Founder, He’s On Wheels

My name is Justin Graves and I'm the founder and owner of He's On Wheels. Which is a motivational speaking endeavor and blog, online. It talks about disability advocacy, civic engagement, community service, and the motto for the blog is life is all about what you've done for other people. More often than not, if I get a request I send them a form that I have on my website. It's just on my blog and it's a speaking request form and it has some very pointed questions. Some simple things like, what kind of A/V equipment will their be and what will the crowd size be, but also much deeper things like what is your organizations mission and what do you want to achieve by having me come in? That way I can have some actual learning objectives and outcomes for them that are associated with what they want to achieve. The idea that they can leave that room and they feel empowered to conquer that next challenge. Because through my presentations, I tell a lot of personal narratives and stories of instances where I was met with a hardship and this is the mindset that I had to overcome that hardship. Whether it was becoming paralyzed at the age of three. Whether it's getting fired from a job. I want them to understand that, hey, even if I have something that is perceived as an almost impossible challenge, now I feel inspired to say, "Well, hey, if that guy can do it, then I most certainly can do it." That's something that I want everyone to feel. Whether they've been around me for five minutes or for five hours. For me, preparing for a talk always begins with pretty much writing like an essay. 'Cause I wrote a ton of papers in graduate school and I think of it very much so the same way. I've got an opening statement, I'm gonna tell you, "Hey, here's what I'm gonna talk to you about today." Kind of give that thesis and then break it down bullet-point by bullet-point by bullet-point and then wrap it up. Not only wrapping it up with, "Hey, this is what I hope you got out of today's presentation," but also, here's a call to action. Then, the second part, which is probably the most important to me is creating the visuals that are associated with the talk. Because I always really like to have some kind of visual whether it's a PowerPoint or a keynote slide or an image. Almost never with words. I don't do a lot of words, but a lot of pictures or videos that complement what I'm actually saying. Because that I way I think it helps people process better and it also helps them commit it to memory. Then I practice it. Just like you're preparing for a presentation at work or a class project. You run through it, make sure it makes sense, make sure that it has a good flow. Usually from there I'm pretty confident and ready to go.