[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
I was cheated lied to betrayed all of
this happened within just six months of
being in a relationship naturally I did
what any rational person would do and I
decided it was time to end their
relationship so I waited until the right
moment I planned and finally I handed in
my resignation letter
now I’m not special there are millions
of people around the world every single
day who feel this way about the managers
and the organizations that they work for
in fact right now if you were to look up
the word employee in the dictionary you
would find that synonyms for the word
employee include cog servant and slave
if you look up the word manager in the
dictionary
you find that synonyms include slave
driver boss and my favorite one the
zookeeper but it gets better if you look
up the word worked in the dictionary
synonyms include daily grind drudgery
and struggle so if you put these three
things together we are all cogs working
for a zookeeper as we go about our daily
drudgery what work sucks
and this is literally how we have built
our organizations over the last 50
hundred and 150 years on top of these
outdated ways of thinking about work and
it’s no wonder that so many people
around the world don’t like their jobs
or their careers
it’s literally ingrained in all our
culture it’s in our society it’s how we
even talk about work now I was never a
good student in fact for the majority of
my life I was a rather terrible student
the only two subjects I seemed to be any
good at more drama and physical
education but when I got to university I
realized that this was my last
opportunity to do something in school
and if I ever wanted to get a good job
that I really need to perform well in
university so I studied really hard I
graduated with honors with a dual degree
in economics and psychology I had these
big crazy dreams of one day becoming the
CMO of an organization like Coca Cola my
first job out of college
the one where I felt so lied and
betrayed to during the interview process
I was told that I would be meeting with
executives and entrepreneurs traveling
across the country and doing all sorts
of meaningful and impactful work a
couple of months into my job I’m stuck
doing data entry cold calling PowerPoint
presentations combine that with a
three-hour daily commute in
bumper-to-bumper Los Angeles traffic
that was my life and I’ll never forget
this one day the CEO comes out of his
beautiful corner office and he says
Jacob come over here I have something
really important for you and I got
excited I thought this is it this is a
moment something amazing is gonna happen
and start running over to him and I say
yes what is it and he puts his hand into
his pocket and he takes out his wallet
and from his wallet he gives me a crisp
clean ten dollar bill
slaps it right in my hand and says I’m
late for a meeting I need you to go to
Starbucks and get me a cup of coffee
and get something for yourself as well
what are you out of your damn mind this
is why you worked so hot in school is to
get you a cup of coffee get your own
stupid cup of coffee so what I thought
on the inside
on the outside I said of course I would
love to get you that cup of coffee
quarter that’s a dreamy of getting you
collie and that was one of the last
full-time jobs that had working for
anybody else and that was around 10
years ago and looking back I suppose I
should be very thankful to that
executive into that cup of coffee
because it taught me a very important
lesson there is no such thing as job
security in fact the only security that
can exist is the one that you create for
yourself today’s world that we live in
work is life and life is work the two
things are blending they’re becoming one
and it’s why I find it so fascinating
sometimes when I have conversations with
people and I say how are you and I’ll
say well my personal life is going great
but my work life is terrible but
consider that you spend almost as much
time on planet earth working as you do
living and if the work side of your life
isn’t going well chances are your life
in general is not going well
so over the last 10 years I discovered
three strategies that allowed me to
shape my work and as a result to create
a better personal life for myself first
is you cannot rely on educational
institutions or on companies to teach
you everything you need to know about
personal or professional development you
have to become a perpetual learner you
must learn how to learn this is perhaps
the most important skill that you can
possess and it’s taking control over
what that looks like my family’s from
the Republic of Georgia now usually when
I say Georgia people think of hey y’all
I’m from the south kind of Georgia in
the United States but I’m talking about
the halo of Mother Russia kind of
Georgia right it’s a very different part
of the world in fact my last name my
original last name isn’t even Morgan
it’s mommy Steffi Lee
I try saying that three times fast and
my family came from the Republic of
Georgia in the 80s as refugees and they
went from the Republic of Georgia to
Italy to Australia to finally ending up
in the United States now as refugees
when they came to America they knew
nothing and they had nothing
my dad learned how to speak English by
watching a popular talk show the Johnny
Carson show with a English to Russian
translation dictionary so that he could
understand the words that Johnny Carson
was saying right that is the ultimate
perpetual learner and this is for the
days of Google this is before we had
access to all of these amazing tools and
resources at our disposal but being a
perpetual learner also means paying
attention to the tangential now how many
of you had this happen you’re in
conversation with somebody and at some
point during the conversation the other
person says I am so heads down in fact
I’m willing to bet that most people in
this room have even said I’m so heads
down but the problem was saying that
you’re so heads down is that you miss
everything else that’s happening in the
world it’s no longer good enough to be
heads down you need to be heads up you
need to be heads side to side and you
even need to be heads behind you you
need to be aware of how your skills and
abilities can be applied not just to
what’s right in front of you but to
