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Episode #88 Landing a TEDx Talk is Easier Than You Think with Cathlyn Melvin

Many of us have watched a TEDx talk, and imagined what it might be like to be up on that stage, delivering a talk of our own. Well this week’s guest is here to tell us that it isn’t as far off of a dream as you might have thought. Cathlyn Melvin is a messaging expert whose insight has been featured via TEDx, Thrive Global, Much More Media, Captivate + Convert, She Built This, and other outlets, and she helps her clients create cohesive messaging and deliver it on a TEDx stage. If you’ve ever thought it would be cool to be able to share your message with the world through a TEDx talk, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

Nicole Laino 

Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to the limitless entrepreneur podcast. I’m your host, Nicole Laino. And we’re talking a really cool topic today. I’m very excited about this one because this has been on my list for a long time. We’re talking TEDx today. And no, I’m not going to talk about this by myself, because that wouldn’t be a terribly interesting or informative conversation, because I don’t know much about it. So I invited a guest on who is an expert at this, I invited on Cathlyn Melvin. She is a messaging expert. And her Insight has been featured in TEDx, thrive global, much more media Captivate and convert, she built this and so many other outlets. And you have a theater background, which you and I have that in common. So I was excited to have you on like, I get it. And there’s so many people who, who, particularly in like the TEDx world that have this, this theater background theater, production, writing, acting, directing, because it is it’s so theater, it really is. Yeah. And I’ve always I’m so I’m excited to hear your take on this. You’ve been on TEDx, you help teach people craft TEDx talks. So let’s dive in. First of all, welcome. Thanks for being here. I’m glad to be here. And tell everybody a little bit about you that I missed? What would you like people to know?

Cathlyn Melvin 

Oh, gosh, there, there could be so much to talk about. So like you said, my first career was in theater, I have a degree in classical theater performance. So I studied all of the old dead white guys, Shakespeare and Shaw and Ibsen and all of them. And then I spent about a decade working as an actor and director. And also during that time, I founded my first business with another actor, educator. And that business was a national touring arts education company. And the business still is I’m just no longer with the business. But and so that is really, that experience was what led me to learn about copywriting, which is part of my current business, I was writing not only was I writing scripts, and lyrics, and music, and all sorts of artistic stuff for that organization, but I also started learning about writing for our website, and our emails and all of that. And so when it came time to leave the theater industry, that is the direction that I eventually went, I went full time as a copywriter. And through a sort of hop, skip and a jump, I had also spent a short time in law school, and dropping out of law school is actually what inspired my TEDx talk. Hmm. And so I was then working as a copywriter, I’d go to my TEDx talk, and I was getting all of my community ready for my talk to come online and ready to spread that. And people started asking me, you know, you have this background, as an actor, as a director, you’re a writer and editor, now you have this great set of skills. I actually started out way back in high school as a competitive speaker. And so people were sort of looking at that background and saying, I want to give a TEDx talk. If I can get a TEDx talk, will you coach me on that? And when I started getting those questions, it just felt like such a beautiful way to use that sort of Venn Diagram of skill sets that I’ve collected over the years. And so yeah, that’s, that’s what I’m doing. Now. I have the copywriting side of my business and the tech side. And they both fall so nicely under that, that messaging umbrella, I talk about how, no matter which side of the business I’m working on, what I’m really doing is helping people get the message that’s on their heart, out into the world and into the minds of other people.

Nicole Laino 

So that is so interesting. And I what I love about this is I believe that we always we have a purpose, there’s some through line, there’s something that’s pulling us in a direction. And it may not look exactly as we think it does, like it’s very rarely I wanted to be an actor, I look at it very much that there was there was a deeper connection to things of stories and acting and movies and theatre were what opened me up and made me feel less alone in the world. They are what connected me to my soul they are what made me feel alive and I wanted to do that for other people. I wanted to be part of it to affect and impact others that was that was a big part of it. And I do that as a coach I do that with my content. I do that so I feel like the direction I was being pulled in in the only time I ever felt like fully off was when I was like working in a corporate environment just churning out product

Cathlyn Melvin 

And having that connection and that in impact now making on a personal level,

Nicole Laino 

yeah, on anyone. So I love that. Like, it’s like you’re being pulled in that direction, and it looks a little bit different. You wear a different costume, maybe for each different thing. But you kind of ended up in that same general vicinity.

