Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - Confidence Classic: Captivate Any Audience with These Expert Secrets of Storytelling with Ashley Stahl Top 100 TEDx Speaker

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Sharing your story in an impactful way can turn you into a magnet for the opportunities you dream about. In this episode, I’m bringing back my conversation with TEDx Speaker, Bestselling Author, and Speechwriter, Ashley Stahl. Ashley shares how to transform your personal experiences into magnetic narratives that can literally change your career, attract clients, and build your confidence. Whether you're dreaming of a TED Talk, want to crush your next podcast interview, or just need to communicate more powerfully in your everyday life, Ashley's going to give you the exact tools to turn your stories into your superpower. In This Episode You Will Learn Powerful storytelling to transform your experiences into compelling narratives. How to attract your dream audience and opportunities. Tips to craft a signature talk to revolutionize your personal brand. Storytelling techniques to apply across podcasts, stages, and conversations. How to deliver a memorable talk that pulls your audience in. Resources + Links Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/monahan Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/MONAHAN. Want to do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic? Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com/MONAHAN. Get 10% off your first Mitopure order at timeline.com/CONFIDENCE. Get 15% off your first order when you use code CONFIDENCE15 at checkout at jennikayne.com. Call my digital clone at 201-897-2553!  Visit heathermonahan.com Sign up for my mailing list: heathermonahan.com/mailing-list/  Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Follow Heather on Instagram & LinkedIn

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million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash confidence creator. That's linkedin.com slash confidence creator to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Why would we do one conversation after the other when we can just stand in front of an audience of 500 people and just move them so powerfully that they come to find us to work with us? It's just unlike any other method I've found so far. Come on this journey with me.

Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi, and welcome back. overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. That's in your seat of grace. I'm ready for my closeup. Hi and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back here with us this week. Okay, you know it's so rare that I have a guest on multiple times,

but today I just had to do it. One, she's my friend, but two, this girl drops gems and teaches just at a whole other level that I had to expose you to it yet again. Okay, Ashley Stahl, she's the founder of Wise Whisperer Agency. She's literally crafted hundreds of TEDx talks and speeches,

stages all over from South by Southwest, MGM, so many venues and events, other level. I mean, her speaker agency is crushing it, and she's turning dreams into reality for hundreds of people and she can do it for you too. Ashley, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you for having me. Okay, so there's so much we want to talk about today. How to craft an ideal talk, how to be a captivating storyteller and blow people away and how to

go viral. But before we get into your wheelhouse and you've done all of those things and I can't wait to hear from you on it, I was just asking you offline about when you worked at the Pentagon and you took me into this whole story about how when you were at the Pentagon,

you were asked to speak and give your first keynote ever and talk me through how that went. Cause I know a lot of people that are listening now have never gotten on stage, have always thought about like, how do you do it? So break it down how it all happened and how you're able to pull it off. It's so funny. I always used to think that when we would see somebody on TV, somebody like went running after them to grab them and put them there. And what I didn't realize is that that person is a publicist, not like somebody else that just wants them to be there. I don't know why, like everybody who's quote unquote sought after, I just really growing

up thought, wow, people must be like TV networks must be racing down to get this expert. They must be good. I didn't understand the world of PR and publicity and how there is just entire workforces full of people that people are paying to get them on TV, to get them on stages. I had no idea how much personal brand can be a game of pay to play. Or if you don't want to pay, you need to work and get it done because it's a lot of tedious work. So for me, in my twenties, I worked in national security. It was during the Obama administration. I know we live in a very politically heated era, so I hope nobody gets spicy about that for better or for worse.

What we can agree, regardless of our politics, is that he was seen as a pretty good speaker. And so I would watch him speak. And one of the things I noticed that he would do is he would always pause. And in his pauses, I could see people processing his information in such a different way. Meanwhile, I ended up getting a job working in national security at the Pentagon. And so I wasn't really tied to him. My team reported to the secretary of defense and I spent my whole life trying to get there. I learned languages.

I got the degrees. I spoke French, Arabic. I started learning Dari, which is spoken in Afghanistan. And so there I was at the Pentagon in DC. I was like 23 and I wanted to join the CIA. I wanted to become a spy. And the reason I wanted to do that was because people always shared things with me. And I thought, wow, after seeing 9-11 happen, you know, when I was in high school standing

there watching the TV screen, I thought, wow, if this is happening in the world and I can use my language skills and my people skills to fix this in some way, because I always knew it was a gift from a young age. I'm going to use it. And what I didn't realize or calculate was how much I didn't know myself, how much my values didn't really line up with being a spy or working in national security, but I benefited from a lot of the trainings. They put me in the FBI. We learned different communication tools like elicitation and counter elicitation.

So what that looks like, Heather, is if I'm wanting to get information from you, I want to know how many people you're in a class and you walk out the door and I want to know how many people are in that classroom is at five, is it 10? I'll say, Hey, that's a pretty big class you have right there. What is that? Like 20 people. And then you'll say, no, it's 10. big class you have right there. What is that? Like 20 people. And then you'll say, no, it's 10. You make people correct you.

