Episode 5
Tyron Leigh Harding
Trauma focussed Professional Speaker and Disability Integration Advocate
Tryon Leigh Harding – The Powerful Story Speaker – Public Speaker World
Learn about Tyron / Contact / Key lessons in the episode
Why listen to this episode
We all know the aim of a talk is to educate the audience but if you can’t get that point across, the talk has failed.
For Tyron Leigh Harding, he uses his personal experience to illustrate the his topic. and it’s a powerful story.
He was given just 3% chance of survival after being shot in a robbery attempt. There is no needs to underline phrases that should be emphasis to an audience when the story and the lesson comes directly form the heart.
For event organisations, Tyron’s powerful story will show how the right speaker can move the audience to action. For public speakers. Tyron shows how you can use personal stories to inspire audiences.
About Tyron
Tyron Leigh Harding (or LTH as he is known) was given a 3% chance of survival 5 years ago. He had been shot during a home invasion. He now shares his incredible story of survival and his emotional journey back to a fulfilling life on stage as a professional public speaker through his company The Pivot Point.
While the idea of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is well known, Tyron talks about Post Traumatic Growth. It’s a belief that overwhelming adversity can lead to not a decline in a person’s life but to a move forward to a much brighter future.
Before the events which left Tyron in a wheelchair, Tyron was a self-described “introvert”. Yet when he began to speak about his ordeal he began to realise that his journey could inspire and help others through tough challenges.
Tyron is fond of pulling “wheelies” in his wheelchair. People often ask him, “What will you do if you tip over and fall backwards?”
He replies, “I’ll get up again”.
The story sums up his approach to life and the message he delivers in his speeches.
Tyorn‘s Top Speeches
- Disability Inclusion & Integration – Treat People as People
- “Trauma is a Natural Reaction, why is it taboo?
Contact Tyron
- 3% Chance of Survival – Choosing Life & Happiness
Key lessons from this episode
- It doesn’t matter if you are an introvert. If you have something interesting to say that people want to hear, people will want to hear it from you!
- If you can share something people want that will genuinely help them, then you can charge for it too. People want to pay for your time if you deliver real value to them.
- Joining a speakers association or group will help you work out what you can charge and feel confident asking for.
- Public Speaking is a welcoming industry. There are a lot of different topics but the principles are similar and happily shared.
- Create a social group (online or offline). Make it social, share ideas but also provide free content. It’s not a place to broadcast what you do but to share ideas. You never know what you can learn or who you might meet.
- If you are struggling to find your niche, talk about your topic to people (in conversation or talks) and see what they react to. The more people you speak to the faster you can find it.
- Don’t just talk about what everyone else talks about. Find your unique twist on things. See what others say and ask yourself what can I say that is different based on my experience?
- Should you give keynotes, workshops, etc? Try them all out and see what works for you.
- Think about scale – how can you help more people? Would an online course work?
- What academic research is out there in your field that doesn’t fit the standard view? What challenges the norms or the convention in your topic area? A lot of academics are poor communicators of cutting edge ideas. Could you be the person who shares that valuable information with others in a way they can consume?
- If you want to become a speaker, don’t think about how to be a speaker but about what you can give. Speaking is just one way of delivering information.
- If you have not considered being a virtual speaker yet, think about it as a way to go. You can go from being a speaker in your own country to being an international speaker overnight.
- When you are creating your talk remember that the attention spans of audiences are dropping and they are lower than ever in virtual talks. You need to keep people’s attention or you’ll fail.
- Remember things WILL go wrong at some point and they’ll be the things you never planned for. It will happen, so prepare to roll with the punches when it comes. If the slides and notes go down, one way is to invite people to ask you questions.
