Molly's TED talk: Jumping Off Career Cliffs
As some of you know, I gave a TED talk in October at TEDNext. Today, it’s live on the internet! You can go watch the official talk. I’m also including both the graphics and the script for the talk below. You’re welcome to compare and contrast what I actually said with what I meant to say 🤪
Feel free to skip down to the actual speech, but I also wanted to take a second to document what the experience was like and what I learned from it for those who are curious.
Here are 6 things I learned from the experience of building and delivering this TED talk:
The process of building a TED talk is intense! If you’re going to say yes to a TED talk, you need to have the capacity for overarching anxiety and space for a lot of work in the months before the talk. I signed up to do my talk in May/June of this year, and the conference was held in October. Every speaker has a curator (or a team). Mine was the incredible pair of Valentina and Whitney. I met with them monthly, and then sort of bi-weekly, and then basically weekly? I don’t know, but it was a lot! These two are as responsible for my talk as I am (well, all the good parts). They gave me very active feedback from the beginning to the end. I mean it... For example, in June, I sent them a list of 5 options of topics for the talk, and they picked risk-taking in careers. Five days before the talk in October, I called them in a panic because I practiced, and the talk was 2 minutes longer than it was supposed to be (8 mins). They listened to it and helped me cut out the fluff in such a beautiful way. It was a meaningfully better talk after every call with them. Curation at TED is an art form, and Whitney and Valentina are pros. Make no mistake, though, taking on a TED talk is like taking on another job. I probably spent 100+ hours on this cute little 8-minute talk between writing, iterating, editing, memorizing, and practicing. Talks at TEDNext were given without a teleprompter and mostly without notes or notecards. TED doesn’t like the word memorization, but whatever you call it, you need to be able to deliver the talk from memory without any prompts. I think I practiced this talk one hundred times? I practiced in my bedroom alone, videotaped myself and forced myself to watch it, practiced while walking the dog, made members of the Glue Club listen to it twice, practiced in the shower, on the plane, in multiple Ubers... Alllllllll of that said, I’m so glad I did it.
It is such a joy to experience someone else’s excellence. I learned so much from building this TED talk and experiencing TED’s amazing “machine.” TED produces a couple of big conferences a year, and each conference has about 80-100+ speakers. It is incredible to experience the team's depth and breadth of knowledge in every aspect of creating and delivering talks and putting on huge conferences. One of my favorite moments was when Briar Goldberg, the amazing head of speaker coaching at TED, said on one of the speaker prep calls, “If you’re going to do drugs, I just need to know which ones because I’ve seen all the side effects and have all the remedies.” And my n00b brain immediately thought, “People give TED talks on mushrooms??” It turns out Briar was talking about drugs like Beta Blockers that help people with anxiety around public speaking, which makes a lot more sense. There were so many little gems — “The speaker support team doesn’t want to go outfit shopping with you the day before your talk, but they absolutely will if they have to!” The TED team has literally seen it all, and their experience shines through in every aspect of their process.
Short is so powerful. TED talks are various lengths, but for TEDNext, they gave us each 8 minutes. I cannot tell you how hard it is to create an 8-minute talk. That is… not a lot of time. You have to cut EVERYTHING. You can only say things once, and then you have to move on. The other thing that folks on the curation team say is “one idea, simply put.” Those of us who are used to 30-minute talks are NOT good at this. But I learned SO MUCH from taking the much longer article — J Curve vs Stairs — and turning it into this very trim, sleek talk. It is an art form unlike any other speech I have given. As I said above, I was cutting up until the last minute. I wish I had a time-lapse of all my edits to this talk... All the things they say about editing are true — kill your babies, short is so much harder than long, and all that — but great editing can make something far more powerful than you can imagine when you start.
When people give you feedback, they are telling you about themselves. Someone once told me, “people giving you advice is either people telling you what they did or what they wish they had done.” The same is true of feedback on something like a TED talk. I got some phenomenal feedback that profoundly shaped this talk, and I honestly should have stopped taking feedback sooner because sometimes it’s hard to remember who you are and what you care about when people are giving you feedback that is really a reflection of their lives and choices. They are telling you what they care about, and some (or a lot) of it isn’t relevant. It is as important to figure out which feedback to ignore as it is what to incorporate.
Saying no to one thing creates space to say yes to something you don’t know about yet. About two months before the opportunity to speak at TED came up, I said no to another big speech that sounded cool but honestly just didn’t feel like me for whatever reason. Then the TED opportunity showed up, and I’m so grateful I had the space to do it. Saying no is a skill I’m working on, and this is a great example of why it’s so important.