That's counter elicitation. So there's so many different communication tools I learned. And I like to think that I use my tools for good and not for evil, but you know, it's been years since I worked in national security, but I'll never forget. I went to an award ceremony. I got this award in DC. I met this girl, her name was Sarah. And I have so many friends named Sarah.

There's something with me and the Sarahs. They've all been so good to me. This Sarah, she won this award with me. It was like a top 99 ceremony for women under 33 in national security or something like that. My dad flew into DC. He was like so proud, you know, of my little award. And I was like, oh, you look so put together. Who are you? And I'm talking to the Sarah girl.

She goes, Oh, I just gave a Ted talk at the UN. It's the TEDx UN Plaza event. I was like, Oh my gosh, that's so cool that you did that. And I said to her, one day, I hope I can do something like that. And she looked at me, she said, Oh, I'm sure it's coming. And she said it like a cartoon, like a sparkle on her tooth, like, do you know, like, I'm sure that's going to happen for you. I'm like, no, it's not. And sure enough, I flew to Istanbul that week. I was in a protest. It was like a government protest. It was, you know, if you watch the news in 2012. You'd see Istanbul was like not going well. A lot of civil unrest. There was tear gas in the air flying in my eye. I'm squinting my eyeballs and I get a text and it's this girl from last week from the

award ceremony. And she said, Hey, I recommended you to Tedx Berkeley. And they took my recommendation. You're going to speak there. By the way, this is Sarah from the thing. I'm like, Oh my God. So I'm like 22, 23. I don't even know how many years old I'm like a fetus. I'm so young and I've never spoken on a stage in my freaking life.

Like what? And so I ended up getting an email from them going back to my hotel that night. And they asked me for a speaking reel. I had no idea how they asked me for a speaking reel. I had no idea how they're, what a speaking reel was. I use my iPhone, like two, like what iPhone was in, in 2010, 2011, I use my iPhone, whatever on Safari and typed in, what is a speaking reel didn't have it. So I propped my phone against the bathroom window of my motel in Istanbul.

I pulled the curtain behind me, so I had like a backdrop. And I just started talking at the screen and decided that was gonna be my speaking reel. Like really, Hot Mess Express, for some reason, it was like an act of God. They took me, they accepted me. And you know, it's so great, it's honestly great. I can't find it.

Like I look at my email and I see, but I sent it via we transfer, you know, when we transfer was a thing and the link is obviously dead because it's like 15 years old or whatever it is. And thank God it is. Cause I don't think I could sit and watch myself in this video, but they accepted me as a speaker. I ended up going on stage after guy Kawasaki, who is a, I don't even know how to describe him as a speaker, like an epic speaker. And he's a legend. And

everybody when I got to the Ted X Berkeley event, it was 2013 that event. Cause once you get booked for a talk like this, you still have three to six, even eight months to prepare. It depends. There's some runway. So I got the yes every night. I thought they were going to take it away from me. They were going to change their mind and be like, never mind. You're not our speaker. Cause I just felt like this imposter. Cause I kind of was like, I had never spoken in my whole life, but that's the thing that makes the Ted and Ted X brand so awesome is that they're really looking for people who have a story. And the thing that I've learned as a writer at my core, that's really who I am, is that you can make stories and art out of everyday life.

That's what great writers and artists can do. So I deeply believe that everybody has a story to tell. And this moment in time was my moment to tell mine. So I got on stage right after guy, I forgot my lines as I was walking up. And then I just kind of centered myself and remembered everything. I memorized every word of my nine minutes speech and the thing went viral, which was like just mind blowing. And the reason that was possible was because when I got this Ted X talk

opportunity, I found somebody in the administration in DC who was a speech writer and I said, look, like I'm about to embarrass myself and fall flat on this YouTube red dot thing. Like, you've got to help me. And he just sat me down for like 20 minutes and he's like, here's how you write a speech. There's the opener. There's the key points. How many minutes is it?

Okay. Nine minutes. Okay. That's only three pages typed, Ashley. That's not a long speech. You should memorize it. If you memorize it, you'll say it better. I followed his directions in that 20 minutes and there we were. I gave my thing and it changed my whole life.

Like that talk, I got around 2 to 3 million views from it. I got 80% of my leads. I ended up launching a coaching business and leaving Washington, DC, because I was so good at job hunting and that was my thing and it was the recession. I helped everybody with their job hunt. So I started a business. 80% of my clients came from that one nine minute talk and I always had a wait list and I just couldn't believe it. I'm like, wow, I am watching so many business people do so many things to get leads to make money to survive. And I just needed to go memorize three pages typed

and like go stand on this dot and that's it. Meet a different guest each week. I don't know what to say. Confidence cleared. Confidence cleared. I asked you to try to find your passion. She's having it. It felt like a lot when I was doing it because I held it so heavily, like it was a big deal

for my career. And it was, it was my first speech of my whole life. And it was going to be, you know, memorialized on a YouTube channel with 40 million subscribers. I didn't want to fall flat on my face. And that fear, there was like the fear of God in me. It lent itself to me, I don't know, like giving the best talk I could at that time. And it all started in a spice bizarre with a text message in my pocket during a protest. And yeah, fast forward 10, 12, 15 years, I had a coaching business. Most of my success came from not one, but two Tedx talks. I would go on to give.

