This week I kicked off another round of coaching for TEDx Buckhead Ave.
It's one of my favorite times of the year.
A group of brilliant people walks into the room carrying years, sometimes decades, of experience. They have stories, research, lessons learned, hard-earned wisdom, and a deep desire to share something that matters.
And almost without fail, they all wrestle with the same thing.
They don't have too few ideas. They have too many.
You can almost see it happening as they begin to explain what they want their talk to be about.
"It started with this..."
"But then I realized..."
"Which made me think about..."
Before long, one idea has become five. Five ideas have become ten. Every story feels essential because every story shaped who they are.
I understand that feeling.
When you've lived something deeply, it's hard to separate the lesson from the life that taught it.
So we do what so many of us do. We try to say everything.
Not because we aren't clear.
Because we care.
We don't want to leave out the story that changed us. We don't want to oversimplify something we've spent years understanding. We want people to get the whole picture.
But here's what I've learned after coaching speakers and writing my own TEDx talks.
The goal isn't to fit your entire life into one talk.
The goal is to leave someone seeing their own life differently.
Those are very different things.
A memorable talk doesn't answer every question. It plants one idea so clearly that people can't stop thinking about it after they leave.
The same is true far beyond a stage.
I see leaders do this in meetings. Founders do it in pitches. Job candidates do it in interviews. We mistake completeness for clarity. We think if we explain enough, people will understand.
Instead, they leave remembering fragments instead of the one thing that mattered most.
Clarity isn't about having fewer experiences.
It's about choosing which experience opens the door for everything else.
Maybe that's why finding your voice can feel so difficult.
It isn't because you have nothing to say.
It's because you've lived enough to say a hundred meaningful things, and now you have to decide where to begin.
So here's a question I've been thinking about this week.
If someone could walk away remembering just one idea from you, what would you want it to be?
Not everything you've learned.
Just the one thing you'd hope they carry with them.
I'd love to know your answer. Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.
