Victoria Brown (00:00)

Hi Alex, thank you so much for joining us on Story Slurp podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you because I’ve been following you for a little while, I’ve been getting your emails and watching you on social media, LinkedIn in particular. And you always seem to be everywhere. So first of all, I’m completely in awe of how you managed to do that. And you always manage to deliver really useful content as well that’s different from anything else out there. So yeah, I’m really loving what you’re doing at the moment.

So for people that don’t know who you are, can you tell us a little bit about what you do?

Alex Merry (00:32)

I think most people probably know me as a public speaking coach, but that role really has evolved and changed as I’ve gone on. I’ve been in this world for probably 15 years, one way or another. And I think that initially I got into this because I ran a TEDx event for a number of years.

And I was quite a cocky 23, 24 year old who thought they knew absolutely everything about communication. So that first group of speakers that we had come speak at TEDx Clapham, I said, look, there are a couple of things that you might want to do with your talk. And I saying that to people who are speaking at the UN and are running globally known companies.

and championing certain causes. Anyway, I just started getting a few referrals from that. And so initially my role was really to help people with high stakes presentations internally inside organizations and also the more thought leadership style presentations that you might find more associated with TED and conferences and so forth. But more recently,

I’ve been building Micdrop, which is a community for thought leaders that speak. And at the very, very heart of that, it really is this idea that if you communicate your ideas in the right way, you can create change at scale. And so we do that on various different levels. Some people are there to start movements and champion causes. Other people are there to build a secondary income from speaking to help prop up the other elements of

the work that they’re doing.

Victoria Brown (02:19)

Wow, that sounds amazing. You must meet a huge variety of people with amazing stories.

Alex Merry (02:25)

That’s definitely the perk. Let me tell you what the perk isn’t, Victoria. The perk isn’t the fact that I have to take some of my own medicine and have to give talks occasionally. I actually don’t like public speaking, which I think often comes as a shock to a lot of people. I shy away from the limelight as much as I possibly can.

Alex Merry (02:53)

I am much, much happier hiding behind what I write publicly on socials and in my newsletter. But unfortunately, I’ve fallen into this job. When I took this job up, didn’t, I don’t know why I didn’t, but for some reason I was like, I’m not gonna have to do too much of that. And that’s just how I found it. So it’s funny how the world works.

Victoria Brown (03:15)

Sometimes some of the biggest introverts can be the best speakers though.

Alex Merry (03:25)

Yeah, but I wouldn’t class myself as the best speaker. I’m good enough. I’m good enough and nothing more. And I would actually say that there’s a really strong case for just being good enough. I don’t think you need to be unbelievable to achieve amazing things. I think it’s actually one of the things that holds back a lot of people because a lot of the people that I often work with have set themselves such high standards because of the roles that they’re in, the expectations they have, the level of ambition that they have. And when we hold ourselves to the 10 out of 10 standards, and when you see content and clips shared often by me probably on social media of just these mind blowing talks that have been delivered, the nature is, know, subconsciously, we’re all telling ourselves, we’ve got to be that good too.

And I’ve run events at that sort of level. and for anyone who might be listening, who’s ever attended a TEDx event, you will know that the difference between what might actually happen live and what you might see as a live audience member is often incredibly different to this pristine, perfect video that you see on the other side. And it doesn’t just happen at TEDx level, it happens at TED level too.

I’ve been to one of those events. I’ve seen what happens. Video editors can make you look far better than you really are.

Victoria Brown (04:52)

I love that, that is so true. And I think you’re absolutely right. It’s so daunting for people, particularly if they’re a CEO of a large organization and they’re expected to be this pristine performer, even though they’re actually a beginner in that field that thing about the reality versus the rehearsal. A lesson I learned really early on, I used to play the piano and I always used to make a mistake.

And the biggest thing that will give it away was my face. Otherwise people didn’t know. And I learned very early on that actually the best thing I could do was just pretend that it didn’t happen and everybody would think it was amazing. They’d only know I got wrong by my face. And I got to realize that every time I performed something would go wrong no matter how much planning I did. And I think that was really good practice for me. Just realize, okay, it’s not gonna be perfect. And I think that you’re absolutely right.

Alex Merry (05:37)

Mm.

Victoria Brown (05:45)

put so much pressure on themselves.

Alex Merry (05:47)

I absolutely love that. I’d show you if I could move my camera, but I can’t. I bought a piano at the beginning of this year and I want to get back into that. So I’ve started just playing a little bit again. And I remember, I think back to school, occasionally I have to play in front of the group.

Victoria Brown (05:54)

Hey!

Alex Merry (06:12)

and I remember my hands trembling. I just absolutely was not designed for having a whole room of people look at me. I think that I love the analogy of what’s happened to your face. You you make a mistake and you’re like, and you can see it, but the audience wouldn’t have noticed had you not done anything. I think they would, if I was playing, I would play categorically the wrong note. But there’s something really interesting in that around how we need to be on stage too.