I got international licensing deals on my e-courses from my Tedx talk. I have, my courses are all in Chinese and Asia on platforms like masterclass, but in Asian and Chinese, I have, my courses are all in Chinese and Asia on platforms like masterclass, but in Asia, it's not masterclass, but it's like it. I got a speaking agent. He saw my talk. He contacted me. He put me on a speaking tour.

He booked me on 40 stages. My keynote fee went from 5k to 30k per speech. It was all from these two little talks. And I forever wondered in my career, why is anybody doing anything when they could just be doing this? And I don't care how much you like speaking or not, you have a story and you have a voice. So if you don't want to be a speaker, which, you know, spoiler alert, I learned, I don't want to, I actually want to be the woman behind the speaker. I'm the writer. I got six book deals offered to me from these TEDx talks. I ended up taking one of them and

that book has been translated into multiple languages. We've done about 60,000 books sold. And just for little old me who identifies as a writer first and foremost, it gave me permission to start offering myself up as a speech writer to people as the 10 or 15 years pressed on. And I really got my mastery and went on those speaking tours and really learned how to command an audience. And now I have a writing team of 20 people at Wise Whisper.

We do many different things, but the most important ones is we help craft keynote speeches. We help get clients booked on all sorts of stages. A hundred of our clients we've helped get booked on the TEDx stage with a hundred percent success, but we help clients every single month, we pitch them to up to 40 aligned stages. So anyone who finds us that wants to establish themselves as a speaker, wants to speak for their brand, get book sales, get clients through speaking.

We pitch them every single month as part of our offers to get them booked for those. Um, we ghost write books. So I've become officially the artist that I was meant to be. And it's funny because I opened up my book in preschool and I remember the thing in preschool that happened preschool graduation, the principal said, what do you want to be when you grow up? And that was our graduation ceremony. All the kids went up to the microphone and said, I want to be a firefighter.

I want to be a, you know, whatever. I walked up and I think it was like a class of 30 kids. And I said, I want to be a mom and a poet. And I waited for the audience to clap. And it was like a black void, like deafening silence. And it's wild because that's just how life is. Right? Like, you know, who you want to be so early sometimes.

And then I went off and worked in national security and counter-terrorism. I went off and had a career coaching business. And then eventually all these things brought me back to who I am, which is I wrote a book. Now I oversee a speech writing team. We're writing speeches and we're not just a speech writing team. We're like a fucking dynasty. Like the people on my team, I have writers from shows like Succession, New Girl, Lizzie McGuire, That's So Raven, like classics, and like shows right now that we're watching now. Our executive creative director spent 13 years at Apple. She was Steve Jobs right hand making decks for him, writing speeches for his executive team. So where I'm at

now in running this agency is really being in an energy of creativity, of artistry, of poetry. And I have learned so much about what it takes to captivate an audience. And it has been such a joy to help other people craft talks, even if it's a 10 minute talk, that actually create results for them. We had a client just last week, we crafted a talk for him. It was like a 10 minute TEDx speech that he's going to go give. We booked him on the TEDx stage. And he ended up getting an award at a gala. And they're like, you can speak up to 10 minutes. And he used his TEDx script that we helped him craft.

And he said at the end, he made an ask for the audience to donate to a cause. He got $2.6 million in donations off that 10 minute script that he just tacked on and ask at the end. It is just the power of being able to move people and make an ask. That is incredible. Oh my gosh, he must've been over the moon when he called you.

Yeah, I mean, it's funny. These people that are our clients, we are pretty high end service, like the talent that we scope is so world class. And there's a part of me that kind of hates the fact that we can't be like the discount agency that's more affordable because there were so many years in business that I needed and still need like more affordable resources. That's not us. We're pretty high end because high end talent has high end compensation. And I've learned it firsthand over here. So we have clients that are coming in that are really

movers and shakers in the world. So for him, I guess it was just another day, like he pulled 2.6 million, but he shot me a text and said, great script. Like people were in tears and they just donated so much money to my cause. And I just thought, like, isn't that wild that the only thing standing between you and what you want are the words you choose and how they make people feel? Like that ability to have a conversation that moves somebody is the epicenter of getting what you want out of your life. Oh my gosh, you make it all sound so simple.

However, it doesn't feel that simple for the rest of us. So break down for us or share with us, what is captivating storytelling and like how do people use that in day-to-day life? You know, one of the things I've been sitting with recently is that there's a lot of different types of storytellers and there's two types that we really lead with at Wise Whisper Agency. And I'll just give everybody the, I say nine types, the ninth one is the boring storytellers. And there's two types that we really lead with at wise whisper agency.

And I'll just give everybody the, I say nine types. The ninth one is the boring storytellers. There's really just eight. The first one is the hero's journey. Right? So that's like from Joseph Campbell, it's a typical beginning, middle, and end, you know, like in the middle, there's some sort of conflict in the end. It resolves itself. It's a standard story arc.