Cathlyn Melvin 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I look back at that sort of circuitous path that I took to get to where I am. And it really is like, each, each element of my life, gave me one more building block. So that now I can, I can help people with their storytelling, I can help people with their messages, and get those ideas out into the world that the world really needs to hear.

Nicole Laino 

And this is one of those areas where I feel like having a coach the coaches for everything, and some of them, it’s like, you really need a coach for that. And some, you really don’t need a coach for that. This is something that I feel like having a coach, really, this is how you get it done. This is how you don’t have just on your list for like, years and years and say like, how am I going to do this? And I’ll read a book and no, you’re not you’re not good, you’ll read the book, and then you won’t do anything with it. And I’m speaking from experience. But let’s talk a little bit about, I think there’s probably somebody listening right now who’s saying like, I want to, I want to, I want to be on a TED stage. I want to deliver a TED talk. But it feels really far away. It feels like maybe something that somebody else, even people who are really experienced and experts in their field like, but I don’t see how, what I do translates to that stage. Where do you start with somebody when they come to you? Do people come to you from that place? Or do most people come to you with like, I have this really solid idea, it’s show me how to put it forward?

Cathlyn Melvin 

I think that most people come to me, when they’re in that question asking stage, when they’re like, I really want to give a TEDx talk, I see all these other people having doors opened for them as a result of their TEDx talk. But they might have any number of different ideas that are that are blocking them. So a lot of the time people say to some, like someday I want to do that I’m not ready. Now. They feel like it’s this big, hairy, audacious goal. And I think that part of that is that we see it making such a major impact. And so we assume that something that that can have such a great impact must be big and scary and hard to achieve. And then on the other side, I think that there are people who are TEDx speakers, there are people who are TEDx coaches, there are people who are TEDx organizers, who are creating a somewhat false level of exclusivity. Because there are over 3500 TEDx events every year across the globe. So no matter where you’re at, I really believe that if you want to get a TEDx talk, you can get a TEDx talk. And you can set that goal to say in the next six weeks, I’m going to send out applications. In the next year, I’m going to get on the stage. Because so much of what is holding people back so much of what held me back was a lack of information. There isn’t when I when I started my TEDx adventure. I am very much an information gatherer and I dug into Google, trying to find out all information that I could about how applications work, what’s required, what the experience is, like, once you get get accepted, and there just isn’t that much. Easily accessible information out there. And so people are feeling like, like it’s being gate kept a little bit serious that Yeah, yeah. There, there are a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. And so one thing that I started to do when I went in this directions, or the offer TEDx coaching was just giving Q and A’s and letting people come and ask those questions. Because it’s not it’s not as scary. It’s not as giant of a leap for most people as as we start out feeling.

Nicole Laino 

Yeah, and, and I think I’m going to ask some questions here that I have, um, One of them being if that’s okay, absolutely. One of them being what comes first? Do I have the talk? Do I have like, do I have like, this is my talk idea. And I’m pitching a very specific idea, or am I pitching something that’s, that’s pretty broad. Or let me back up, actually. So you mentioned there’s 3500 TEDx stages all over. And that’s something that I think people don’t understand TEDx is, is like a franchise opportunity that happens in cities all over the place, there’ll be like a Tulsa TEDx. There’ll be like all these different cities all over the world. So you can apply to any of them, right?

