you're like, okay, it's done.

speaker-0 (10:04)
No.

speaker-1 (10:19)
It's like, no, now you gotta sell this thing for like at least another year in order to have it get legs, in order to let it give you all the opportunities that are available. And like we could talk about that for a TEDx talk, but it this is for any opportunity you have to get on a stage in front of people. As much as you can, always try to make sure you've got at least a qu somewhat quality.

Video of your presentation, whether you ask a friend to record it on an iPhone or you ask them to make sure that there's somebody quality recording it for you. You can add that to your reel. You can send people to it. A lot of times, if you're applying for a speaking gig, people want to know that you're able to get on a stage and command a room. And so you've got to have different things for them to look at so that they can know and say, okay, this person knows what they're doing.

you could have such an incredible idea, but if you struggle with being in front of an audience, that's an impression that you can't really erase.

speaker-0 (11:19)
Yeah, I will say that time that I like hired someone to help me and I'm a performer, like I know how to talk on stage. I don't always hire someone, but especially in that instance, I was like, I have no idea what I'm doing here. And having an outside eye to make sure that the ideas are tracking and to help you find those moments to pause, like it it is really invaluable,

speaker-1 (11:41)
Yeah. And so back to the TEDxes, a lot of them will have a coach or somebody that they have designated as the person who's kind of wrangling the speakers, who's making sure the scripts are on time, et cetera. however, they don't often have public speaking training or they don't know how to coach somebody. They're kind of just there to like tick off the boxes to make sure that scripts get in on time, et cetera, et cetera.

maybe that even that you're memorized. And so if you are someone who's looking to really let a TEDx take you in directions that you didn't have opportunity for otherwise, I really recommend getting a coach to help you with that

speaker-0 (12:26)
When comes to booking your first TEDx talk, you mentioned that sometimes they have their speakers chosen before the audition process. Like how much of this is you applying and advocating for yourself and how much of it is just you get discovered and you get a slot.

speaker-1 (12:44)
Yeah, I mean it it really depends on the organization, it depends on the franchise, it depends on what they're going for, it depends on the theme. So at the TEDx Queens U, they often invite, let's say, three people. The other thing about inviting people is, and every TEDx has a different budget. If you're inviting somebody, there's an expectation at least that expenses are covered because

you don't get paid for a TEDx. In fact, that's in the rules. if you're inviting people, you want to make sure you have the expense budget for their travel. Like if you're bringing somebody from a different country, that's expensive. So there's going to be a certain amount of folks who are invited. You want to have anchor

guests, people that you know will help sell tickets, stuff like that. And then there's always an audition process. some places audition in person, some places will do virtual auditions, some places do a combination of both. So if you're starting out, a great thing to do is to first go to the TEDx website and find the TEDxes that are close to where you live.

And start following them on Instagram because

Things change every year. they may not have the same audition times as they did the year before.

you follow them on Instagram, you'll often get at least the most up-to-date version of whatever's going to be happening. And the other thing about the TEDx website is you don't always get to see when they're auditioning, but they're definitely going to say that on Instagram. So you can start developing relationships with folks that way. Start DMing them, start them getting to know you.

And just learning a little bit more about that particular conference so that when you go to pitch, when you go to audition, you have a little bit more of an in than you might if you were just pitching completely cool.

speaker-0 (14:41)
Man, I thought this would have been all so much more formal and not nearly as bootstrappy, but sounds like it's about networking, it's about keeping your finger on the pulse and like being prepared for when the opportunity strikes.

speaker-1 (14:55)
Yeah, exactly. And so because we don't always know when the auditions are going to be, so I've done two auditions myself. And one of them, they were like, okay, your audition is in five days and we want seven minutes of your talk. Seven minutes of a talk is like dozens and dozens of hours of work in order for it to be in really good shape. Thankfully,

I had already developed a TEDx talk and I was pitching that particular talk. So I had it. But a lot of folks would have just been like, I I don't have anything ready. Yeah.

speaker-0 (15:33)
And

then you practice it and it's seven minutes, but you get up there and you talk so fast it's five and then you just stare at them for two minutes.

speaker-1 (15:38)
Yeah.