The second type of story that you hear all the time we often see on TV dramas It's a lot of ups and downs and then it completes in some way like a finale So it's almost like they have some ups. They have some downs We don't really know where it's going and then it has this sort of completion to it. That's the drama stories The snapshot stories are less what I like to call them It's snapshots of multiple stories from multiple people's perspectives and bringing them into one. So we see this type of storytelling in a lot of movies. And as people are listening, especially if they have a pen in hand, they can

write this down. They can start to see like, what kind of storyteller are you? Right? So the snapshot stories, there's a movie called life itself. It's a tearjerker. It shows a car accident happening and somebody dies. And the whole movie backs up and it's written in a way where you look at the life of every single person that was impacted by that car accident. And then the movie ends with all of those people coming together and meeting each other. A lot of books are like that.

A chapter might be the name of a character and the chapters told you the name of the character. This is snapshot storytelling. And that's just, you know, maybe somebody listening right now, they're thinking about reading a book or writing a book. They're thinking about writing a speech. These are all different approaches you could do,

but I would argue the two that we're using are the most powerful. So I'll get into those. The fourth type is the gap stories. It's comparing what is now with what could be. We see this often in speeches. Like Martin Luther King's, I have a dream speech. That is a traditional gap storytelling method.

My dream is that it's over here. We're over here. Very, very common storytelling method. You see a lot of politicians doing that. Number, the fifth one is the proof in the pudding storytelling. I use this one quite often. Politicians use this a lot.

And we've had a lot of politicians come to us and ask us if we can write their campaign trail speech for them, because it's like a Ted talk. It's like this inspirational 10 minute thing that gets people rallying. So the proof in the pudding stories, it's about one core concept with different people or situations to prove it, right? So you might see a core argument and then a lawyer is using evidence to

prove it, stories to prove it. Or you might see a politician saying, this is what we should do. And here's all these people that are impacted by us not doing this. We're proving that we should do this. So that's an educational framework, educational storytelling. We use that quite a bit at wise whisper agency. And we get more into that. The sixth one is mosaic stories. It's showing how all these different ideas came to be, all these different fragments came to be. So one thing I think about a lot, and maybe this is just that I worked in counterterrorism is the Arab spring. So we remember like the entire Middle East like lit up in around 2012 Arab Spring. And there's a

lot of little pieces of that movement that became momentum to create the entire movement. So if somebody wanted to tell a story about something like the Arab Spring, they might want to use the mosaic method. They're grabbing little peaks and little moments of different people's lives, different situations that catapulted into one full movement. The seventh is the bait and switch story. It's a story that sounds like it's going one way and then it completely blindsides you and goes a different way. A lot of people think of like TV shows like the undoing with Nicole Kidman. That show on HBO was all about like somebody was found dead

and who did it. And then in the end you get completely blindsided by who did it, right? That's the bait and switch storytelling. And then the one that we use at Wise Whisper in addition to the proof in the pudding where we have one argument and we educate people on why that's the way to go, is this one.

It's called the powerful flashback stories. This approach to storytelling is dropping people right into a moment in time that you don't give them context. You don't talk about how it was a sunny day at 6 a.m. and you made your coffee, but no. You get them right into the heat of the moment. So think about a spy movie where you're dropped right into a spy mission in the

first scene. Like you don't know who to, you don't know what's what, but somebody's running and somebody's being chased and you're in as fuck, right? Like that's a powerful flashback story. So, and then I just say number nine, boring stories, cause life is just too short for a boring story or a bad haircut. That's like my motto. It is just too short for a boring story or bad haircut. That's like my motto. It's just too short. So what does wise whisper use?

We use the powerful flashback. We use the proof in the pudding. So let's talk a little bit about the flashback since we just left off on that. There's many different things that you want to think about to make something go viral, to make something do well. The first piece is obviously the title, right? Like when I think about titles, I think about white elephant parties.

Like you don't really know what you're working with. You just see presents that are wrapped. So why would you pick an ugly present? Like if you're not gonna pick one that has like snot on it and the ball is falling off and like, God knows what happened to the present to get to the white elephant party. You're gonna pick the one that looks exciting, that looks fun,

because that's all you have to work off of. That's how titles are. So you want to ask yourself, what is a title that aligns with what my ideal customer is searching, the person who I want to find me? If you look at the top 100 most trending TEDx talks, and I say that because we've just helped so many clients right there and get booked for those, you're going to see titles like The Art Of, The Skill Of, Three Ways To, The Missing Ingredient For. You're going to see words that have SEO optimized potential. If you write The Art of Confidence and you're working with a platform like YouTube, you have pretty high SEO potential

to be found, right? So first thing first is the title. The second piece, which is what I want to get into with your storytelling, is how you open up your story. So if you're giving a speech, there's maybe like three different approaches that we see people open up speeches with quite often, and they all line up with the powerful flashback. So the first one is the cheap shot. I don't mean to insult it by calling it a cheap shot, but what it really is, is the most crazy story of your life, right? So my second TEDx talk opens up with my dad being in the kitchen.

It's not even a story about me, by the way. I think that's interesting to point out that I opened up a speech about my speech about somebody else's story. You can do that. You can open up a speech with a story that's not yours. Permission slip. I gave a story about my dad in the kitchen brewing his coffee and getting a phone call from somebody saying that I was kidnapped.