Cathlyn Melvin 

Most of them have an application process. Some of them are invitation only, oh, some of the like, bigger name, more established ones. TEDx started in 2008, or 2009, was the first year that they offered licenses, and they’re free licenses, so anyone can apply to host a TEDx event. And I lost my train of thought there. I was saying, oh, so the ones that have been around since those early years since 2009 2010 2011. A lot of them have grown to the point where they do outreach. Yeah,

Nicole Laino 

right. Yeah, but but for the most part, there are, there are still 1000s of opportunities that you can be applying to be on a TEDx stage, some TEDx, Houston, TEDx, some someplace. So So are they applying first? Are we like, are we sort of searching around and saying, like, let me see what because each TEDx has a theme, right? Each TEDx has some sort of theme. And so what am I looking for? Am I doing that first? Or am I sitting down and saying like, what do I want to talk about? What are the themes that are right for me,

Cathlyn Melvin 

I suggest having your idea before you dive in, because for me, it really is. And for Ted, the TED organization, too, it’s all about that idea worth spreading. And so you can have your specific idea. And you can mold it in your applications. You can say for instance, the event that I spoke at their theme that year was forward. And my talk is called the brave leap sideways. It’s about getting off the treadmill of life by taking that brave leap to the side. And so in my application, I was able to say, you know, sometimes the only way to move forward is by taking that brave leap to the side first. And so as much as you can connect your idea to the specific theme of that specific event that is going to help you so much. One of the mistakes that I think that people make quite often is using that like spray and pray method where you submit to a ton of events. But you don’t take the time and you don’t give the energy to really convince that event organizer that my topic is going to further your event’s theme. And so as much as you can do that, as much as you can specify, that’s going to be super important. But yeah, definitely starting with having your idea. And I really think that the first step in your TEDx adventure is deciding why you want to do it. Figuring out what your goals are, and sometimes when I ask people like, well, what’s your goal with TEDx, they’re like Cathlyn. My goal is to get a TEDx talk. So yes, but why? Because there are so many reasons whether people have a book, and they want to use their TEDx to spread the idea of their book, or they want to get their idea out in front of prospective clients, like they’re all of these different boxes that you can check as far as your goals. But that’s really going to inform what that idea is that you want to share, it’s going to inform the types of events that you want to apply to, it’s going to it’s going to change your whole trajectory. So definitely start with identifying those goals and those wise,

Nicole Laino 

right, because it’s important to know to like TEDx is not a webinar. It’s not. It’s not a and I think that that’s especially like coaches, service providers. You have ideas, but we’re, we’re so in the method of selling a lot that you can forget, like, there’s no call to action. At the end of a TEDx talk.

Cathlyn Melvin 

It’s not a place where you Pitch Anything. And in fact, if you if you make your talk promotional, first of all, you’re unlikely to get accepted. it right if your application feels promotional, even if you get accepted, and you get to give your talk on a specific stage, what happens after the event is all of the videos from the event gets sent to the big Ted organization, and there’s a committee there that decides whether they get online or not. And if that committee says, Ooh, sounds like maybe this is a little salesy, maybe this is a hidden promo. They’re not going to put your talk online because they’re protecting their brand.

Nicole Laino 

Right? And the mission of TED is, isn’t it ideas worth spreading? Isn’t that kind of yeah, this head overall mission? So what’s your idea worth spreading? Is the question and then why do I want to spread this idea is the question that you’re saying you should be answering first. So I think like just to give kind of like an example. So if my idea, like the thing that the thing that I teach, the thing that I care the most about what I feel like my mission is, is I help people no longer play small in their life that I feel like, that’s my, that’s been my mission since I was a kid. And, and I have done that in many different ways. So if that’s the idea that I want to spread, and I have multiple ways that I can talk about it, then answering that question of why I want to spread that idea, well, why I do want to work with people, I want people to see me as an authority in this space, I want people to see things differently. And ultimately, I do want to be able to put this in my marketing and in, you know, as something that that establishes me as an authority in this space, that if you have this problem, you can hear me speak about this from a very authentic place. And hopefully, you know that that helps us build a relationship there. So that would be like my overall goal, spread the idea, but also capture those people that are like, I want help with this as well. So that kind of would inform probably whether I tell a story from my childhood, or if I tell a story from you know, my corporate career or something where I’m, is that is that kind of why you you dial in the why to know like, what are the ways that you want to tell this, to spread? This is