Victoria Brown (06:14)

Yeah.

Just breathe.

Alex Merry (06:40)

So we’ve got to lean into this idea of imperfect presentations. It’s often the moments where we make mistakes that we reveal the person behind this perfect persona that we’re trying to put out. And they’re often the real opportunities to connect with your audience. But there’s also something else that’s going on here psychologically, which is we’re very, very quick to judge, particularly when we’re in these sort of fight or flight settings and

Victoria Brown (06:56)

Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Merry (07:07)

everything feels much more heightened and sensitive. We will judge what is going on. We might judge the expression of the people who are looking at us and being like, ⁓ none of them are smiling. This must be going really badly. Or it could be none of them are smiling. This must mean the gravity of what I’m talking about is really landing.

Depending on the person that you’re speaking to they could have two completely different perspectives on that and I think the trick is if we can learn to stop judging what’s going on and just notice so Notice what’s going on but not add a label if that’s good or that’s bad. It can really help us Get out of our heads and actually see what’s going on and be present and happy

and respond to what’s going on in real time rather than thinking that we’ve got to stick to this set formula or this thing that we plan to do.

Victoria Brown (08:10)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, 100%. It’s almost like you’re taking yourself out of yourself and kind of saying, ⁓ what’s happening here without kind of being external to it. I’m really, really intrigued by the fact that little Alex, who hated public speaking, ended up being a public speaking coach, which is just really quite, quite amusing. So what is it that drew you to it and what is it that makes you get up on that stage there must be something in you, is it your purpose that kind of drives you on?

Alex Merry (08:47)

It’s not the act of doing it that I like, it’s the stuff that happens after. And that first TEDx event that I ran, I was really lucky because I was at a party and the friend who was hosting this party says, you’ve got to me, Isabelle. she’d make an amazing TEDx speaker. She’d be amazing. you put TEDx speaker up on your LinkedIn profile, you are getting pitched left, right and center.

And even back then that was the case. think it was almost 10 years ago to the day that we ran our first event. But I met Isabel and what I was expecting her to say was subtly, I wanna pitch me, I wanna promote my business, I wanna tell my story, all of this stuff. And I said, so what do you wanna talk about? And her response took me completely by surprise. She goes, I wanna change the perception of sexual assault. And that was the first time I’d ever had somebody pitch me.

a talk that had nothing to do with them and everything to do with the change they were trying to create. She was two years out of university, quite frankly, Victoria, she had no right to be speaking on that stage. She was so unqualified at the time. She was in the right area, you know, she was doing some of that work, but really she should have handed me to her boss. But that just did not matter to me because the idea as someone running one of these events that I got to help someone who was so driven about creating this kind of change.

That was just a, yeah, let’s do it. I didn’t even make her do the normal application. I was just, you’re in. So six months later, she gives the talk. I don’t think anything of it. Two years later, I get a call. I was at Clapham Junction station waiting to catch a train to Putney and I get a call and she goes, we’ve done it. And I’ve not spoken to her for a while. I was like, what would you mean? What have we done? That was how she opened the call. And that morning, if you’d gone onto BBC News, you would have seen that

the government had put legislation in place to make sex and relationship education compulsory in English schools. And her talk had played a part in making that happen. Now, her talk hasn’t gone viral online. It’s been seen 10,000 times, which is actually in this particular YouTube landscape of 2025. Getting 10,000 views on a talk is actually doing pretty well. It’s very difficult to do that. But back then, 10,000 views wasn’t a huge amount.

But it’s also a really good lesson in it’s not about how many views you get, it’s about who’s seeing your talk. And she’d been sharing that talk as a precursor to meetings that she was having with important people in government. And that’s how this stuff came about. And that was it for me. When I saw that happen, I suddenly understood it. The right message to the right people at the right time can…

Victoria Brown (11:29)

Yeah.

Alex Merry (11:39)

have monumental impacts and can be a force multiply for all of the other work that you might end up doing.

Victoria Brown (11:46)

Absolutely. And do you think on some level as well it helped her hone that message?

Alex Merry (11:50)

for sure. Yeah. Going through that process and getting clarity around what it is that you’re trying to say would have really helped. I think you’ve got to be very succinct with how you talk and very precise about how you talk, but it takes time to get that and to be able to communicate that in a way that really lands with the people that you’re speaking to.

Victoria Brown (12:08)

Yeah, amazing, So I suppose you put yourself through the discomfort of doing the talk because you know that the end result is worth it then, is that what you’re saying?

Alex Merry (12:17)

That’s, I mean, that’s what I do. That’s exactly what I do. I put myself through the pain because ultimately it’s for something bigger than that.

Victoria Brown (12:19)

Ha

So if you can do it, anyone can do it then. Yeah. Yes.