It's a crazy story. People were in right away. That's my second TEDx talk in 2019. My first TEDx talk, the first three words of that talk are spying, the Pentagon, counter-terrorism. And then I say, this was my career path at age 22. It's all about grabbing people. And the cheap shot is about grabbing them

with the craziest story you could ever think of. So for example, we had a client at Wise Whisper Agency. We were helping him distill his ideas into a TEDx talk and to a keynote speech. And we went through his life stories. We do this all the time. And one of his life stories was that he got into not one, but two fatal car accidents. Nobody survived except for him. And he walked away completely unscathed.

So to us, that was a pretty crazy story. Like, how could you step away from something like that? So that's a cheap shot story. Cheap shots always work. And I don't mean to call them cheap shots to insult them. They just are. They're a low lift. They tell themselves.

They're so wild. Everybody's going to tune in. The second type of powerful flashback is more about the relatable heartfelt story. And I think it's really important I talk about this because a lot of people might think, oh, I don't have any crazy stories. My life has been kind of unremarkable. I totally get that. You have just as much potency as somebody with a cheap shot because everyday life can

be so relatable and so heartfelt. I think about a client we had who we helped her write her keynote. And we have a very comprehensive intake form that collects people's life stories. And in her intake form, she told this story of her being in high school. And she was at a party and it was the popular guy's house. And she always felt kind of insecure, kind of uncomfortable. She told me she felt like she was pudgy and just like, you know, whatever those things are in high school that feel really bad is what she was going through.

And she heard a girl say, hey, so-and-so wants to talk to you. And it was the popular kid that wanted to talk to her. She ran to the bathroom to get her hair all... She heard through the crack of the bathroom door somebody telling him, hey, she wants to talk to you. And he said, ew, that girl, I don't wanna talk to her. And that moment really set her on a low self-esteem path, lower than low could get.

But as an opening story, that's not a cheap shot, that's not a crazy story, it's just a sad, hard moment in her life. And that's why the powerful flashback method, it's not just about bringing people into a whole story. It's about looping people into a moment in time. So if she was opening up her keynote with that moment, she would open up by saying, I was at a party

and I'll never forget this moment where this person, you know, and then she can back into the whole story. It was early in the morning. But that hook of getting people right into that pain moment. And I think a lot of people think storytelling and speeches are about making people cry. And that's not the case. This is just a sad story. There's a lot of heartfelt stories, right?

I think about a client who we wrote a speech for her about burnout. And when we really looked at the speech, it actually was a speech about having fun. We opened up her talk about her surfing. And it was like the first time she did something fun after years of being sobered out and being a workaholic. And I think that's what it's really about is taking a simple story, but looking deeper beneath it and saying, what does the story really represent for me, and making that be the thing that you share about in your flashback.

So she could get on stage and say, in 2017, I got on a surfboard and I realized it was the first time I'd had fun in 10 years. So it's like really just opening up and painting a picture for people in a heartfelt way. So you don't have to have a cheap shot. The third type of storytelling is the conversational approach. This is the kind of story that you see all the time. You see it a lot on the Ted or the TEDx stage. People get on stage,

they'll tell you a shocking statistic. They'll tell you some sort of piece of data. The problem with this one, we try not to use this very much, but I wanted to include it for people to just contextualize how this can exist in a powerful flashback is people might start to have a discussion with the audience and drop a powerful statistic to get to their intentions or to get their attention. But then they start to converse with the audience and usually the audience will get bored unless the story in the conversation is powerful enough and heartfelt enough. So it's kind of, you know, not as effective as giving a heartfelt story and taking people on a journey. Because if you say, did you know that 90% of the blah, blah, blah has blah, blah, blah happened in their life?

People will get your attention. But then once you start to back up and explain it, you could lose people unless you have powerful storytelling. So just something to consider. If you want to open up a speech with like a powerful statistic is make sure you have powerful storytelling. So just something to consider if you want to open up a speech with a powerful statistic is make sure you have a story to go with it. That is a flashback moment, something potent that people can go into with you. Wow. Oh my gosh.

This is like a deeper dive than I've ever done into the art storytelling. So thank you for explaining all that. When you look at the data and the most successful TEDx talks, TED Talks, is there a trend that one opener is the right opener? What does it tell you? Yeah, I mean, pretty much like you're going to go viral if you have a cheap shot story

and you tell it with enough spirit. So if you have a crazy story and it's the craziest story ever, not only a crazy story, but you can help people feel a range of emotion throughout the crazy story. That's the second piece. Then you're in a position for something to go very viral as long as it's followed by good content. Because if you should have a crazy story, but the rest of your content isn't really helpful for people, it's not going to hit.

They're just going to be like, wow, that's a crazy story. I felt so much, but it didn't help me. And they're not going to share it. So you have to pair crazy story with a range of emotion. If you look at my second TEDx talk in 2019 about how to figure out what you really want, my dad gets that phone call in the kitchen I was kidnapped and I talk about how

we had just lost my big sister. We just took her off of life support and the fear in his body of like his only other daughter left getting a phone call like this. That's a, so I made people feel like his fear, his heartbreak, it ended up being a scam. Spoiler alert, the phone call that he got that I was kidnapped was a scam. But I ended up going home that night and it was like, for me, this moment of seeing how fragile he is, like he almost wired his entire life savings

to some nobody who scammed him and pretended that they had kidnapped me on the phone. Meanwhile, I was like sitting at coffee with somebody down the street. So this phone call was so real for him. But, so it's a cheap shot story. It's a crazy story. And I say that again,

without judgment towards myself for using it. But I still showed people the range of emotion on my dad's experience, what he had just been through in his life, why that phone call meant so much. I made commentary in the speech about that. I brought people into my experience that for me, what came up was realizing my dad's getting older.