Cathlyn Melvin 

definitely part of it. I think that that why literally touches every element of your experience with TEDx. And I think that one of the things that I heard you say was, you would eventually want to include your talk in your marketing so that people can see you as an expert, people can see that you are knowledgeable and researched and someone to come to with questions. And so what I would suggest you do when you’re looking for events, is check out the the events that you’re interested in on YouTube or on ted.com. So you can see the production quality of the video. Because if you’re looking to use it as marketing materials, you want to be somewhere where you’re on a stage that looks professional, where the quality of the video looks professional, maybe where there’s more than one camera angle, and keeping things like that in mind, even all of that goes back to why you want your your talk.

Nicole Laino 

That’s an interesting point that I would have never thought of if you didn’t bring it up, because I would be like, well, all of them are filmed. Well, aren’t they aren’t filmed at all? Oh, no. Well, I don’t know. It’s definitely

Cathlyn Melvin 

something to ask it and to do some Googling on? Yeah.

Nicole Laino 

Yeah. And you know, like, it does add, like, you know, and I’ve definitely seen people too, who have put up the third TEDx speaker, and they put it up on their website. And then when I look up the TEDx talk, it’s completely incongruent with their message, or with anything else. And I’m, and I’m sort of puzzled, like, so it’s the logo on their website, which looks really good. But I don’t think it speaks to their message. So that would be something where I’d be like, Well, I don’t want to do that. Because I hope that if they see it that they go watch it would be the goal for me is like, Oh, well, now go watch my TEDx talk.

Cathlyn Melvin 

And my TEDx Talk doesn’t actually have anything to do with my business. And I’ve I have wanted to give a TEDx talk for a very long time since they started coming online, which was like right after I’d graduated from college, because I had had this experience as a competitive speaker in high school. When I was seeing these come online, I was like, This feels so familiar, and comfortable. And like that was where that was my happy place that was being a speaker. And so I had been looking at TEDx for years, didn’t know what my idea was going to be. And then I had this experience where I dropped out of law school and had dealt with a lot of like, shame that I was placing on myself for not finishing what I start heard and I thought, this is something that needs to be talked about. And so even though it is not, for most entrepreneurs, who are the people that I work with, I work with a lot of personal brands, I believe that the best choice is taking the message from your business, what are you trying to, how are you trying to change the world in your business? And how can you put that into an idea worth spreading? so that when I asked you, in one sentence, to tell me what you want the audience to understand when they walk out the door, after listening to your talk, I want you to have that sentence. To say, I want them to know that, or I want them to understand that, or I want them to take this next action based on my talk, and really do have a link back to your business, if your goals for your talk have to do with your business. So that’s another reason to go back to those goals. And really use them to evaluate what you’re talking about how you’re talking about it, what you’re doing with it, how you’re promoting it, all of that.

Nicole Laino 

Well, and I do feel like TEDx is is sort of a gateway drug, like a lot of people do more than one, they go back. And they go to different stages. And I know people that have gone to multiple stages, and you can’t reuse the idea. Like once you’ve done one talk, it’s like now if you’re going to apply someplace else, you’re playing with a completely new idea. Exactly. What a beautiful way to hone in on. If you’ve been dancing around your mission, and you’re not sure what it is. Or if you’re like I don’t, I really want to be on the stage. I really want to do this. There’s a calling to but I don’t really know how I would do it in alignment with my business. Well, maybe there’s just a story that you want to tell, maybe there’s a, maybe there’s part of you that you feel belongs up there. So don’t let that stop you either, is sort of what it feels like to go watch a bunch of TEDx is there’s like, literally, I think that’s what trips people up is, wow, you could go anywhere with these talks.

