Taylor Swift’s Speaking Secrets: How to Connect with Any Audience: Podcast Ep. 438

438-SYB-Reaction-Taylor-Swift.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

438-SYB-Reaction-Taylor-Swift.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Carol Cox:
We’re trying something new. Reactions to big speeches. This one is Taylor Swift’s 2022 NYU commencement address, and what you can learn as a speaker on this episode of the Speaking Your Brand podcast. More and more women are making an impact by starting businesses, running for office, and speaking up for what matters. With my background as a TV political analyst, entrepreneur, and speaker. I interview and coach purpose driven women to shape their brands, grow their companies, and become recognized as influencers in their field. This is speaking your brand, your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience. Today we’re stepping into the world of Taylor Swift. But instead of analyzing her lyrics or her music, we’re going to break down her public speaking, including her recent Appearance on the New Heights podcast, because even megastars have techniques and teachable moments that you can use in your own talks. Now, even before it was announced that Taylor was going to be on her boyfriend Travis Kelsey’s podcast, Diane and I had decided that we were going to analyze the commencement speech that Taylor delivered at NYU in 2022. And then we listened to this recent podcast on new Heights, and we’re like, wow, she actually mentioned that speech, which she hadn’t mentioned any other speeches that she did. So we’re like, oh, synchronicity. This was meant to be. So let me play a clip from her podcast appearance where she talks about this NYU speech. And then we’re going to dive into three takeaways that you can use. No matter what type of presentation or talk that you’re delivering, doesn’t have to be a graduation or commencement speech. It can be any type of talk because Taylor has a lot to teach us. All right, let me cue queue up the podcast episode here. I was.

Taylor Swift:
In an honorary doctorate from NYU, and I made the commencement speech, and I put so many lyrical Easter eggs in that speech that when the Midnights album came out after that, the fans were like, the whole.

Taylor Swift:
Speech.

Taylor Swift:
Was an Easter egg. Yeah. And that’s for me. That’s really fun because I. Because they find it fun.

Carol Cox:
All right. So really I go watch the entire two hour podcast episode. It is so well worth it. It was such a delight to hear her talk about not only getting back her master recordings, but the Eras tour and everything that she did on there. Obviously how she and Travis met and dating and then her new album that she dropped there on the podcast episode Not Diane. I know that we have been following Taylor for quite a while because we not only enjoy her music, but we really recognize what a superstar she is when it comes to her brand and to her business. She’s so intentional about everything that she does. Yet she’s also feels very relatable and down to earth and like, literally like even though she is this mega superstar, probably one, probably the biggest star in the world because of the arrows tour. Now that you really feel like if you just ran into her at a coffee shop or somehow got invited over to her house for dinner, it would feel totally normal and natural.

Diane Diaz:
Yes, I feel like she is the most uncool cool girl that there is, right? She is. I feel like she’s the type of she’s a cool girl because she’s Taylor Swift and she’s famous, but she’s also that nerdy girl, right? That became the cool girl, but she’s still nerdy and I love that about her. And very relatable.

Carol Cox:
And in her NYU speech, she talks about cringe right now, which we’ll talk about here in a little bit about how, like, we always do things probably that are cringe at a certain point of our lives, and we look back and we’re like, oh my God, how could we have done that or worn that, or said that or, or whatever, but into something like a trend or a fad. And so she’s very, very relatable. And that’s what we’re going to talk about here in this episode. This is a new series that we’re starting where we’re going to react to big speeches. So like Taylor Swift’s commencement speech at NYU, we’re also going to look at really well known Ted talks, Grammy speeches, Oscars, and so and so on to break down what really works. So why are these speeches so compelling and what you can learn to make your own talks and presentations unforgettable as well. And so I’m by the way, I’m Carol Cox, founder and CEO, speaking. Your brand in Diaz is our community lead communication strategist and brand messaging expert as well. And so we really enjoy helping our clients dig into. There are big ideas. There are content. What are the main takeaways? What are the lessons that they want to share with their audience? How are they going to deliver their talks in a way that is transformative for their audiences, that is memorable and that delivers an experience, and that’s really what the best speakers do.