He's too fragile to handle phone calls like this. And then I also started talking about the compassion I had for the kidnappers in the Ted talk. I talked about how, why would anybody make a living this way, scaring the life out of people and taking their life savings? And the only thing I could come up with was like, maybe they didn't think of another option. Maybe they didn't have another option. Maybe they live somewhere that this was like the only real way to make money.

There's a lot of third world countries where people are making money through scams because of survival reasons. And so I just remember looking at these kidnappers in this speech and saying like, wow, and that's the story I'm going to tell myself about them, that they must have thought there was no other option. And so showing people that range of emotion was pretty critical, I think, to being able to not just take a cheap shot story, but to give it texture, to make it memorable. And then from there, you've got to give your best content.

You've got to give your best talking points. And any speech you write, my rule of thumb is 115 words per minute. So I'm always thinking, okay, around 25% of any speech I give can be the opener. And so I just kind of do my word count accordingly. When should people be hiring someone to write a speech for them?

So for example, as I'm sitting here, I'm like, I should have hired you to write my first TEDx talk. I didn't know what I was doing. Right. I didn't even oftentimes you just don't even know that's available to you that that's a thing. Right. Like you just think that you're not even allowed to do that. So is it important enough that somebody should be actually hiring to have something written for them? It's such a chicken or egg thing, because on one hand, we are pretty high in service. So I would tell people work with us when you've already kind of done the

lift to get yourself somewhere, but you want to get further. But then there's the other part of me that's like, no, invest in the best, get the best talk. Cause people can come in and have us write a 10 to 15 minute talk for them. And that's scoped out at a lower price point, right? They don't even need to ask us to book them on stages if they don't want. And they want to do the tedious work of pitching themselves to get booked on stages. But if you have one 15 minute talk, and here's a mistake that I'm sure you've seen a lot of

speakers make is they say yes to every talk and then they're constantly creating new content. It's one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Your speaking career is constantly diluting what you know and turning it into these, you know, new speeches, one after the night that really turns your speaking career into this graveyard of content that you haven't really mastered. And so I would say to anybody here who has at least, you know, maybe six figures in their business, if you want to take your business to the next level, at least have a 15 minute talk. And by the way, if you invest in a team like ours at wise whisper, you can take that 15 minutes, you have a spine of your speech and you can expand upon it on your own. Right?

Like if you don't want to pay us to make it longer, you can put that time in, but now you've got a base. You've got a base talk. And so I would say anybody that has a business that they want to get out there. And I was telling you earlier, Heather, there's two types of speaking in my opinion. Like the first type is speaking for your brand. base talk. And so I would say anybody that has a business that they want to get out there. And I was telling you earlier, Heather, there's two types of speaking in my opinion. Like the first type is speaking for your brand, just getting brand awareness, right? So speaking

in front of ideal audiences to get book sales, to put your influence out there, to practice your speeches, to get consulting clients, that's speaking for your brand. In that case, it's beneficial for you to be able to promote yourself So usually you're gonna want to do unpaid speaking engagements because as soon as they're paying you a high fee They're your customer. They're your client and they are demanding of you what they want for their audience It's not about you promoting yourself. The second type of speaking is that it's having an established speaking career Going on the speaking circuit being a full-time speaker. And I know you know, Heather, with all the work you've done in the speaking arena, that that's

a very real thing is there's a lot of people who want to be a full-time paid speaker. Those speakers usually will come to us to help them craft a TEDx talk and get it booked on the TEDx stage or any stage that they want. But I would say any business owner, you really owe it to yourself to have a powerful talk in your back pocket. If you want our help getting you on stages all over the world, we have an offer where we pitch up to 40 aligned targeted stages per month for you. We have relationships on these stages. It includes podcasts, the amount of people that we are booking every day for speeches in front of ideal customers who want to hear what they have to offer. It just makes me think, why would we do one conversation after

the other when we can just stand in front of an audience of 500 people and just move them so powerfully that they come to find us to work with us? It's just unlike any other method I've found so far. And I feel like same with you, because you've been speaking for so long. No, you just really illustrate the example of it doesn't need to be one to one selling when it can be one to many and instead attracting that business to you. It's the power of the personal brand and the power of taking stages. You also brought up another really interesting point that I had not thought about previously, which is the importance of storytelling

in regards to other arenas, not just on stage, but you just brought it up as a guest on podcasts. How often do you see people you're teaching them through talks that you're giving them, but then they're applying that to podcasts? Right. And if you take a look at the beginning of this conversation, you were like, Ashley, you worked in national security and I did the flashback approach. In this conversation, I was like, oh yeah, I got this award and there I was in Istanbul and the tear gas was going off. I brought you right into the moment with me. So I do this without even knowing I'm doing anymore. I think it's because we've just written so many speeches and I've overseen so many of them. But the way I see it is good storytelling.

