Your Tiny Talk Can Pack A Big Punch

By Antoinette Perez

When it costs nothing to publish a thinkpiece or go live on a social media platform, we get used to wordiness that masks weak intention and soft messaging. The Tiny Talk Model, which I introduce in my upcoming book Tiny Talks, Big Impact, offers a simple and concise alternative to rambling and confusion. A purposeful 5-10 minute talk cuts through the clutter and allows your message to stand out. And if you can add a meaningful call to action at the end, your talk may land a punch unheard of for its weight class.

If you can find the sweet spot between who you are, the message you want to deliver, and how you want your audience to feel, and say it in 5-10 minutes, you will no doubt have accomplished a lot. Many solid, short-form talks never ask a thing of their audience other than their attention, and these talks receive sincere appreciation and accolades. 

Packing a bigger punch by challenging your audience to do something after a 5 or 10 minute talk is entirely optional. But if you level up your talk by getting your audience to take action, you will have added secret sauce, and you may hear about your talk for years to come.

Self-help and personal and professional development spaces are brimming with promises of “transformation.” The premise is that if you attend a personal development seminar, or read a self-help book, you should emerge transformed, because their ideas and systems are JUSTTHATGOOD. 

To be sure, ideas and systems may have transformational potential. But transformation requires action, and the decision to act is up to the person receiving the ideas and information. No one will transform until they have decided to do something different with what they’ve learned. Knowing can inform doing, but knowing is not doing. We don’t transform because of what we know. We transform because of what we do. 

While five minutes isn’t enough time for most of us to transform, it’s definitely enough time for you to plant a seed, and issue a challenge to take action. And that first step can be exactly what someone needs to begin their journey of transformation.

At the end of your talk, ask yourself whether your audience now knows enough to take a new or different action, based on what you covered. 

If you gave a speech for a co-worker’s retirement, sharing that they always saw the best in everyone, ask everyone at the end of your talk to chat with at least three people on their way out of the room, and tell them one thing they like best about them. 

If you toasted the 40-year-old birthday boy’s warm hugs, invite your audience to celebrate this birthday by giving him a big hug before the night is over.

If you honored a friend’s life by spotlighting their ability to nurture deep friendships, challenge your audience to call a friend they haven’t spoken with in a while, to rekindle and nurture that mutual friend that you will all miss.

You get the picture. Think of an action that your audience can take to extend the message from your talk into real life. This is very much the proverbial cherry on top, but can elevate your talk from a good idea to an effective action.

Remember that a successful, memorable talk engages head + heart + hands. Plenty of talks make a difference and only cover the first two. By design, most TED talks are limited to engaging head and heart (TED’s byline is “ideas worth spreading,” not “actions worth taking”), so please don’t think that a talk that only does those two things is a talk not worth giving. 

But this final step of engaging “hands”, aka getting your audience to take immediate action on your idea, can truly change the way people think and act on an ongoing basis.

Get on the list to be notified when Tiny Talks, Big Impact – edited by Sharp Skirts founder Carla Cook –is published in summer 2025.