Carol Cox:
And so that’s the kind of breakdown we’re going to do here. So make sure to hit the subscribe button if you’re watching this on YouTube. If you’re listening to this on the Speaking Your Brand podcast, be sure to follow the podcast in your podcast app so you don’t miss future episodes. And of course, you can hop on over to the Speaking Your Brand YouTube channel to watch this on video. If you want to see us and see Taylor as well as listen to it. So Diane, here is the we’re going to share three specific tips. But I think this is the number one takeaway that I got when I watched Taylor is it’s about a 15 minute graduation speech is that no matter who you are, no matter if you have performed 150 shows to sold out, stadium sized crowds. You can be relatable to any audience that you’re speaking to. Now you may think Taylor Swift, she didn’t even go to college. She’s so smart, she’s so intelligent, she’s so well read. But she didn’t have a normal college experience like those graduates at NYU had who were sitting there in the audience, so she could imagine what it was like to live in a college dorm or walk across campus to to go to class. But she had not personally experienced that. And here she is instead jetting around the world on her private plane, right, going and performing.

Carol Cox:
And so you may think, well, how can she relate to anyone in the audience? But that truly is her superpower is her relatability, not only through the lyrics that she writes, but through her performance, her persona and her speeches and her podcast appearance as well. So let’s take a look now at these three tips that we can use for how to be more relatable to our audiences. So you may not be a big time celebrity like Taylor Swift. I don’t think any of us are except for her. But you may come across where, you know, you have to give a talk to an audience and you’re like, oh, you know, this audience is I don’t they’re not really like me. Or maybe they’re younger than me, or maybe they’re older than me, or maybe it’s a completely different industry or a completely different profession. Or maybe it is an audience that’s very similar to who you are, but you still want to come across as relatable. And so no matter who the audience is or what size the event is, these are the three things that you can do. So the first thing, Diane, I’m going to have you talk to us about, because we did a whole podcast episode on this, which I’ll link in the show notes. It’s about using humor in your talks and specifically self-deprecating humor. How did you find that? Taylor did this in her graduation speech.

Diane Diaz:
Oh, my gosh, it was so good because I think she, you know, she. I’m sure when they came to her with this idea and she, she mentions in that speech, by the way, that that NYU speech that she’s pretty sure she was asked to do it because of her song 22 and it was 2022, which I think is a really nice tie in and very smart of NYU to choose her for that. But I’m sure when this opportunity came her way, she probably did think, oh my gosh, like, this is not what I do. I don’t give speeches. And in fact, she doesn’t really do interviews often. And if ever anymore. And in On the New Heights podcast, we learned that was her first podcast. So I’m sure she felt very much out of her element, but yet she still did it. And I think she she used that self-deprecating humor in the same way that she has used through any interview I’ve ever heard her, where she talks about being the nerdy kid, you know, feeling kind of out of place. She even talks about that in some of her songs, right? Like, I know in one of her lyrics, she talks about she feels like everyone is a sexy baby and she’s the monster on the hill. You’re too big to to, um, hang around and, you know, lurching forward and like. So she feels out of place, right? And so she she talks openly about that.

Diane Diaz:
And I think that’s why her audience loves her and why she gets. I think Travis mentioned that too, is what he noticed about her concerts, is that there were people of all age groups there, and now she bridges the gap between all these different age groups and all these different generations of people, because she’s just a regular girl, because she talks about not fitting in, sitting in her room writing music because she felt alone. Well, what can I do alone in my room? I can write music. I can play the piano, I can play the guitar. So she just tells those stories. And then when she tells those stories, we all think back to a time of like, oh my gosh, I remember that time when I felt out of place or didn’t feel like I fit in. And now all of a sudden she is me and I am her, right? Like we are the same person and and that just draws you into her. Well, yes, she’s a mega millionaire billionaire, whatever she is, you know, falling on her private jet. I don’t have that. But still. Yet she understands me, right? And so that self-deprecating humor breaks down that, uh, sort of protective wall around us for not wanting to feel like we’re we don’t fit in and lets us know it’s okay, because she also felt that way. Right? So I love that she does that.

Carol Cox:
And she does. And she does that really well. She did that in the podcast interview that she did. So I have a clip I’m gonna play. This is the very beginning of the commencement speech, and she does it right away, which is so important because she is who she is, and she wants to make sure the audience knows that she’s there with humility and with gratitude for being there to get this honorary doctorate and not there to basically like to tell them, like here, like basically like wag her finger, like, I know better than you because that’s not at all how she would be. All right, let’s let me play that clip here.