And again, there's those eight different ways you can tell stories or write books or make movies. But these two ways I do, where one is about the flashback, the second one which I can get into is about proof in the pudding. It's educational storytelling. There's different tactics you can use to just be valuable. And one thing I wanna share with everybody

is original content cuts through the noise. And what I mean by that is sometimes we look at our stories and we think in conversations like this, how do we be the most powerful storyteller ever? But what I want to tell everybody listening is if you are giving content that people really need, if you break your leg, the most important thing you want to know is how to fix your leg, how to make it not be broken, right? You don't need a good storytelling doctor to tell you a whole story about how they're going to fix your leg. You just need the steps you need to take from the doctor. Okay, first you need to come in, then we need to get a scan, then we need to put you on

this plan, and then it's going to be better. When somebody is in deep need of your services, you actually don't need to be that good of a storyteller because at the end of the day, they just need it. You are the scratch to their itch. And so I also want to point out the power of just being an expert and not just being an expert, but covering a topic that an audience picture an audience like a desert. If they're thirsty for water and your content is the water, you don't even have to put that much pressure on yourself to be a good storyteller. And I think that that's really important based on what you're booking, based on what you're talking about.

I think a lot about clients who come into wise whisper agency. We tried not to write books because writing speeches, you know, I could probably have one writer on my team and these are coveted resources for us, our writing team. I could probably have one of them write three speeches or four speeches in a month. It probably takes seven months for them to be stuck in one book. So I've stayed away from books, but now too many clients have come back. I'm in like, please, please, please.

And our writers really love them. And we're like, no, we love them too much. We want to write their books. So we've gotten into book writing. The books that we have really found are the best ones to write, are the ones that kind of write themselves, right? It's like the broken leg. It's like, this is very straightforward content and people are going to read it

if this is what they need. It really, you really don't have to be that interesting. I think being a good storyteller is a service to make the ride more beautiful. And a lot of my job as a storyteller is I kind of picture my clients, my listeners, I picture myself like the driver of the magic school bus. And when I go on a podcast, I'm like, all right, everybody get in and let me show you what happened at that protest that morning and get in and let me show you what happened on the phone. Look at my dad. He's right there. He's on the phone. You bring people into your world with you and you cut the noise and the power of that

and getting people's attention cannot be underestimated. You know, that being said, that approach that I talked about, the proof in the pudding, educational storytelling, while we do a lot of flashback storytelling for our openers of speeches, we do a lot of educational storytelling. And what that looks like is etymology. So for example, etymology is the study of words and how they've evolved throughout history. So you've heard a lot of people talk about the word passion and it comes from the Latin root, patio, which means suffering compassion means with suffering. Right.

People talk about that all the time. We use that. So we're being educational in our speeches, or we might talk about history. Like maybe there's an approach on this podcast I could have taken where I could have talked about the history of the world, the history of the time. We use that. So we're being educational in our speeches, or we might talk about history. Like maybe there's an approach on this podcast I could have taken where I could have talked about ancient storytelling and how it kept tribes together since XBC, right? Like I could have gone into the history of storytelling and how it's one of the most important parts of human experience and how people understand each other. That wasn't the approach I took on this podcast, but having an educational historical approach

to how you talk about something. Let's say that you are a midwife. Can you talk about the history of midwifing babies? Like where does this come from in society? That's very educational. People love to be stimulated to learn something new and to understand the relevance of what you're doing in the contextualize it in the experience of life that we're all in another educational tool is obviously data, really, really powerful. So there's many things you can do with storytelling, but hopefully this gives everybody listening some starting points on how to craft a speech that really can

move people. Ashley, I mean, obviously you're so gifted at this, but so for someone, because I'm even thinking of myself now, because I've never thought at this level in depth in regards to strategic, being this strategic about an approach. So is there something to be said about the audience that you're addressing and which approach is best for them? That's a great question. I mean, every audience is different.

And I think it kind of goes back to what I said with the doctor and the leg being broken. There are some service providers where they really are fixing a broken leg and their speech rights itself, you don't have to put the frills on it just makes it for a better school bus ride. If you put the magical storytelling on it, but your tips alone, you're in a desert and they need water and water is going to taste better than it's ever tasted if they need it that bad. So I would say some audiences, they just need your information and you're the subject matter

expert and you don't have to put the pressure on yourself. And I tell clients this all the time because in our offer, it's called the speaker skyrocket program. We have pitched so many clients on stages, some of them, it's a panel and they'll be like, how do I prepare? And I'm like, honestly, this is like a scratch and itch panel. Like, you are such an expert. This is a panel about the topic you know. You don't need to zhuzh it up with stories. Just know what they need to know.

And you already know what that is. You don't even need to have it written down. You don't need to put more work in. Then there's other audiences where maybe it's a more general audience. And they're there to inspire. That's when the storytelling becomes pretty crucial. Okay, you brought up panels and this is something that maybe this is just me,

but I find panels so boring. What is the deal with that? Is it because people aren't given enough time or autonomy to tell stories and they're just answering like a bulleted direct question? But I can't be the only person that feels that way. You know what? I do find that a lot of panels have been super boring.