Cathlyn Melvin 

Yeah, originally. So the reason that it’s called TED is because way back in the 80s, when it started, it was technology, entertainment and design, because the founders believed that there was an intersection of all three. And it was it was a time when like, CDs were coming out, we were looking at, look how cool they are. And also they’re still functional and and then when Chris Anderson took over the organization in 2000 2001, he really opened it up to now we have scientists and philosophers and business people, and philanthropists, and really anyone who has an idea that can impact the world is, is able to come speak.

Nicole Laino 

So it’s wonderful. But it also can be a little bit confusing, where you’re like, wow, I thought I understood how this worked. And now it doesn’t like or maybe that’s just me.

Cathlyn Melvin 

But I think overwhelming to be like, well, but my idea, is my idea worth it. Is it big enough? Is it world changing enough. And I think that we sometimes get stuck in that sort of imposter syndrome, a limitation of ourselves to say, well, I don’t think I’m ready yet, because my idea isn’t big enough, because it’s not going to wow the world the way that I want it to and the reality is, when you’re standing on stage in front of an audience, your ideas are going to impact them. And from that moment of standing on the red dot and giving this powerful speech, and getting inside the brains of the audience, it’s only going to ripple out further and further from there, you are going to create an impact. Even if your idea is saying, you know, we’ve been talking a lot about XYZ. And I really think that in the conversation of XYZ, people are also forgetting w. And we need to talk about w x, y, z in order to see the whole picture like it can be a little twist. It can be a new interpretation. It does need to be a new idea. And it needs to be at an idea that’s going to interest people. But it doesn’t have to be saying oh, we thought that the sun revolved around the earth. And now we know that it’s the opposite way. It doesn’t have to be world changing in at that scale.

Nicole Laino 

Right. And I’ve definitely fallen into this because you go and you watch TEDx talks, or TED talks, and there are people that are like, and we created this new way to bring water to people in a remote village in Malawi. And I’m like, I can’t What

Cathlyn Melvin 

I do Not that I yeah,

Nicole Laino 

I don’t even I listen to the talk. And I, I heard how they did it. And I still don’t know how they did it. Like, they’re obviously like, I don’t belong there. And, and so I think that that’s a very helpful point to bring up is don’t be intimidated by they’re not your competition. And that’s why the theme matters too, because if you’re going into it, like, you’re, you’re looking online, so you’re not necessarily seeing like, and this was the stage for that day. And all the speakers that came on, and you’re seeing probably the ones that get the most views, which might have been from a major TED stage, not TEDx, or from one of the more major TEDx stages, and you just don’t know the context of how they got accepted, or what they were accepted into. And you’re missing all the other ones that were impactful in their own way that aren’t, you know, you don’t have to have like a patent out, right? On like a new invention for some innovative way to like, you know, sustain our natural resources or something like that. And you make

Cathlyn Melvin 

a good point to about like, looking at imagining the lineup of the day, because when an organizer and their committee, when they are going through the piles of applications that you are in, if you don’t get accepted to that event, it does not mean that your idea was not worthy. Yeah, it does not mean that you were not ready, it just means that they had eight or 10, or maybe 16 slots during the day. And they are trying to pull in a variety of talks, that all work together. And maybe yours is going to be a fantastic talk. But it just wasn’t right for that event in that year on that day.

Nicole Laino 

Right. And so let’s talk a little bit about the talk itself. And when you’re framing your idea, and so if you have the sort of base idea, are you? Where do you take things? Where are you kind of helping people massage this idea of build it out? And how specific Are you getting? On the on the actual topic? And I guess how narrow is it?