Alex Merry (12:29)

years. I say that with

like a hesitance. I was asked this on Sky News on a very kind of slow news day. I managed to get on Sky News a few years ago. You need a slow news day. I paid, I’m not gonna lie, I’ll tell you the real story. I paid about five grand for that privilege.

Victoria Brown (12:43)

You

That’s the secret!

Alex Merry (12:56)

I don’t think I had much of a public story to share. And I think the PR person that I’d hired, who’d promised me the world, was thinking, actually, this is going to be a bit of a struggle anyway. She pulled in a favor that maybe she owed. And I managed to get on TV for a few minutes. But it was interesting, because I was asked that same question on there. Can anybody be amazing at this? And I panicked to start with, because

Niall Ferguson, I think, was the guy interviewing me. And he’s charming, a lovely guy. But the way he said it to start with was, now, Alex, I’m someone who makes a living from being pretty good at how he communicates. Are you telling me that anyone can do this? That was how, you know, he’s looking for that angle. And so I then basically go beetroot red and thinking in my head, panicking.

And I just say, well, yeah, actually I do. And I just double down on it. And they take you to and from in a car, which was kind of a cool experience. And I just, on the way back, I was thinking, I don’t know why I said that because that’s not actually what I truly believe. I think that there’s got to be some alignment between the topics that you’re talking about and your passion in order for you to communicate well. I think that if those two things are aligned,

then anyone can find that passion. And there’s a kind of a quiet passion and there’s a more extroverted passion that that we often associate people with, but passion is all relative. So if there’s someone who’s actually quite perhaps robotic in their delivery, but they’re talking about something they really love, well, they will naturally do things that you can tell that they’re loving it.

Just that little increase is contagious enough. So I think that’s the first key. There’s gotta be an overlap between those two things. And then, ideally, you’d be speaking to the right people too, because there’s gotta be an interest or a reason for the audience to want to hear about what you’ve gotta say for a message to really land and resonate. It’s not just about the speaker themselves.

Victoria Brown (14:47)

Thank

How does that work at something like a TEDx event there when I suppose the audience aren’t particularly tailored to a specific topic, it’s going to be a random mix of topics?

Alex Merry (15:13)

Yeah, great question. What you need for an event like that where you’re speaking to a generalist audience is what I call inclusive expertise. You need some stuff that’s going to appeal to the experts in the room and the people who are already on board. So there’s got to be some stuff that maybe furthers their knowledge, even though they might already have a good grasp of the concept that you might be talking about.

And that’s actually where storytelling really comes in. And then there’s got to be stuff that is like an entry point into your world. And early on in a talk, what the really good speakers will do is they’ll cast a net around the audience and bring them all in so that they at least feel like they’re all at the same level from a knowledge perspective.

Victoria Brown (16:00)

Okay, almost different tiers of messaging for different people in the audience, but kind of wrap it up in a story. Is that what you’re saying?

Alex Merry (16:04)

Yeah.

Yeah, stories can absolutely help with that. think where stories really matter are…

No one can take your own experiences away from you.

I think that if you have a really clear grasp of your own story and what the consequences of those stories are in relation to your subject, you then have a very clear understanding of what makes your perspective unique, which means that you can walk into any room.

Sometimes the most intimidating rooms to walk into are rooms full of experts, people who are actually way more experienced than you, yet you’ve got to talk about your subject. None of them have exactly the same experience as you. And they’re the stories that you need to be drawing on, the stories that make your experience different so you can share your own conclusions. That way there’s no competition between trying to sort of out ego, out match somebody. You know, we can fall into the trap of playing the status game. You don’t need to do any of that.

Victoria Brown (17:10)

No, because you’re never going to be the smartest in the room. And you’re never going to be the least smartest in the room, are you? You’re always going to be somewhere in the middle.

Alex Merry (17:18)

stories, and just having an internal grasp of stories, let alone being able to tell them well externally, having an internal grasp of stories is just, is absolutely critical.

Victoria Brown (17:27)

What do you mean by an internal grasp of the stories?

Alex Merry (17:30)

it’s about understanding your own story, right?

One of the things that I didn’t share for a very long time was that I ended up having to go to therapy very soon after I became a public speaking coach. And the reason I went to therapy was because of my issues with public speaking. you can hear the irony in that, it’s not lost on me, but I never thought that sharing that story publicly would be a good thing to do.

I actually thought that’s the kind of story that would diminish my credibility. Who’s going to want to work with a public speaking coach that’s needed therapy to deal with their own public speaking issues? Yeah, actually, it’s perhaps been one of the most compelling reasons why people will want to work with me, because it’s all well and good working with a public speaking coach who has always found this easy. But if you have had to go through some of the extremes,

of navigating these elements, you’ve got a much better grip and understanding of what the people that you’re working with might be going through.

Victoria Brown (18:30)

Absolutely, and I imagine that doing the public speaking is probably what brought these issues out even more because it just tightened it.