The best work happens when you are truly and authentically yourself. One of the best pieces of advice that Briar gave during her speaker coaching was to be yourself on stage — not to try to adopt someone else’s style or do what you think a "TED speaker" should do. I’d say it’s actually true of the whole process. When I was picking a topic and watching a lot of other TED talks, I realized that one of the most important things you have to do is choose something that is authentic to you AND, most importantly, something that feels evergreen — something you want to be associated with and known for forever. If you look at the top 25 TED talks, most of them are on topics that will never expire. As I went through the process, a few folks I talked to asked me, “What is your goal for giving this talk? What are you trying to accomplish? What will make you feel successful? A book deal? 1 million views?” At first, I felt like I should have a goal. I really didn’t have a goal when I said yes — I just wanted the experience. After thinking about it a bit, I realized that my goals with this talk are the same as my goals with my writing — I wanted to learn a lot, produce something I was proud of, and offer something that would hopefully help people that I was never going to meet or work with. That’s all that I hope for this talk. I am proud of my 8-minute buddy, and I hope it will help some of you, your friends, or your kids.
Thank yous!
I’m so grateful to everyone who helped me with this experience.
Anna Bulbrook who invited me and was my one-woman hype team through this whole process. It is such a gift to have friends who see you even better than you see yourself and challenge you to step into the light.
Valentina Bojanini, Whitney Pennington Rodgers, Briar Goldberg, and the team at TED, who patiently taught me so much.
Vanda Marlow — my amazing coach and friend — who was with me through every step of this process, particularly the tricky beginning.
The super-talented Lindsay Seifi (Monroe) brought the story to life with graphics and slides that steal the show. I want you to know that Lindsay is so talented that she basically created this set of visuals in one shot. We edited two of the slides and deleted a few others, but Lindsay is the best.
Nathalie Arbel helped me write the original article that is the basis for the talk and was the original genius behind the vibe of the visuals
The members of Glue Club and friends like Claire McDonnell, who gave me such great feedback.
Strangers like David Schweidel and Ben Kellogg who generously gave me their time and their expertise.
Finally, my incredible Glue Club team — Ashley Prince Murphy, Alice Hehman, Sara Grotting, and Tracey Baumwell — who came with me to Atlanta, literally cheered me on, helped me lead a Discovery Session (which is an interactive session at TED), and made me feel so supported in every way. And Kate Rasmussen Clayton, who couldn't be with us but made sure that she and her daughter Charlie were there in spirit.
If you’ve read this far, then I just want you to know that there are two things I’m embarrassed about… Despite amazing coaching from the TED team and folks like David Schweidel AND a pretty solid dress rehearsal two days before the speech, during the actual speech, I somehow never moved my feet! I just stood there... that was not the plan, but whatever?! I also had a brain fart on stage — I drew a total blank — and though I’m sure they will edit it out of the video, the audience was very lovely and supportive, which is what the TED team had said would happen. But still 😳.
Here you go… As I mentioned at the top, the actual TED talk is here, and what’s below is the script (what I intended to say) and corresponding images…
Molly’s TED Talk - enjoy!
There’s a lot of pressure around what it takes to build a great career.
And it all comes back to one simple idea… that you’re supposed to know what you want to do.
It’s an idea that I like to call… the stairs.
Here’s how the stairs go
You pick a major in college.
Your major leads you to a first job,
and then you get promoted
and promoted inside that same field
or that one company…
…forever.
The BEST part of the stairs is safety and security. It feels like you know what you need to do to get ahead.
But the stairs are also like a weird video game that you can get stuck inside of for years…
The stairs can make you feel like your self-worth is tied to your title, your last performance rating, or your next promotion.
But the truth is… the stairs are an illusion.
These days, excellent careers are no longer built by excellent stair climbers.
Said differently, one of the most important things you can get good at in your career is taking risks… or, as I like to call it, jumping off cliffs.
Let me explain what I mean with a story…
At 25, I got offered a crazy job.
I had spent two years successfully climbing the stairs in Human Resources at Facebook. Suddenly, a leader of another team asked me to be part of a new project doing something I knew absolutely nothing about.
It was long-term and risky, and people told me the project would probably fail.
I was intrigued and also scared. I talked to a lot of people and a whole bunch of them told me not to do it.
But there was a little voice inside me that just kept saying, “I wonder if I am capable of being good in this entirely new world…”
So... I took the leap and jumped off the cliff.
I'd like to say that what happened next is that I became an overnight success and it was obviously a great decision...