Cathlyn Melvin 

It depends on what the idea is, how narrow you want to get. But I generally talk about people starting from their their big idea, which is more general, it’s like, this is kind of what I want to talk about. And from there, we refine down, I have a whole bunch of questions that I ask people in those one on one conversations, to get them into what I call your one succinct sentence. And your one succinct sentence is going to be, is going to be your idea worth spreading. That’s what you’re going to pitch to the events. And maybe sometimes your one succinct sentence is actually two simple sentences. Right? But I but I try to get people limited in that way. Because, yeah, you can say so much, in one or two sentences. And I think that those of us who have these ideas like living in our souls, they bubble out of us, and we just keep talking. And so it’s about listening to that person talk or listening to yourself, record yourself, talk about your idea. And then I don’t know if you if you you did this when when you were studying theater, but because I was specifically studying Shakespeare a lot of the time, one of the things that that my coaches and professors would have us do is highlight what they call the telegraph words, like the most important words, if you were sending a telegraph limit, limit the word count. And that’s what I want you to do with your big idea. After you after you’ve talked and talked and talked and talked, maybe you’ve talked for five minutes, I want you to listen back through it or read back through it. And look at Oh, what, what sentences first of all, are absolutely necessary to tell this idea. And keep on refining it further and further down from those sentences. What are the words so that you can eventually end up with that one succinct sentence that is just like super sharp, super clear, and says exactly what you want people to understand. From the wording. The wording could be coming up with is like, distilled like you’re you’re stilling it down. You’re distilling this down so that it’s a potent bang and sentence that hits very, very hard to what you want. gonna say that really pulls people in and get your point of view across without giving away the entire thing. There’s some curiosity to it. There’s some something where people are like, oh, I want to, I want to go there with you. Yeah, they were they they lean in, they already might have questions about it. But you’re definitely leaving. Leaving room, even as you’re making that statement, you’re leaving room for expansion on it. Because obviously, that’s what you’re going to do, as you write your talk, you’re going to take 5 or 8 or 12, or up to 18 minutes, depending on what you are allowed at the given event. And expand that idea open with anecdotes, and statistics, and research, and everything that you’ve experienced and can use to storytell with your audience.

Nicole Laino 

And like your TEDx talk, let’s just use it as an example. So yours, I’m sorry, remind me of the title again, it was they use the brave leap sideways, the brave leap sideways. So coming up with that, like, there’s some curious, there’s some curiosity, there’s, and what you’re talking about in the talk is not it’s not an idea that nobody had before. But your point of view on it is very specific. And you’re talking about like, here’s what I did, you may have done it, too. But like, this is how I saw it. And this is, this is the bigger picture to this kind of one act. So can you talk about a little bit? Did you start there? Were you like, did you just know right away with all of your background and everything where you’re like, This is my talk. And it came really easily? Or was that did it start someplace else, and then ended up here. So

Cathlyn Melvin 

it my idea didn’t really more from the time that I applied to the the day of the event, some people’s do, though, some people’s change, some people end up having a completely different lens on their idea.

Nicole Laino 

That would be I think there’s a lot of people.

Cathlyn Melvin 

But for me, I had had this experience and really struggled through it. And through out the experience of of deciding whether to drop out and how to go about that. Having conversations with my best friend and my mother and some other trusted advisors in my life, I kept coming back to this idea of feeling like I was on a treadmill, like I was running and running, and it had sped up and it was so fast, and I was gasping for breath. And it wasn’t getting me anywhere that I wanted to go. I had realized by that point that while maybe I wanted the degree, I was not ever going to be happy as a practicing attorney. Now, and so I had already had a bunch of conversations where I had used that metaphor. And then that was really what I brought into, into the talk and ended up being sort of the the framework and where that idea of the brave leap sideways jumping over the handrail of that that treadmill came from so that you can shake yourself off, you can take a breath, and you can start down a path, like a real path that goes somewhere and maybe that’s not your forever path. Maybe that’s not the path that you’re gonna, you know, get to you’re happy ever after, at the end of it. But at least you’re moving. And in moving, you can generate new ideas that you couldn’t when you were gasping for breath sprinting. At who knows what speed on the treadmill?

