“I have so many ideas! But no one else seems to ‘get’ them.”
Does this sound familiar?
I hear from a lot of people who have BIG ideas, but they haven’t packaged them in a way that someone else can understand them. YOU know you have good ideas. But often, the hard part is communicating those ideas to OTHER people so that they can understand.
My advice: Focus on packaging your ideas. Presenting them in a simple, clear way so that other people could understand the huge whirlwind of creativity and thinking in your brain.
Think of your ideas as a gift, and package them up so that other people can recognize their value.
Your ideas, when polished and organized and displayed for others, are a gift.
But if you leave your ideas loose and tangled, trailing behind you without any rhyme or reason, they don’t seem like gifts at all. They seem like a messy jumble, and no one will be running after you to scoop them up.
If you want your ideas to be a gift to others, you have to package and present them like a gift. Straighten them out, wrap them up, top them with a bow. Show people what you’re presenting to them in a way they can understand.
Thought leaders have two main problems
In my work untangling leaders’ big ideas, I see people struggling with one of two problems. To put it simply, they either have:
- 🗒️All ideas, no polish or packaging (not enough marketing)
- 🎀All polish, no ideas (too much marketing)
Maybe you’re experiencing the first scenario: plenty of ideas, but no polish or packaging.
My prescription: Spend time (probably a lot of time) digging into your ideas. Push back on your assumptions. Get ruthless about which ideas need to be sharper.
Ask:
- What are my most important points?
- What experiences most clearly illustrate my story?
- What’s the two-sentence takeaway?
And:
- What could I cut out?
- What details and caveats are overcomplicating my ideas and stopping people from understanding?
- What could I save for a different book?
I’ve also worked with many leaders who get stuck in the second scenario: they have a beautifully polished big idea, but nothing deeper to back it up.
This “all marketing, no ideas” scenario usually happens when the leader isn’t close enough to the process. They are known for a certain perspective, and their marketing team takes it and runs with it, without asking deeper questions or developing the details. The result is a pretty, shiny idea…but there’s not much there once the wrapping comes off.
For your audience, that’s like being handed a big, beautifully wrapped package with layers and layers of tissue paper and ribbon, only to find a tiny, sad gift inside. It’s choosing a book with a beautiful cover, but mostly blank pages. All polish and no substance is a fast way to kill trust with your audience.
Interestingly, the prescription to fix this problem isn’t so different than in scenario 1: Spend more time developing your ideas.
In this scenario, you’ll need to dig in to truly understand what you’re trying to say, beyond the tight headline.
Ask:
- How did I learn this big-picture lesson?
- What are the stories and experiences that back up my main point?
- What are 10 things people need to know about this idea?
And:
- What other experts could support my big idea?
- What follow-up questions are people going to ask?
- What details and caveats could make this idea really land for my audience?
Whether you’re dealing with too much polish or not enough, here’s the universal takeaway: How you package your ideas matters just as much as what’s inside. Focus on developing, fine-tuning, and packaging your ideas to create a valuable gift for your audience.