Alex Merry (18:39)

it was the title. I used to run a different business and I’d have to stand up. We grew the company to 250 people. I got very, very comfortable in the end I kind of forced my way through it, but speaking to that group and sort of reflecting on it, one of the reasons I felt very comfortable about it was I was a COO. Kind of had to listen to me, I’m the COO, right? But the problem is,

is when you become a public speaking coach, the expectations on the quality and the level at which you’re speaking skyrocket. It’s like, it’s the difference between one of your friends who says they’re really funny and then the next day they say, I’ve become a comedian. Like the pressure to make somebody laugh as a comedian is much, higher than someone who’s just having a laugh in a pub. And I just didn’t know how to handle that.

So think a lot of that was I had a lot of fake confidence that was, you know, reliant on external validation through my job title, as opposed to internal congruence with an alignment with my authority.

Victoria Brown (19:44)

Did you feel like you were playing more of a persona then? And now it’s more you.

Alex Merry (19:49)

Yeah, I think so. And actually, this idea of imperfect presenting and actually being fine with making mistakes, I sort of started to make that my own. And that’s definitely helped me. So, you know, I’m not going into talks now when I’ve got to give a talk, worried too much about if something goes wrong, because I’ll just have a bit of a laugh.

at it and I’m actually sort of demonstrating that it’s okay to do that. So it creates a nice fulfilling prophecy in that respect.

Victoria Brown (20:22)

Yeah, because you are the example of what other people need to follow. if you are doing it, then they will feel more comfortable in doing it as well. And it’s like you say, no one’s going to get good at anything unless they start. And at some point, they are going to fail. And they need to accept that.

Alex Merry (20:36)

Yeah,

completely, completely that. And I think that willingness to let go of perfection and accept that it could go wrong and it’ll still be okay, that can take a lot of the pain out.

Victoria Brown (20:47)

Yeah, absolutely. Just, carry on. I know it’s easier said than done. But yeah, you’ve just got to remember, just carry on. I imagine that you’ve had to lean on tools and techniques to get you through because

you’ve been so nervous about public speaking. What kind of things did you use to help you, especially in the early days?

Alex Merry (21:09)

I created an extremely self-indulgent pre-talk ritual, which would start the night before my talk, where I would force my poor wife to listen to me deliver it one more time just before bed. And you might think that’s the worst time to be possibly delivering that talk, but actually delivering it just before you’ve got to go to bed can actually save you a sleepless night thinking and worrying about it.

So it’s sort of knowing that that last proper rehearsal is done. that’s a good starting point. Then the next morning…

fight or flight response kicks in, you’ve got lots of adrenaline cortisol running through your body, give the body what it wants. So I used to go on a run What I do on the run is say hello to as many strangers as possible, which if you live in London, doesn’t go down that well. They think you’re a lunatic. But it works quite nicely to get you to remind yourself that audiences

aren’t scary, they’re not scary people, they’re just humans. And then the other thing that I’d be doing is I’d be listening to music to shift me into the kind of state that I want to be in. So I know that I tend to get way too serious when I’m preparing for something. And I know that serious is probably not going to be the most useful state for me to be in actually on stage myself. So I normally listen to some, you know, quite embarrassing music, quite frankly,

kind of play this, you wouldn’t let your friends see, but I sort of do that to say just a matter, like if any of my friends could see me now, little do they know this is what I’ve been listening to,

Victoria Brown (22:39)

tell us what are the songs I really want to know now.

Alex Merry (22:42)

Well, it tends to fall down

the line of disco, right? A bit of 80s disco, maybe a little earlier, like a bit of chic, Nile Rodgers goes down pretty well. And I just groove on out to that.

Victoria Brown (22:46)

⁓

That’s, I think that’s quite cool actually, maybe that says more about me.

Alex Merry (22:57)

The older I’ve

got, the more cool I’ve thought it was, Victoria, for sure. I actually think it’s very cool now, but back then I didn’t.

Victoria Brown (23:03)

you were going to say steps or something for a second.

Alex Merry (23:07)

Have

you been looking at my playlist? What’s going on?

Victoria Brown (23:10)

just going to admit to that one. I think lots of people struggle with this idea of oversharing and they’re worried about what to share, how much is oversharing and how much is undersharing and Brené Brown talks about this obviously a lot as well. have you got any ideas on where that line is between oversharing and undersharing?

Alex Merry (23:11)

Hahahaha

Yeah, for me, it’s all about intention. The intention that you have behind the story dictates what you do share and what you don’t. I think one of the kinds of stories that people often really struggle with are stories of personal hardship. There’s almost become a requirement to share a story of personal hardship at some point during a talk.

stories of personal hardship can be, if told in the right way, can be incredibly powerful, incredibly useful. But the moment they become more serving for the person saying them than they do for the people hearing them, that’s where they’re.

that’s where there is often a problem. So going back to the very fundamentals of why is it that you’re telling this story? What is it that you’re hoping the audience are gonna get from this story is really important. And often how you would use a story of personal hardship is to introduce a topic and show a connection with the topic that you’re talking about as opposed to

using it to create a connection with your audience. Oh, look at this person, they’ve gone through this. We should feel sorry for them. We should feel guilty about what they’ve gone through. That’s where there’s a friction there.

