Coaches. When you're getting ready for the TEDx stage, a lot of people think, "Yeah, I really don't need a coach. I'm a professional speaker. I speak all over the world. I spend my life speaking on stages around the globe, and I've got this." My question, though, is do you have this?

Here's the thing: I work with speakers all over the place and a lot of times I'm brought in by TEDx organizations to coach their entire speaker lineup. Oftentimes I won't have a part or I won't play a role in the speaker selection process. I will, though, play a role once the speakers are selected, and then I begin to work with them in helping them get ready for that red circle.

I was working with this one client recently and one of their speakers, I had my first initial meeting with them. And I said, "Okay, great, so you've done all this tremendous work. You are a professional speaker yourself. Are you ready to take on this TEDx journey?" And they said, "Yes, and you know, I really don't need a coach. I'm good. Thank you, but no, I'm good." And I asked, "Well, have you ever done a TEDx talk before?" "No." "Okay, I can help."

Here's the thing. TEDx is such a unique way of speaking. It's unlike any other speaking on the planet. There's so many tiny little nuances to understand and to follow that are not true for other levels of speaking. This style is so specific that you want to do your best to be amazing onstage. So, how do you do that? You do that by surrounding yourself with people who are going to support you on that journey, and it starts with coaches.

What you want to do is look for coaches in areas that you're not strong. So, let's say you'd really like to work on your voice, you might find a vocal coach. Or let's say you really want to work on your movement onstage, you might want to work with a theater coach. Ideally, you wanna find a coach who has experience in the TEDx world. Again, it's really important that you have people that you surround yourself with that have knowledge in this unique format.

I've been a martial artist for 27 years now, and I have coaches. So, I have my dojo that I go to and I train with a Grand Master every week, and that's my home base. And I will go on trips and I will go seek out other martial artists, other martial arts masters to learn a specific skill. For example, I do a lot of knife fighting, and in knife fighting, you want to find people who are the best in the world doing knife fighting. So, I go and I fly and I train with them, and then I bring those skills back to my home dojo and I work again and again and again. And you can do the same thing. If you think about it, and you are going to, let's say, the Olympics, you wouldn't go to the Olympics without a coach, right? So, you want to surround yourselves with people who can help you up your game, whoever they may be.

And also, I will tell you this. You want to establish your team early in the process. Now, what I mean by this is you don't want to wait til two weeks before your TEDx event and all of a sudden you get a vocal coach, you get a theater coach, and you get all these different coaches. That is going to overwhelm your mind. Don't do that. Build your coaches one at a time early in the process. The earlier you have your coaches, the better.

Another nuance: Be careful of having too many coaches. And be careful of your family as a coach or coaches. Families want to help. We love our families, right? They want to help so much, so they feel like it's their job to tell us something very specific we should change or do. If they have experience in the TEDx world, perfect. Listen to that. But if they don't, be mindful of those suggestions and those lessons that they are putting forth to you. You really want to rely on the people who have been there, been through the trenches, and they can guide you. Because when you surround yourself with people like that, it is going to make you play at a higher level.

And I'll also share this. No one has ever told me that they have prepared too much for a TEDx talk. So, start early, get your coaches in line, train with the people you trust and that you have great recommendations to work with, and then you will be absolutely amazing onstage.