Taylor Swift:
Last time I was in a stadium this size, I was dancing in heels and wearing a glittery leotard. This outfit is much more comfortable. I would like to say a huge thank you to NYU’s chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bill Berkeley, and all the trustees and members of the board NYU President Andrew Hamilton, Provost Katherine, 90% sure. The main reason I’m here is because I have a song called 22.

Carol Cox:
All right. So there’s that part. That part where she said, I’m pretty sure I’m here because I have a song called 22. So again, acknowledging that that’s a self-deprecating humor, right? She’s acknowledging why she’s there and she’s grateful for it. But like having this little kind of joke at herself about it. And here’s the other thing that I love, which is hard for me to do, is what does she do? She pauses, and she lets the crowd laugh and cheer and applaud, and she, like, lets them have that moment before she continues on.

Diane Diaz:
Yeah, she’s so good at that. I think that probably that skill probably comes a lot from her, her performances, because she’s very good with audience engagement and imagine that she’s playing to hundreds of thousands of people not, you know, 50, 100, 200, 600 like it’s a lot of people. And yet she still makes every person in that 100,000 person audience feel like they she is there for them. And she’s very good at engaging with people. Right. And so I think that skill came in handy for this particular thing.

Carol Cox:
Absolutely. And you know, what’s so for those of you thinking about for your own presentation and talks, think of a lighthearted moment or kind of a quirk that you have or something that you can laugh at about yourself, because that will make you more relatable. And I realize that I just did that by saying that I’m not good at letting the audience like, yes, laugh or applaud. Like I will run off the stage before take in the taking the applause after a speech. And I want to get better at that. But that is a real thing, like the real thing. That is a challenge for me to do. So that’s that. That is a little thing where it’s self-deprecating humor. It doesn’t ruin your credibility or you being seen as the authority or the expert, but it lets the audience know that you like like you said earlier, I like taking down those protective walls that we oftentimes put up.

Diane Diaz:
Yeah, I noticed too, that she is using a teleprompters and which is of course, because again, this is not her genre. So why would she not have teleprompters. Right. And but she’s very comfortable in the sort of not that it’s uncomfortable, but she’s comfortable in the constraints of that. And she’s managing it quite well for someone who is not. Yes, she’s a performer, but she’s not a speech giver, right? It’s a totally different skill, and she’s doing a great job of it because I think everybody that’s there knows the gig, right? Like she said, she’s asked to do it because she’s got a song called 22. And we all know she’s a performer. She’s not a speech giver. She’s not there to tell them what to do, but she just disarms you with that, you know, self-deprecating humor and just, like, calling it out, right?

Carol Cox:
Yes. Okay, I have one another clip of her with a self-deprecating humor that I think is a great example. So let me cue that up.

Taylor Swift:
Not the type of doctor you would want around in case of an emergency, unless your specific emergency was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook and an intensely cathartic bridge section.

Diane Diaz:
She knows her strengths, right?

Carol Cox:
Right. And that’s why I picked that clip. Because even though she’s joking about she, you know, she’s getting this honorary doctorate, she can call herself doctor, right? Haha. You know, funny. But she still puts in there her expertise. Yes. Which is right. The songwriting and the lyrics and the catchy hooks and the melody. So that’s the balance. With self-deprecating humor, especially as women, is to make sure that, yes, we can use self-deprecating humor, but we still want to own our strengths and will we are really good at.

Diane Diaz:
Yes, yes. Love that.

Carol Cox:
All right. So that was the key takeaway, number one, which is use self-deprecating humor, especially towards the beginning. Or use any type of humor at the beginning of a presentation or talk. It really draws the audience in. And laughter is a great form of social bonding. The second thing is to know your audience. So understand where your audience is. So what life stage are they in, or what stage are they in and their business or their career? What challenges are they’re facing? What are their aspirations, their goals? Their hopes? What do they want for themselves? So think about what is your audience thinking about in their heads, like what is preoccupying them related to what you do, what what your topic is for your presentation or your talk. Kind of like kind of what is on their mind. And so let me play a couple of clips and then we’ll get into this other idea of also drawing out from your audience. Things that are kind of like the elephant in the room that you want to make sure that you’re addressing, whether it’s objections or maybe things that are going on, even on a more societal level, that may be important to mention. So I have a couple of clips here about how important it is to know your audience. So let me cue up the first one.