I personally think I'm better on a panel than I am as a keynote because I'm somebody that has a lot to say. I have a lot of content. And when people can meet me where they are, I can hit that exact need so much more than I would if I did a keynote speech in front of everybody. And it's more of a blanket topic, right?

But I do think that panels are a really good place because they are so boring for people to shine. So one thing that a lot of speakers have is called bits and bobs. Like I don't know if you've ever used that language in your speaking, Heather, but like I hear a lot of high paid speakers on the circuit use it. There's this exercise I like to give clients at wise whisper agency where I tell them to make a life timeline, write down every significant event of your life, inflection points, decisions, impasses from when you were a little kid to now.

And there's probably like 15 events that you're like, Oh, like graduating college was a big moment for me or that girl that like I tripped fell and broke my arm. I don't know all these bones broken in this episode, but anyway, like big moments and then write down what you learned from that moment. What was the lesson from that moment? What was significant about that moment? The amount of clients who come in and fill out our intake form and say, Oh my God, that pulled so many stories out of me. I didn't even know existed. And now those stories are in their repertoire of stories that they can tell. We call those bits and bobs.

It's like you can pull a bit or a bob off the shelf and throw it in to a panel, right? So maybe somebody asked you a question from the audience, it's like they're grabbing on a bit or a bob that you have from your life stories. And because you've taken the time to excavate those, you are able to share those in a powerful way. One of the things I want to share with you is, you know, a number of my clients have hired you in the agency to craft talks for them, land TEDx stages for them, land big stages for them.

And one of the consistent feedback that I hear from everybody is when they're working with you or the team initially, the actual questionnaire that you guys put together, the work that they need to go through, right, which you were just touching on a little bit of it, is so cathartic, healing, shocking, like, and they all say the same thing. Why is that? I love that you're saying that. You know, I didn't even realize how mystical this agency could be for me because I'm such a results person. Take me out of the Pentagon and national security. Take me out of the military, but I still was in it long enough. Even if I have good intentions in life, I really look at the net outcomes of things. That's how

I think in business. I'm like, if somebody pays you, even if your intention was to give them the service, they didn't get the service, they better get the damn service. That's how I think. So I wasn't thinking enough when I started this company about the journey the clients were actually going through emotionally. I was so caught up in how do we write the best talk ever and they have it in their hand? How do we get them on the TEDx stage? How do we get them at South by Southwest? How do we get them their spots? But you are correct that so many people have said, wow, this has been like therapy for me. And I think this comes from a quote that I love by Martin Scorsese. He says, what's most personal is most creative. And what we are really doing in

our intake form is we are taking a look at what is most personal so that we can be creative. And our intake form has questions. There's a couple of questions. One question is, you know, name 10 of the most significant life events in your entire lifetime. Why were they significant? What did you learn from it? How are you different because of it? Another question we have in there is,

what do you want the world to really know? Something that you intimately understand, that the world just doesn't get yet. And how would the world be different if they got it? So yeah, we are excavating into people's psyches, into people's souls, and people are coming out. And it's really fun to hear that you've sent us all these clients that are telling you that that they've gotten like a therapeutic experience through going through this with

us. Yeah, I think it's so much bigger than a talk, but it's a talent, understanding yourself. It's about self awareness. It's about seeing value in yourself. It's a confidence building exercise. It's like they said, a healing exercise in your life and seeing the value of yourself and you're teaching them these tools and skills that they can use. It goes beyond just telling a talk. It's like you said, the power of storytelling and captivating storytelling is something that can be done one-on-one in a conversation with somebody

that you can use this tool everywhere in your life. And just like you're using right now in the podcast. Yeah, exactly. And that's my hope for everybody listening. I'm hoping that because of this episode, they become better storytellers and they make conversations that turn into results for them, all because they could bring people

on the Magic school bus with them. All right, well, tell everybody how they can work with you, how do they find you, and how can you unlock that magic in them? Okay, well, first of all, like, I am not me if I don't give this audience a promo because I just love you and your audience.

Anyone who contacts us within 90 days of this episode coming out, please let us know you came from Heather and we'll give you $1,000 off whatever you do with us. But we have pretty formal offerings. Number one is crafting your signature talk. A lot of clients like that to be a TEDx talk and getting you booked on a big stage. A lot of clients like that to be the TEDx stage. We also craft all sorts of keynotes, we ghost write books, and we have an offer, the Speaker Skyrocket program on our website that's all about just getting you booked on stages so that you can give

the best talk of your life over and over and get all the business, more business than what you know what to do with. And that's all at wisewhisperagency.com. Guys, check it out. I mean, Ashley has done the most incredible work for so many of my clients. All I hear is five star reviews on her and I personally know her. She's an incredible human, incredible person, stands behind her work. If you're looking to become a better storyteller, if you're looking to have a keynote or a speech, a signature speech, this is the one place to go.

WiseWhisperAgency.com. Thank you so much. Ashley, thank you so much for being here. Guys, get ahold of her. She's the best. I'll link it all for you in the show notes. Keep creating your confidence. You just found a new way to do it. Now I'll see you next week.