Victoria Brown (24:49)

It’s almost like the X factor kind of factor, isn’t it? How many soft stories can I get out? Yeah.

Alex Merry (24:53)

Yeah, you see it. Yeah,

you see it on shows like that for sure. I used to call it the X-Factor sob story. And you know that the reason why that story is being shown is more for manipulative purposes and manipulative is perhaps a strong word, but it’s more for the benefit of the people than the audience. And everything you do when you’re speaking on stage,

on podcasts, whatever that medium is for you should be about helping the people that you’re speaking to, nothing else.

Victoria Brown (25:28)

100 % I could not agree with you more. And I think the biggest mistake people make with communication, whether it’s written, whether it’s spoken, whatever medium it is, whatever channel they use, they want to jump to the channel and they want to jump to the medium and they’re not thinking about what they want to get out of it or who they’re talking to and what’s best. for example, spoke to someone the other day and they wanted to do videos. And I’m like, why do you want to do video? Tell me why you want to do videos.

they couldn’t come up with a reason, it’s because it’s the latest thing. you need to be thinking about what you want to achieve otherwise you’re on a fruitless task of trying to complete too many tasks and not get anything back.

Alex Merry (26:06)

Yeah,

it’s so true. I’ve been working with the founder of a very, very famous tech company recently. And one of their biggest frustrations when they go on podcasts or they’ve got a fireside chat that they’ve got to do is they keep getting asked about their humble beginnings. And this particular person is like, I’ve already talked about this so many times.

And I worry it comes across as self-indulgent. I worry that it feels like I’m fishing for sympathy. Yet what’s really interesting is when they tell that particular story, it’s so useful because it gives us a filter for how that person thinks and what is driving the decisions and the motivations and so forth that they have. And on the other end of this spectrum,

is this idea that the stories that can make us often feel very uncomfortable are the ones that really help our audience truly understand us. So I think one of the potential tells, I’d love to know your take on this, is about the reluctance to want to tell that particular story in the first place. If some people are very eager, that’s where you kind of think, oh, who are you doing this for? But if they’re reluctant, there might be something in that.

Victoria Brown (27:24)

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that actually. That’s interesting because that makes me think you are playing to that ego when they want to share it and it makes me think when it’s a story they don’t want to share it’s some kind of limiting belief or a blocker that’s there and that’s what’s stopping them which is usually the thing they need to do to be able to move forward. So yeah, maybe that’s something in there I think. Really interesting. So the risk of copying that question that’s obviously been massively overused.

Alex Merry (27:39)

Hmm.

Victoria Brown (27:52)

What about your beginnings? So you said that you use those kind of stories to help people understand the interviewee. How have your beginnings helped influence what you do now?

Alex Merry (28:03)

I have

had very normal.

childhood, privilege, upbringing, almost to the point where it’s been too much in a funny sort of way because I think I just sort of floated through the early stages of my childhood because everything was just so easy for me.

very, very, very lucky. The reality check started to come in when I was transitioning into the world of work and I had no idea what I wanted to do.

My dad was amazing actually, because when I went to university, he was like, how are you going to fund it? And in my head, I just assumed that they’d help. And he didn’t. And that was just so good for me. It really, really was. I remember being so angry with him that summer, just before uni, because it was like, why are you telling me this now? You were the one who wanted me to go to university in the first place. Now you’re not going to help me get through.

and you get these forms through from the uni about how much halls are gonna cost, all of this stuff. But I was also very lucky, because for my 16th birthday, my parents gave me a football coaching course. because I’d just joined a football team, I was like the youngest person in the football team, I was terrible.

but there was a guy who was one of the better players in the team who started to run soccer schools in the summer holidays. And he was like, if you get your coaching badge, you can come and run soccer schools with me. I started getting paid like 15 pounds an hour to be out in a park. It was amazing. And what that ended up resulting in is when I got to university, I…

Victoria Brown (29:40)

Wow.

Alex Merry (29:53)

I went straight to the sports department and said, are there any teams that I can coach? I’ll do it for free. And then I managed to get a job. They just said, why don’t you have this job? £20 an hour. I could not believe it. Didn’t have to work behind a bar. And football coaching actually ended up helping me pay for pay for university. But there were also lots of lessons while I was coaching football, because I was coaching players that were better than me.

often coaching players that were older than me. And coaching kids is very, different to coaching adults. And so what I had to learn, which has been an incredibly useful skill, now I’m working with people who are far more experienced, successful, some of the stuff they believe, you have to learn how to communicate in a different way and speak on a certain level as a group, depending on status. And…

Victoria Brown (30:44)

you

Alex Merry (30:45)

and experience as opposed to just perhaps relying on the fact that you’re older than other people or whatever. So there are a couple of things. In all honesty, Victoria, I’m still trying to piece together that element, partly because I don’t think there’s that much that’s that interesting to share in that, which I’m sure isn’t the first time you’ve heard that, because it’s not the first time I’ve heard it either. So I appreciate the irony.