Taylor Swift:
As a kid, I always thought I would go away to college imagining the posters I would hang on the wall of my freshman dorm. I even set the ending of my music video for my song Love Story at my fantasy imaginary college, where I meet a male model reading a book on the grass, and with one single glance, we realized we had been in love in our past lives.

Carol Cox:
Which is exactly.

Taylor Swift:
What you guys all experienced at some point in the last four years, right?

Carol Cox:
All right. I love that because again, like, it’s, you know, she’s she’s drawing a comparison between herself and then like, she had this dream to, you know, imagine going to college. Clearly she didn’t go but the people in the audience did. So she understands, you know, kind of what their dreams and their desires and their hopes would have been. But they still connecting it back to her music and why she’s there as the commencement speaker.

Diane Diaz:
Mhm. Yeah I love that. She’s um I love that she, you know, there couldn’t be more of a world of difference between her and the audience that she’s speaking to. And yet she’s just saying, you know, we those are those universal experiences that we all have. It doesn’t matter whether you’re mega rich or not. You go into college, not going to college. Those are universal experiences that dreaming as a teenager or, you know, or that certain age dreaming about that meeting that perfect guy or girl. Like we all have those things, right? And so I love that she’s just calling that out because I think she she builds greater credibility with them when she says, you know, I maybe I didn’t maybe I’m not in college and wasn’t in college, but yet I get it. Like we have all had this experience. Yes.

Carol Cox:
So the other thing that she does, as far as in her speech itself, and this is not related to kind of the bigger takeaway relatability, but it is good, structurally wise, that she does have a beginning, middle and end of a talk. And now you may be thinking, well, that’s obvious. Duh. Every speech has a beginning, middle and end. You would think so. But just because you start and then you have a section and then you have the end doesn’t mean you have a beginning, middle and end.

Diane Diaz:
You know, sometimes they meander and it’s very confusing. Yes.

Carol Cox:
Just like songs, you can say, well, a song. I heard musical notes at the beginning and then the musical notes started, stopped at the end. Doesn’t mean that it’s a song like you have to have structure just like Taylor Swift has structure to her songs, so she has a clear beginning where she, you know, starts, she does her thank yous and acknowledgments to the people who are there, which is standard for a commencement speech. And then she kind of gets into the, you know, the, the what it would be like to go to college and writing her songs. And then she says she has some life hacks. Yeah, some lessons for the audience. So she teased them up like, I’m going to share some some of these life hacks, she says. I don’t want to call it advice because I don’t like unsolicited advice. But she has this life hack, so she shares the the one thing about like, life can be heavy, catch and release, you know, that kind of thing. And then she has a second life hack, and I’m going to play the beginning of that part here.

Taylor Swift:
Secondly, learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively. Cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime. Even the term cringe might someday be deemed cringe.

Carol Cox:
All right. Again, I love that because she’s acknowledging what so especially for younger people who have lived so much of their life online. Like Diane, we’re lucky that probably during the days when we would have followed fads, we wouldn’t wait.

Diane Diaz:
There’s no evidence of it.

Carol Cox:
Social media, we don’t have to worry about any of that. So whatever it was, cringe. There’s no proof of it whatsoever. But obviously younger people, they do have a lot of proof. So I love, again, like knowing your audience, knowing that that’s an experience that they probably had, you know, cringe is a thing you hear a lot online. So she’s relating to where the audience is at.

Diane Diaz:
I like how she’s using their language too, because she’s they’re 22. She’s 35, right? Or at that point, probably she was. That was three years. 32. Right. So I mean, that’s quite an age difference. So she but she’s using the language in vernacular they would use so that it’s very relatable to them. Yet she’s still instilling the lessons that she’s had. So but yet they’re going to understand it because she’s putting it in the terms they get. Yes.

Carol Cox:
That’s a great point. Yes. So that’s a great point. Thinking about that again, relating to your audience to think about the terminology that they use. So maybe you’re not talking to teenagers or college students, but you’re talking to people in a certain industry or a certain type of business, then you don’t want to. I mean, you could use their jargon if you know of that. It would be kind of funny to them that you’re saying it because you’re not in their industry or because you know that that’s going to be something that they really connect with. Likewise, or on the flip side, don’t use jargon that’s particular to what you do to an audience that is not familiar with it.