Nicole Laino 

No, I love that. And I love like so. So that kind of metaphor came to you were from from that visualization. And, and that’s, that’s where your intuition talking to you just being like, and I get things like that too. I sort of I, people who work with my clients know, like, I give really weird analogies I’ll be like, it’s like this. And it’s usually a very bizarre visual. But but it does illustrate the point. And you took that illustration and you were like, here’s how I can put that into a talk. Here’s like how I can take that idea how that I can take that concept and apply it to like this point of view that I have on this moment in time this this is a very common thing. So I think there’s there’s something in that to where you’re like this is a broad reaching topic of like a lot of people have been in this place before. Yep. And I know that that’s a prerequisite you’re either giving them a brand new idea of like this is something we did that nobody’s ever thought of, like you know, you know, innovative ways to like convert salt water to energy or something right in the desert, or

Cathlyn Melvin 

You’re trying to spread an idea that people have experienced, or they know people who have experienced, they’re only a degree or so separated. Because that’s an idea that is going to spread, they’re going to say, “oh, man, I just saw this speaker and she said this thing. And I felt that so hard.” And they’re going to be sitting at lunch talking to the person who didn’t see that talk. And it’s going to, that’s how it ripples and ripples and ripples out.

Nicole Laino 

That just made me so excited thinking about like giving a talk and people being like having to tell people what they heard. Like, I just got like, I just got all all tingly and excited about this is so amazing. I could literally just keep talking about this thing in your brain. But I would I would feel like we need to have like a credit card exchange than if I asked you any more questions about this. I like this is awesome. This has been amazing. I know that we have, like, we’ve only touched on it. But I think that we covered a lot of a lot of the meat and a lot of like, I think we demystify the process a little bit, which and

Cathlyn Melvin 

that’s, that’s always what I want to do. I just, I want to lift the curtain a little bit so people can see that it’s not so big and not so scary. Wherever you’re at, you’re ready for the next step. If you want a TEDx talk, you’re gonna get your TEDx talk, you can do it. It’s, it’s,

Nicole Laino 

it’s very doable. It’s, it’s very, very doable, but it’s, but it also like, that’s the beauty of it. It’s like, it’s actually it’s very doable, and it does carry a lot of a lot of clout. So, yeah, why not do it, it’s a worthwhile adventure, if you feel like it’s something that you feel called to do. So thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing so openly. And for just for lifting that curtain for us. I know that you helped a lot of people by being here and by sharing with us, so thank you so much.

Cathlyn Melvin 

Thank you. I really appreciate being here.

Nicole Laino 

Where can everybody stay in touch with you? Where can they learn more? Where how can they work with you tell them all the things. So

Cathlyn Melvin 

the first place I’m going to direct people to is on my website, which is right cat creative.com? The correct cat? Yes, I have, I have a gray and white, very needy velcro cat. And you’ll see on my logo, there’s a silhouette of that cat. But at Right cat creative.com/ted X planner, you can grab your TEDx planner that just takes all the guesswork out of what your next steps are. So it’s super easy to follow. It maps out exactly how much time you need as you’re prepping, whether you are writing or editing or memorizing or rehearsing your talk. So you can just follow that week by week. And if you want to connect with me, personally, I am on LinkedIn, I am the only Kathlyn Melvin on LinkedIn. It’s ca t h l Lyn me l Vi n. So please feel free to to connect with me there and just send me a note letting me know how you found me.

Nicole Laino 

Yeah, tell me if you came by way of the limitless entrepreneur podcast that Nicole sent you.

Cathlyn Melvin 

And then Nicole and I will both celebrate.

Nicole Laino 

That’s right. That’s right. Well, thank you. And we will link all of that up in the show notes as we always do. So we will make it super easy for you. You don’t have to worry about remembering any of that writing it down, just hop on over to the any of the show pages, wherever you’re listening to this. And you can be linked and transported over to all Kathlyn stuff. Thank you for being here. This was super fun, really informative. And I just loved this episode. I appreciate you.

Cathlyn Melvin 

Thank you so much. It was lovely chatting with you.

Nicole Laino 

I appreciate you listener who made it all the way to the end of this conversation with us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for just bringing your energy to this because we feel it and I feel it every single week. So thank you. And remember, you are only limited by the limitations that you accept. So stop accepting those limitations because when you do you become limitless. So go out there and be limitless everyone. Until next time, I will see you

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