But actually, the first 9 months of that project felt a lot more like falling off of a very steep cliff…
I went from feeling competent and capable in HR to feeling like an absolute idiot all the time. I was sitting in rooms with brilliant people and asking what felt like very dumb questions.
6 months in, I got the lowest performance review of my life.
I had a lot of moments where I wanted to run back to the safety of the stairs…
But then something interesting happened…
About 9 months in, I had to lead a meeting – a debate about a very complex and nuanced part of the project.
I did it with confidence and I so vividly remember walking out of that meeting feeling like myself again.
I had gone from feeling like a beginner to feeling capable in this entirely new world.
From there, I kept learning and growing, and after 3 years on this project, I was a completely different person.
I was offered jobs that no one would have considered me for if I had stayed in HR.
Cliff jumps don’t just take you a couple of flights up on the stairs - they are like a weird elevator that takes you to an entirely new place.
Ultimately, cliff jumps teach you about yourself and what you are capable of in ways that the stairs cannot.
To get good at Cliff Jumping, you have to get good at three things:
The first is actually jumping off the cliff:
After years of coaching people through career decisions, I know that sometimes it just isn’t the right time to take a risk BUT I can tell you that most people who stay stuck on the stairs are not there out of necessity.
The main thing that keeps us on the stairs is fear.
The most important thing is to learn to tell the difference between the “I’m scared I might run out of money” kind of fear – which you should listen to –
and the “I’m scared I might fail” kind of fear, which you should actually take as a big flashing green light.
Cliff jumps show you what you are capable of in spite of fear.
The second thing you have to get good at is surviving the fall:
Jumping off a cliff is taking a giant step backward into the land of feeling like a beginner
You are in a learning process and that involves a huge emotional roller coaster – daily, weekly, sometimes hourly.
All of my cliff jumps have included cycling rapidly through feelings from:
“Maybe I can do this” to
“Who even offered me this job in the first place”
This emotional rollercoaster is NORMAL… AND it doesn’t mean anything is wrong. You have to learn to expect the emotions and ignore them at the same time.
The most important mantra for me in this phase has been “give it two weeks.”
Emotions like this don’t go away when you “sleep on it” – which is what A LOT people tell you to do.
BUT most of them subside eventually and two weeks is a good barometer for what you should actually pay attention to.
The third thing you have to get good at is being a professional idiot:
This is now one of my greatest strengths.
I am COMFORTABLE feeling like a moron. I am GREAT at sitting in rooms with brilliant people and asking stupid questions.
But what that really means is that I’ve become an extraordinary learner…
One of my favorite phrases is “sorry if this is a stupid question but…” As soon as you ask that way, it turns out that everyone will both want to make you feel better – “no no, that’s not a stupid question” –
AND you’ll discover that everyone wants to be a teacher. It makes them feel smart to teach you what they know.
You’ll also discover that most stupid questions aren’t actually stupid. So many people are afraid of sounding dumb, that the world is littered with important questions that never got asked.
“Define that word for me” or “why are we doing that” or “why are we having this meeting?”
If youre willing to stick your neck out and risk sounding like an idiot, you’ll often find that you’re actually the most valuable person in the room.
There’s one last part of the illusion of the stairs that becomes obvious the more cliffs that you jump off of.
And that is the idea that there is ONE set of stairs – that success has one definition.
I have a lot of friends who have gotten to some version of the top of the stairs – a lot of money, a fancy title, or fame – and… realized that they are miserable.
One friend described becoming CEO of her company and then immediately thinking – “is this all that there is?”
You know what she did next? She jumped off a cliff to a whole new industry…
She went from being the CEO of a marketing agency to helping people who were dying in hospice.
Success is not the same for everyone.
I know that what I’m talking about isn’t easy.
It takes bravery to trade the known for the unknown.
It takes courage to do something that might seem like a step backwards or sideways to other people.
But
you will never really know who you are
or what you could become
unless you learn how to try.
Thank you.
We built Glue Club to give startup leaders a space to learn what good looks like and help them skip some of the mistakes others (me!) have made. Glue Club is a membership-based leadership development program that helps startup leaders feel better and be better at work. Membership begins with our Foundations program, which kicks off with a 4-week intensive workshop including "Lessons" taught by me and weekly facilitated circles where you problem-solve collaboratively with your peers, finding solutions for challenges that you and your company are facing. If you’re a company builder who wants a community of people to lean on and learn from, come join us!
I enjoyed your talk, Molly. Thank you 🙏
It's a great speech. Thank you, Molly