Diane Diaz:
Right, right. Yes. Yeah. You really have to understand the audience and read the room, to write and know how to relate. I spoke to a group of it was actually middle school and high schoolers recently, and I really had to put a lot of effort into because I don’t talk to children and I needed to like, dial down the professional tone of the personal brand talk and make it approachable and relatable to that age group. But, you know, you really have to think. And that’s just an extreme example. But it’s true. No matter who you’re speaking to, you have to change your delivery and change your wording and change the stories so that they relate to it so it’s meaningful to them. Otherwise it’s not going to land.

Carol Cox:
Yeah. You have to think about what are their goals, what do they want for themselves? Where are they at in their life? What what is kind of getting in their way or what are their thought processes? What are they concerned about? So you’re still talking about personal branding, which you would do with a business audience of of women. But you can also do it for younger people. You just have to shift what they are, what they’re focused on?

Diane Diaz:
Yes.

Carol Cox:
Yes. All right, so I have one more clip on this section about knowing your audience. And this might be my favorite part, because Diane and I know that we have talked a lot about on the Speaking Your Brand podcast and our Thought Leader Academy with our clients about when you have a personal story, you absolutely should share it with your audience. If it relates to your overall message or the lessons that you want to impart to the people who are in the room. But oftentimes people our clients are like, well, but what? How does my story connect to what I’m saying? Or I don’t really, you know, I’m just going to share my story and then what happens next? So what we say is that you have to take your story and universalize it. So it’s the personal to the universal, the me to the you or the me to the we. And of course, no surprise Taylor does this so expertly. So let me bring up that clip.

Taylor Swift:
I’ve made and released 11 albums and in the process switched genre from country to pop to alternative to folk. And this might sound like a very songwriter centric line of discussion, but in a way, I really do think we are all writers, and most of us write in a different voice for different situations. You write differently in your Instagram stories than you do your senior thesis. You send a different type of email to your boss than you do your best friend from home. We are all literary chameleons and I think it’s fascinating.

Carol Cox:
All right. So again like.

Diane Diaz:
So smart.

Carol Cox:
Very much recognizing that yes, she’s talking about her creative process, which is actually good for her to share in a speech because people do want a little to know a little bit about what you do as a person. They don’t want it to. They want it to be about them, but they also want to learn about you because that’s how you’re a reflection. You’re a mirror for them. So when she’s talking earlier in that clip, before I started in about her creative process and why songwriting is so meaningful to her. But then she’s like, okay, well, obviously most of the people in this audience are not songwriters. Maybe some of them are, but most of them are. So she immediately connects to. But we’re all writers in our lives, and we all write for in different voices, for different purposes, for different reasons. And I think that is such, such an expert example of this idea of knowing your audience, but then taking the personal story to the universal.

Diane Diaz:
Yeah. And I think she actually, I feel like does that with her music too, because her she tells I mean, obviously most of her songs are based on things that happened in her life. And yet when you listen to them, you know, you can’t necessarily apply every song to your own life, but you can find little nuggets in each song that you’re like, yeah, I kind of get that idea, or I get that concept, or I get that instance where that could happen and I, oh, I’ve been through something similar. Right. So she tells very personal, I know I believe one of the critiques of her Tortured Poets Department album was that it was just all about her. And I’m like, well, yeah, but it’s being about her. Her audience understands. It’s about also about them, right? Like it’s about her, but it’s about us through her. Right? I think her audience now knows that. And so she writes about her. But then we feel it ourselves, about ourselves. And so anybody that knows anything about her kind of gets that. But she did it very masterfully here in this speech. Right? Very deliberately. And I think, too, because it is a different setting than a song that she’s writing. Right. That you’re just going to listen to without her there. She’s actually telling you, here’s the thing, and here’s why that thing is relatable for you.

