Invited To Give A Talk On Entrepreneurship

I have been invited to give a talk on Entrepreneurship at a youth program organized by a Church in Ogba, Lagos. It's this Saturday.

image: drshrand.com

I will like your suggestions on what I should talk more about. I'm meant to talk for 45mins and have a 15mins Q&A session. And I've been thinking hard about how to structure my talk and what to focus more on. I won't be projecting any presentation slides and don't want to make the talk in anywhere academic-like. I want to make it conversational and deep, with lots of real stories. So I want your suggestions, based on your knowledge of me, on what theme I should focus on and how I should structure the talk.

As much as I love to share my knowledge and stories, I avoid giving talks. I don't know enough neither am I someone enough to confidently talk to people about anything other than my faith and MS Excel. Being a professional speaker often requires you put up an air of superiority and overhype your successes. It forces you to see yourself in an unnatural light. It comes with the high risk of one doing no more than just talking up and down, here and there. 

It's the main reason I am no longer focusing on conducting Excel training. I keep saying almost the same thing, explaining the same features and answering almost the same questions. It makes me feel like I know all there is about Excel. And it makes the few projects I have done look like multitudes. I don't feel challenged or forced to learn something new or solve some tough strange business problems.

The real joy I get from what I do is when I take on a project that I have not done something similar to before and I am forced to think creatively and work hard from morning till the next morning. I prefer getting stuck at an Excel program code than getting praised during a training session (which happens all the time).

Luckily, this talk is a unique one. I was selected based on the recommendation of a friend who believed in me more than I believe in myself. And it's not a recurrent one. And this is one of the moments I have been training for since 2011 when I joined Toastmasters. Also my experience of conducting professional/technical training since 2009 (when I was working as a CCNA instructor) will be of immense benefit. It taught me the power of illustrating with things around and telling good stories. I had wonderful ways of explaining how a router works and the different OSI reference model layers. I always got great ratings and excellent feedback. So I am going to combine my award winning Toastmasters speech crafting expertise and educative professional training skill to deliver a great talk.

As a Toastmaster, what makes a great speech is more of feedback and rehearsals before the main speech day. And that is why I am seeking your feedback and suggestions. If you were to be part of the audience what would you prefer I talk more on and how would you expect I string together everything. 

Thanks!