Welcome to our next series, "Road to the Red Circle." Why are we doing this series? Well right now I'm coaching 41 different TEDx speakers. And I have TEDx on the brain. Every night, on the weekends, in the shower, while I'm driving, it's TEDx, TEDx, TEDx, TEDx, TEDx. And what I wanted to do is bring you guys some of these techniques and insights and ideas that I am just hearing, hearing, hearing every day. This way, as you are on your way to the red circle, you can take some of these best of the best techniques and insights and implement them into your own talks.

So, here we go. in this first video we're going to cover content. Now, content. TEDx talks. A lot of people are invited to deliver a TEDx talk and they generally know what they want to talk about but not specifically. Here's the most important part of a TED or TEDx talk. You've got to know what your idea worth spreading is. What is that? What is that one idea that the world needs to know? Not three ideas, not 20 ideas. Many, many, many speakers will come to a first meeting with me and they will have three ideas, five ideas, 10 ideas. You cannot pack that much different content into an 18-minute talk. Or less; a 12-minute talk. Or less; a 6-minute talk.

No matter how much time you have to give your TEDx talk, with 18 minutes being the max, you want to focus on your one idea. So, think about it like this: What is that unique perspective that you have, your point of view, on a topic that is uniquely yours? Any topic in the world that is uniquely yours, based on your life experiences. You have a conditioning, you have a point of view on this topic. That's what you want to decide first.

Now once you have your idea worth spreading, where do you go from there? Is there a TEDx or TED talk format? No. There isn't. And here's why. If there were a one-size-fits-all TED talk format, every single TED talk would sound exactly the same. And then, they'd be boring. We couldn't watch them if they all sound exactly the same. So, for that reason, there's no official format.

That said, you can look at what will bring your idea to life in the best way. Maybe it's story, maybe it's shocking facts and uncovering statistics that we had no idea were happening, maybe you're using images and visuals to help bring your idea to life. Whatever it is, you're going to want to find what works for you and make this talk uniquely yours.

Now when it comes to content, don't be worried about multiple drafts. Because almost 100% of the time, every speaker I work with, there are a lot of drafts that come through. Ten, 20, 40 or more. I have had speakers with that many drafts and more. Why? Because you're refining your idea, refining your idea, refining your idea, refining your stories, refining your positioning, your transitions, your open, your close, the lessons that you wanna teach. So, allow yourself room to grow with this talk because the talk will grow with you.

And here's another insight for you as well. And if your talk in in six months, you're going to want to take that entire six months to work on your content, but don't do it. There will be a time when you need to lock that content down and move on to memorizing it and then, move on to delivering it. So, there needs to be a point of time that you're not working on changing up the content the night before your TED talk. That will be a disaster. Work on the schedule. You can schedule it for yourself so you know when you want to lock down that content and move into the next phases of developing your TEDx talk.

And if you want another look at content and content creation, we did a whole series on that called "Crafting Content."  Watch those videos here in the Members-Only Library.