Carol Cox:
Diane, let’s talk about objections. And again, I know a lot of times when we’re working our own presentations, when we’re working with clients, I’ll often say to them in our VIP days and I’ll say, okay, so what do you think people in the audience are thinking to themselves right now? So because they’ll say our clients will say something like, well, but what if they’ve already heard this before? What if what if they’ve they’ve tried this and they didn’t work or whatever it happens to be? Yes. And so I say, well, then say that literally. Say that out loud. Say to your audience, well, you may have tried this before and, you know, show me, you know, show of hands. How many of you tried this and it didn’t work? Okay. Well, let’s we’re going to try a different kind of approach to it or. Okay. So now you all may be thinking that x, y, z. So literally say out loud what you think the audience is saying in their head. So Diane, how does Taylor do this in her commencement address?

Diane Diaz:
Yeah, she you know, one of the things she does at the very beginning is she addresses the huge elephant in the room is that these graduates just went through going to college during a global pandemic. And so she’s letting them know, like, yeah, it was weird. You, you, you know, I think because also because she’s very up here with like she lives in a completely different world than us. So does she completely understand what it was like to go to college at all? Especially during a global pandemic? No, but she understands there was a global pandemic. You all had an experience that was atypical for college people. I get it right. It was a strange experience. And you probably you all made it through that. You dealt with that. But it was a thing. So she calls it out at the beginning. So I think that that sort of disarms the it actually shortens the distance between us and her. Right. Like, so that we don’t feel like if she’s not going to get this, like she not only did she not go to college, but there was a pandemic and I had to go to college. No, she’s saying like, I get it, you went to college during a pandemic, right? And so she she just puts right out there. It is. It is an old sales technique. Right. To state the objections. Like, you know, I know this this XYZ product or service seems really expensive. And you’re I’m sure your budget budgets are tight right now. Like I get it, but blah blah blah. Right. So that is what she does. She she sells them the idea of what she’s going to talk about and says, listen, I know you went through a pandemic, but I’m going to share some hacks with you, right? So she I love that she just states it outright because we all they all know that.

Carol Cox:
Well, it would feel weird if she didn’t address it because again, now in 2025, you wouldn’t be addressing it because people are like, no, I don’t want to talk about the pandemic. But in May of 2022, very much, it was still top of mind for everyone. And it was so central to their college experience. And if she hadn’t addressed it, and if you were as a speaker, if there’s something going on, you know, discernment plays a role here. But if you don’t address something that is really like top of mind for the audience, it’s going to feel like you literally took your speech off the shelf. Yes, Matt, it memorized.

Diane Diaz:
And yeah.

Carol Cox:
Right click play on yourself. Yes. And you just said the whole thing and it feels inauthentic and genuine. Yeah. When that happens.

Diane Diaz:
I think she is probably one of the best people at addressing timely things that are going on with her audience, because she and she’s not a person who’s out there. She doesn’t do a lot of interviews. She doesn’t. She’s not on social media. She she, of course, has social media, social media presence, but she’s not on there. And so when she addresses something, she does address instances like she there was I think her concerts in Vienna had to be cancelled because there was some sort of a, um, bomb threat or something. So they had to cancel all the shows. Now she of course she has to address that, but it is. So, um, of course she has a team helping her with this, but I think she is the leader of that message. And it’s. You can tell when the message comes out that it’s very Taylor Swift, right? It’s full of caring. And so I’m sure when she’s crafting this speech, she’s aware, like, what have these young people been through? Right. Like, what have they been through? What have they been dealing with? That I need to just make sure I say like, yeah, I get it. You’ve gone through this and this and this, right? So I think she’s very good at that. Very good at that.

Carol Cox:
I am sure she wrote this speech. She probably had her mom or someone kind of, you know, just like she does with anything, probably get some, some feedback on it to tighten it up and to make it better. But as a writer, I’m sure.

Diane Diaz:
Oh my God.

Carol Cox:
I’m.

Diane Diaz:
Sure she wrote it. Yeah.

Carol Cox:
And you can tell. All right. So so then that was so kind of number two, knowing your audience and then bridging the personal story to universal themes is number three. But they’re very much closely connected together. So let me play another clip. And this is getting towards maybe like a little over halfway through her talk where she talks about perfectionism and now perfectionism. Perfectionism is really the core of this speech that she wants the college grads to learn from her own struggles with Perfectionism and being this young female role model, especially in those like mid 2000 to late 2000 era when like the tabloids and the TMZ websites were just brutal, especially when it came to younger women, celebrities and the public eye. And about this idea of of it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to be vulnerable. Like things are going to happen. You’re not going to be perfect and to learn from it. So let me play a couple of clips from that.