Victoria Brown (31:09)

No one thinks their own story is interesting because it’s normalized to them the way I describe it is like you’re in a maze, know those mazes at the state of your homes and you just can’t really see because to you it’s just not, it’s just all hedge, it’s all maze and it’s not until, again I love the fact that you look back at that coaching experience because I think that’s the best way.

to look back and see the threads that pull everything together because you’re a coach now. That coaching experience undoubtedly framed what you’re doing now. And if you’re anything like me, you think, oh my God, I’ve done so many random things. It just didn’t seem to make any sense. And then you look back and you think, actually, there is a thread. And I think it really helps you understand your purpose and…

and where you want to go.

Alex Merry (32:00)

I certainly agree with that. And I think doing something like therapy or working with a coach to start unpacking this stuff is such a useful exercise for sure.

Victoria Brown (32:11)

so you come across a lot of speakers that you work with and people that you’re watching as well. So who is the best speaker or storyteller right now in your opinion?

Alex Merry (32:21)

There are some amazing communicators out there. I think the person that I consistently come back to, I just love listening to, is Rory Sutherland. He is a master of…

of world-class examples to bring points to life. And he’ll often find really unexpected examples. He won’t go down the obvious route And actually, I think there’s something that we can all learn from Rory Sutherland, which is that often the difference between a good public speaker and a good communicator and a world-class communicator.

are the examples and the stories that they use to drive their messages home. And one of the things that I often ask my members of Mic Drop, and I’ll often talk about this in my newsletter as well, if you can have a few different notes sort of pinned to the top of your phone for the random moments of creativity and…

aha moments that you might have. So you can jot down some of the good stuff. It will have a phenomenal impact on your ability to create talks really quickly, to come up with great examples in podcasts, to just generally be a really interesting person to listen to and have a coffee with. And I break those things into four different camps. The first camp,

are stories, you’ll be pleased to know. And there are so many different routes that we can go down with stories, like so many. We’ve got stories about ourselves, we’ve got stories about other people, we’ve got stories about companies, we’ve got stories about nature, we’ve got stories over time and history, just so many different things that we can go to. And often I think people think that stories have to be about us, they don’t. If we look at some of the most popular TED Talks of all time, you don’t know anything about.

that particular speaker from the talk they’ve just given. But they’ve been telling some amazing, unbelievable stories about other people.

So stories is fundamentally.

Critical as a means of driving a message home bringing it to life creating a connection with your audience the second type of thing that I think I think everybody needs is I Packaged the the umbrella term as theory and in theory what I’m talking about as statistics data models frameworks research Sometimes it’s going to be from other people sometimes it’s going to be

from yourself.

Sometimes one number that you share can transform the way people feel about a whole topic. But I think particularly if you’re gonna use a number, you wanna be very strict and sparing. Our job is often to curate what our audience hears and what they don’t. And if it’s not quite good enough, don’t put it in.

Victoria Brown (35:18)

Yes. Yes. Be ruthless.

Alex Merry (35:20)

Hahaha.

be absolutely ruthless. And remember that if you’re telling a story around data, the only reason why you’re telling a story around data is because you’re trying to get to the answer of an important question. And the story that is interesting around data is normally around a disparity between expectation and reality, what the audience thinks something’s going to be and the actual reality of what it is.

the bit in between where that gap is. That’s where the interesting stuff is often found.

Victoria Brown (35:56)

Do you think people use numbers sometimes as a crutch because it almost proves that they know what they’re talking about?

Alex Merry (36:00)

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think people in the same way some people might feel obligated to share their personal story. So many people feel obligated to share a statistic and it is only useful if it is powerful enough for people to truly comprehend it. The other mistake people make when they share numbers is often they’ll share a number that’s so big we can’t grasp it, we can’t understand it. So if someone says 180,000 people,

That’s a big number. How do we put that into context? But if someone says that 180,000 people, whatever the context was, that’s the equivalent of two Wembley stadiums filled up. At least suddenly then we’ve got a way of visualizing it and we’ve got some sort of comparison that we can make on it. So, stories theory, super important. Next one is insights. And insights, I would add in opinions here. We have to have our own opinions. If we’re gonna be up on stage,

Victoria Brown (36:46)

Yeah, absolutely.

