Significance in the Age of AI
AI is handing leaders back their hours. This talk is about what they are for.
Why this talk matters now
The greatest tragedy in life is to be successful at things that do not matter. Tim Tebow said that on a stage I happened to be in the audience for, and it has been the question I keep coming back to ever since.
The high performers in your audience have been running a treadmill for fifteen or twenty years. They hit numbers. They got promoted. They earned the title. And many of them are quietly wondering whether the next milestone is going to feel any different than the last one.
This talk is for them.
What’s in the talk
A working definition of significance that holds up on a Monday morning, not just inside a moment of inspiration. The questions I had to ask myself when I walked away from federal work to operate a Chick-fil-A. The framework I use now for deciding what work to take on, what to decline, and how to choose the next decade.
I open with the story of the decision itself. Leaving an outside-looking-in dream job to run a high-volume restaurant in Miami. The pushback from people who could not understand. The clarity that came after.
The middle of the talk is the framework: three filters for distinguishing significance from success, and a practical test you can run on any opportunity to know which one it is.
The last third is the playbook for actually living it. Not theoretical. Not vague. Five concrete moves any senior leader can make this quarter to start choosing significance over success without quitting their job or abandoning their team.
How I customize for your audience
For a corporate sales kickoff or award ceremony, I tailor the framework to the specific industry and to the demographic of who is in the room. I draw on the operator texture of running a real business with real people whose lives the work touches.
For a faith-aligned audience, I lean into the personal narrative more openly: the role faith and family played in the decision to walk away from federal work, and the practices that keep the significance-versus-success question alive on a daily basis.
For a leadership summit or executive offsite, I extend the talk into a workshop where each leader maps their current work against the three filters and builds a personal significance audit they can run quarterly.