Taylor Swift:
See, I was a teenager at a time when our society was absolutely obsessed with the idea of having perfect young female role models.

Speaker4:
It felt like.

Taylor Swift:
Every interview I did included slight barbs by the interviewer about me one day running off the rails, and that meant a different thing to every person who said it to me. So I became a young adult while being fed the message that if I didn’t make any mistakes. All the children of America would grow up to be perfect angels. However, if I did slip up, the entire earth would fall off its axis and it would be entirely my fault. And I would go to pop star jail forever and ever.

Carol Cox:
All right, let me jump ahead. So she kind of tees up this idea of feeling this, this very heavy weight and burden of being perfect so that, you know, not only for like the children of the world, not that, but for her career. Like, let’s be real like she. And again, the, the press and the industry are, you know, are very hard, especially on young women. So she wanted to make sure she had a thriving career. So let me jump ahead a little bit here to how she kind of bridges this idea of her own personal story of perfectionism.

Taylor Swift:
I know the pressure of living your life through the lens of perfectionism, and I know that I’m talking to a group of perfectionists because you are here today graduating from NYU. So this might be hard for you to hear in your life. You will inevitably misspeak. Trust the wrong person under react, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it. Overthink. Not think at all. Self-sabotage. Create a reality where only your experience exists. Ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others. Deny any wrongdoing. Not take the steps to make it right. Feel very guilty. Let the guilt eat at you. Hit rock bottom. Finally address the pain you caused. Try to do better next time. Rinse, repeat.

Carol Cox:
All right. So super relatable, right?

Diane Diaz:
I feel like.

Carol Cox:
She hit the mall that we, everyone in the audience has had.

Diane Diaz:
We’ve all been on that train.

Carol Cox:
All of that. Right? Yeah. So again, like taking that personal experience that she had because most people in that audience and certainly us, like we weren’t teenagers in the public eye like she was when she was a teenager. But we’ve all had those experiences of perfectionism, wanting perfectionism, and then the mistakes that happen.

Diane Diaz:
Yeah, I love that. She how? It’s like, well, you know, here she is, this big famous person. She’s been through it, but she’s also letting everybody and they all know we’ve all been through that. But she’s letting them know everybody’s going through. This is just it’s not abnormal. This is going and it’s going to happen again because that’s life.

Carol Cox:
Yeah. So for as you’re working on your own presentations and talks, think about for your own personal stories and you should include personal stories in your talks, even if you are doing a, you know, a quote unquote business topic or it’s a business audience, personal stories as you’ve seen here. Connect you with your audience in a deeper way. They let the audience know that they’re not alone, that you validate and empathize the experience that they’re having as well, that you’re not putting yourself on a pedestal. So you may have be a few steps ahead of them as far as in life or in the stage that you’re in and your business or career, but you’re there to kind of take them along the journey as well. And so think about for as you’re working on your talks, is how can you use self-deprecating humor in an appropriate way, but in a way that that brings your audience in? How can you let the audience know that you understand where they’re at, their goals, their aspirations? Also any challenges that they’re faced with right now and then bridge those personal stories to the universal by shifting from me to you.

Carol Cox:
So just a lot of times it’s just shifting. The language can be done really easily. And so we hope that you’ve enjoyed this first reaction video that we have done. Let us know in the comments. If you like us to do more, we have more ideas planned. We’d love to know what you thought about it, what else you would like for us to do? Are there any speeches in particular that you have in mind that you would like to know? Yeah, let us know. It could be someone famous or it doesn’t have to be anyone famous. It could just be one that you thought was well done. And then we could pick out why it was so well done. So drop your thoughts in the comments and again, make sure to hit subscribe here on the YouTube channel so that you don’t miss a future episodes. And make sure to follow the Speaking Your Brand podcast. And of course, if you would like to learn more about what we do here. Speaking your brand, go to speaking your brand. Dot com. Diane, thank you so much for joining today.

Diane Diaz:
Yes, of course it was fun. I love Taylor Swift. So my pleasure it was.

Carol Cox:
And thanks everyone for watching. Until next time. We’ll see you then.

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