And then you're like, what am I supposed to fill the other time with when it comes time to actually present? Because TEDx talks are usually anywhere from average eight to twelve minutes, and maximum is eighteen minutes.

speaker-0 (15:51)
When they ask you for your seven minutes, it's not a condensed version of the whole thing. It should be like a seven minute excerpt that like leaves them hanging or the most entertaining seven minutes or what?

speaker-1 (16:01)
Well again, it will change some places don't even have you audition. They just interview you and talk about your ideas. in this particular case, they wanted the seven minutes. So it was just like a portion of it. And I was like, great, I actually have the whole script. I'm gonna send that to you in case you're interested in looking at it. And here is the seven minutes of of this particular talk.

speaker-0 (16:23)
the conferences have themes? yeah, that's something that they announce annually and you just need to find the the conferences that kind of match this idea that you already had for the thing you wanted to talk about?

speaker-1 (16:35)
Sometimes they do auditions and they haven't even decided on the theme. So you're just going in with your idea and they will program it based on whether or not they see it to fit.

speaker-0 (16:43)
You're a business owner or an author and they suspect you actually are just trying to look for a stage to get on to like grow your initiative instead of just entertain the audience. Are they gonna hold that against you, do you think?

speaker-1 (16:57)
Yes. Okay. Yeah. And so we and they have rules around this too. So if you're a business owner, if it makes sense within the talk, you can reference your business, but you can't sell from the stage, for example. if they catch wind of that, they will fix your speech ahead of time so that you know it will actually get put

on the TEDx site because same with your book. You can kind of reference your book, but it can't be about your book because it can be about what the ideas are in your book, but you all of your slides, like you can't keep posting your book because then they'll just see it as a way of trying to promote yourself. And again, they want to promote the ideas, not you and like you making sales.

speaker-0 (17:47)
I like telling people to dream big, but if your goal right now is to do a TED Talk and you're not yet famous, you would say aim for TEDx for now.

speaker-1 (17:55)
Definitely, yes. You can always try. I think trying is psychologically such a really important thing to do. Like go go as big as you possibly can. but I would say that starting with a TEDx, because here's the other thing. If your TEDx is really good, and this has happened to a couple of my clients, the TED main website will publish it from their main one.

I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. You get even more eyes on you. And then if it goes off, you have a greater chance of getting an actual TED talk.

speaker-0 (18:30)
so you're a business owner, you want to book a TEDx talk, you've got a goal to be on this stage, and you're gonna start thinking about what your big ideas would be and what you could talk about and what you're actually gonna be like tingling talking about because that

Passion is a big part of what they're looking for. What's one other action step people can start and do right now?

speaker-1 (18:52)
finding the TEDxes close to you that and start to build relationships with them, as well as just starting to build out your talk. And if you have five incredible ideas, start building out you know, point form notes from that, start brainstorming. And then if you have five, for example, then you'll have an even better chance of making at least one of them fit into whatever the themes are. The other thing that I think is so important to do.

Watch TEDx talks and remember what you loved about certain ones and what you didn't love about other ones. Recognize what you find captivating in performers and what turns you off in performances and make notes about that so that you can make sure that when you are doing your performance, you're giving it the most amount of attention and like power that you possibly can.

speaker-0 (19:49)
Worst case scenario, maybe you find other conferences or summits or podcasts or a book. You know, there's no harm in actually starting to write that thing and then find other stages for it too.

speaker-1 (20:00)
Great totally. Who knows? Yeah. Well, I have a business program, and the part of what we do is like we make a TEDx talk. Even if you're never going to perform it, you're going to be able to take that and put it into so many other different places, like even networking, getting up in front of folks.

speaker-0 (20:16)
say we've got a business owner out there and they're looking for a speaking coach. they're getting up in front of colleagues. They're getting themselves up onto stages and they want someone to support them. Where can we find you, Megan?

speaker-1 (20:27)
Well, social media wise, I'm most active on Instagram. So that's at ImpactWitch, I am P A C T Witch. And then my website is impactwitch.com. And if you go to the work with me section, you can see all the different ways that we could work together.

speaker-0 (20:42)
Beautiful. before I say goodbye to you, Megan, Megan is also a magic marketing machine alumni. Do you have anything you think that a person that wants to grow on Instagram, get clients from their content should know about the program?

speaker-1 (20:55)
Magic Marketing Machine, well, Jenna knows this because I am the most effusive person in the room whenever we're talking about the program because it's I I you know I love it. It's such a great program. But in terms of, you know, thinking about TedX and Magic Marketing Machine, what it helps you do is think of those things like a hook or like something that's captivating or something that's gonna keep people's attention. Cause it all ends up being the same kind of stuff, just in different formats.

But Magic Marketing Machine is such a great way to, and you know, I've taken Jenna's other program as well, booked out offers. It's such a great way to really dive into who you are and like how you show up, which is what is going to be driving people to your business anyways. Jenna has called me out a few times, being like, This is too many things. Let's just like

condense it. And I'm like, but I want to talk about all the things. She's like, that's not gonna work. So magic marketing machine is like you'll go there thinking it's for Instagram and then you're gonna realize how much of that work extends into so many other different places that you that you market your business.

speaker-0 (22:06)
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And that's that's sneaky emo. Yeah. Thank you much for so much for your kind words and thank you for being here today and sharing all that insight. Scoop with us.

speaker-1 (22:09)
That's it. Mm-hmm. Yes.

Thank you for having me. I love talking about this.