Alex Merry (36:59)

If we’re given a microphone, we’ve got to give ourselves permission to say what we really think. People who sit on the fence are not going to be remembered. So taking a stand for something, and the stand that you take can be nuanced, doesn’t have to be black and white. I actually think the most interesting stuff isn’t black and white. But have some opinions and be able to articulate those in a single sentence. Very, very important.

Victoria Brown (37:23)

how do you get people over that? If they’re not the kind of person that likes putting themselves out there like I’m not, then trying to get them off the fence and be very distinctive about their opinion, how do you get them over that? Because people have the intrinsic, they want to be liked by everybody. And I know from a business sense, it makes sense to be honing in on certain audience and excluding others, but it’s not our natural kind of habitat and where we want to be. So how do you get people over that?

Alex Merry (37:50)

typically I force it down their throat Victoria with with a couple of sentence structures that help people get to the point and it’s like just fill in connect the dots and and the first sentence structure it stems from when I used to to be looking for speakers we put a call out for speakers for Tedx Clapham and one of the questions that we’d ask

in true TEDx style was what is your idea worth spreading? And what most people would do is send a, like a convoluted paragraph of mess. And the people who win in that scenario actually just send a single sentence and that sentence tells us exactly what the point they’re trying to make is over the course of their talk. So the sentence structure goes in that context would go like this. My idea is that X does Y.

And that’s it. My idea is that laughter builds resilience. My idea is that creativity is important as literacy. My idea is that speaking about what you do is as important as why you do it. Or if Simon Sinek would disagree and say the other way around, and that’s what I was trying to get to anyway, but I got it wrong. But you can see what I mean. Like Brené Brown, my idea is that vulnerability is a strength. That’s it. That’s all she’s saying in that talk.

Victoria Brown (39:06)

And does it help if that statement is unexpected?

Alex Merry (39:09)

And for a TEDx talk, not necessarily. I think it can just be Ron Seale, because it’s very different to a title of a talk. A title of a talk is what’s going to convince people to watch it. It needs to be click-baity and bring real people in from an algorithm perspective. But I don’t think it necessarily needs to. But.

If you can be mindful of the journey that you’re trying to take your audience on, I think that really matters because a good speaker will meet the audience where they’re at and then they will take them to a destination that is somewhere different. Now, the speakers who play it safe will stay in this window called the Overton window. the Overton window really comes from political science.

it’s how politicians gauge how an idea is going to land with the public. So right in the centre of the window is expected.

imagine you’re about to give a talk on storytelling, what is everyone in the audience gonna expect you to say? What would your answer to that be?

Victoria Brown (40:15)

do more storytelling because it connects people which is true.

Alex Merry (40:17)

Yeah. Right.

We, yeah,

but that can’t be the message for your talk because it will be forgotten and you will lose people really quickly because ultimately if they’re hearing what they expected to hear, you’re not interesting. They can kind of work it out themselves. They get the point. So what we’ve got to do as communicators is think of something that is going to challenge the way our audience thinks about storytelling.

So what you could do with that is you could say something like, just imagine, you might share a story today that someone listening will remember for the next 30 years. Isn’t that powerful? That right there fundamentally shifts how someone might think about storytelling.

And what we’ve done is we’ve broken through this expected Overton window and we’ve gone into a sentence or a statement or an idea that becomes more radical and unthinkable and potentially quite inspirational because we’ve pushed through the boundaries of what people thought you were going to talk about. So that’s what we really want to get into. But ultimately, it just comes down to the simple sentence. The point is X does Y. Or my idea is that in TEDx talk, this does Y.

The final one of those points is questions. So we’ve got stories, theory, insights, questions. Here’s where people go wrong with questions. They’ll walk on stage and they’ll go, put your hands up if.

and they make the audience do something before they’ve built up a relationship with the audience. I think actually putting your hand up if, often that feels quite manipulative in the same way that a story of personal hardship might feel quite manipulative. Put your hand up if you’ve ever been through something really difficult and then everyone agrees and puts their hand up. It’s like, we’ve got a common bond. That’s not useful. You’re giving an obvious answer. If you can ask questions that really challenge the way your audience

think about a topic, can really make a difference. When I was in New York a few years back, I watched somebody called Rutger Bregman give a talk. And he walked on stage and he goes, wanna start with a question. Why do the poor make such poor decisions? And then he paused. I at the time was playing on my phone because I was kind of Ted talked out.

I stopped what I was doing and I started listening to what he was about to say, because I was like, how are you going to dig yourself out of a hole like that? And this talk was amazing. It was on universal basic income. it was talking about how it’s not as black and white as people might, you know, everything about that I thought was a really clever way to, start the thing. So if you can build a list of questions that will really challenge your audience too, I think that can be really useful. And these things will dramatically improve the way you communicate.

Victoria Brown (43:09)

Hmm, it’s got me thinking when you did the TEDx talks are there some talks that did really well in person but didn’t translate online and were there some that the opposite vice versa? I mean did it follow that if you were good on stage you delivered an amazing talk or standing ovation or whatever that it would be good online and it would go viral?

Alex Merry (43:28)

No, isn’t it interesting? And I, you know, it, I, feel so sad when speakers end up hating their talk because it didn’t get the view count that they wanted it to get. It’s such a waste. What I recommend TEDx speakers do these days is they sack off the YouTube algorithm because it’s unpredictable. It doesn’t serve you.

Victoria Brown (43:30)

What a surprise!

Alex Merry (43:56)

You need to take the original copy of your talk and break that talk into sound bites and you start sharing that talk publicly. It is so, so important that you do that. There’ll be maybe six, seven, eight sound bites in there that you can use. And we’ve got a number of people in mic drop who are using this strategy now and they are getting hundreds of of thousands of views on their talks because their talk is being seen in a much more consumable.

small bite-sized chunks as opposed to relying on this one asset that happens to be on YouTube with a view count that actually means very, very And you think back to the story I shared about Isabel. Her talk hasn’t been seen thousands of times. It’s changed government legislation. She has an MBE now, unsurprisingly. So you can measure in-cap impacts through vanity, but it’s not always the full story.

Victoria Brown (44:33)

but not.

Wow.

No, and I think there’s more of that, the most value you can get out of it is not by the number of people who are viewing it, but by, and also by the, who’s you viewing it, but also by the fact that with sharing YouTube video clips becomes this huge element of trust. Because if you have gone through something to get a TED Talk and deliver it, in our heads, when we’re watching that, we’re impressed already. So beyond the just the number of people seeing it, I think that

Just that is going to get them opportunities. It’s going to get people knocking on their door because they’ve stood up and done the thing that’s not easy to do.

Alex Merry (45:28)

Yeah, it’s so true.

Victoria Brown (45:29)

Yeah, so interesting isn’t it? so you’ve had some amazing experiences over your career and your life in general, what’s been the biggest pinch me moment for you do you think?

Alex Merry (45:45)

think the biggest pinch me moment was last year actually.

We were struggling quite a lot from a business perspective. Everyone makes an assumption that because you’re posting on LinkedIn and those LinkedIn posts are doing well, that you’re smashing it. It’s not always the case. The reality was, was 18 months ago, our business had been plateauing for three years. We hadn’t broken through. We working even harder than we were the three years before that to hit the same results. I was pretty close to sacking it all in, to be completely honest.

And then I came to the realization that I had taken the company to its limit with the skills that I have and I needed to bring some external help in. And we brought someone in, an amazing guy called Tom Ross, as an advisor for the business. And last year we learned how to turn on a tap.

and get people to want to work with Mic Drop and become members of Mic Drop.

You know that that’s our equivalent of product market fit. We will take on 50 members in May We’ve already had a hundred applications through and we haven’t even started promoting it yet that’s pinch me stuff for someone who’s been in sort of not even feast and famine just survival mode for eight or nine years So to get to that point has been quite something. Yeah

Victoria Brown (47:05)

And what do you think the key to it is? Is it bringing in this advisor and some external expertise or is there something else?

Alex Merry (47:12)

No, it was bringing in the advisor. the truth was, when we brought Tom in, I surrendered and

ever since then I just do what he tells me to do.

Victoria Brown (47:27)

you consider when you brought someone in because I think that’s a huge decision for someone if you’ve worked on your own and you don’t want to let it go and you’re worried that this person isn’t going to really understand what you’re trying to do how did you make the decision to go with Tom

Alex Merry (47:40)

We’d been working with Tom for a number of years, sort of behind the scenes indirectly. We’re part of a founders community together. I’ve been seeing his work. We’re part of a community for community builders. So we knew he was good already, but we never actually worked with him properly. And I thought, I don’t even know whether this is right for him, but I’ll drop him a message. And that’s what I did.

So sometimes you’ve got to just acknowledge the limits of your ability and learn from other people.

Victoria Brown (48:07)

Yeah, it’s easier than done though. It’s really hard thing to do, I think as a founder. Letting go is impossible.

Alex Merry (48:12)

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Victoria Brown (48:17)

So Alex, can you tell us what you’re up to next and where people can find you?

Alex Merry (48:23)

the easiest place for people to find me is LinkedIn. I post on there a few times a week and I try and make those posts useful. But the most interesting stuff and the stuff that I think that your audience would really like. I have a newsletter called Founder to Thought Leader and I share more advanced stuff there. The kind of stuff that I can share with people who really care about this stuff and the nuanced elements.

So every Monday at 12.47, I share a public speaking tip. Sometimes it’s a story tip, sometimes it’s a strategy tip, but it’s about helping you amplify your ideas through communication. And that in there is a really great place to start.

Victoria Brown (49:04)

Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us, Alex.

Alex Merry (49:07)

It’s been so much fun, Victoria. Thank you for having me.