things that are a little bit on the side
be a perpetual learner pay attention to
the tangential the second thing that I
learned is that you have to fake it till
you make it after my first job out of
college my whole goal in life simply
became how can I make a living without
having to work for anybody else ever
again
and at the time I was finding all sorts
of jobs online on websites like
Craigslist I wrote articles for $15
an article I did whatever I could to try
to make money the reality of the
situation was the I was a struggling
young kid without making much money but
what I told myself was that I was this
young entrepreneur building a life for
himself that he truly wanted to live and
I would repeat that phrase over and over
every single day all the time even to
this day what you believe in what you
tell yourself matters because it will
guide your behaviors it will guide your
actions and it will guide how you feel
about yourself I remember one time I was
actually on a stage much like this one
and I was behind the stage getting ready
to come on and the music was playing the
lights were beaming and from behind the
stage the announcer says and now please
welcome to the stage Jacob Morgan and
people were clapping and I came out I
looked at everybody and I thought am i
naked am i wearing any pants I had this
impostor syndrome moment that 70% of
people around the world at some point
experienced to be honest I don’t know
how I made it through my talk but I
thought I had given such a terrible
performance that my career was over I
thought nobody’s gonna want to hire me
after this and so I just wanted to get
off stage to not see anybody to not talk
to anybody to just go home and as I was
getting ready to walk off the stage
these executives were lining up to come
speak with me to shake my hand to ask me
for feedback to tell me that they
enjoyed my talk it was at that moment
that I realized I am wearing pants and
that I do belong in my situation though
it wasn’t just the imaginary voices in
my head I had that were telling me I was
no good I had real voices from real
people telling me I was no good these
are people today we call them online
trolls they would leave leave angry
comments on my web site create fake
Twitter accounts about me they would
message my wife then-girlfriend
telling her to break up with me because
I was bad for her career
you can imagine how angry they are now
that we’re actually married and for
months I would look these people make me
feel bad and for months after that I
would argue and fight and debate with
all of them and then finally I realized
nobody knows who these people are and
perhaps more importantly nobody cares
whether you are dealing with imaginary
voices in your head telling you that
you’re no good or real voices that are
telling you you’re no good you have to
remember to be optimistic you’re a beast
what you tell yourself matters you will
guide your behaviors your actions and
how you feel and you can think of
yourself as the struggling young kid
without any money or you can think of
yourself as the young entrepreneur
wanting to build a life for themselves
that they truly want to live it’s a
choice it’s how you think fake it till
you make it the last thing that I
learned is perhaps the most
controversial and that is don’t follow
your passion bring your passion with you
follow your passion is one of the
biggest business platitudes we keep
hearing about we’re always told to
follow our passions but the problem with
that is first it assumes that passion
lives outside of you and that you need
to go chase it second it assumes that
passion is one static thing right here’s
your passion go get it but as you grow
as you experience different things as
you become good at different things your
passion is going to change and lastly
most of us can’t even figure out our
passion before we choose what to pursue
I was never passionate about the future
of work or employee experience or
speaking or doing any of the stuff that
I’m doing but as I got involved with
doing these things I noticed that people
would start to share my ideas that
opportunities would start to unlock for
me and then I became passionate about
what it is that I’m doing I learned to
focus on the little things that allowed
me to see the
big picture of what I was trying to
create it reminds me a lot of a story
about a man who went to visit a
construction site and on the
construction site he sees three people
working and he goes up to the first
person and he says what do you do and
the person says I am laying bricks and
he goes up to the second person and he
says what are you doing and the person
says I’m building a wall and he goes up
to the third person and as he’s walking
up to the third person he hears him
singing a tune hmm he goes over them and
he says my goodness what do you do and
the person stops their work bites their
brow takes off their hat looks up at the
sky and says I’m building a cathedral
everyone is passionate about something
isn’t it better to live your life
bringing that passion with you to
everything that you do instead of
chasing it in a world where everybody is
told to follow their passion you can
instead stand out by bringing yours if
you can be a perpetual learner if you
can fake it till you make it and if you
don’t follow your passion you bring it
with you then you will take more control
over your work life and as a result you
will build a life for yourself that you
truly want to live and if this
struggling young kid without any money
was able to do it then so can you thank
you
[Applause]
you
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
I was cheated lied to betrayed all of
this happened within just six months of
being in a relationship naturally I did
what any rational person would do and I
decided it was time to end their
relationship so I waited until the right
moment I planned and finally I handed in
my resignation letter
now I’m not special there are millions
of people around the world every single
day who feel this way about the managers
and the organizations that they work for
in fact right now if you were to look up
the word employee in the dictionary you
would find that synonyms for the word
employee include cog servant and slave
if you look up the word manager in the
dictionary
you find that synonyms include slave
driver boss and my favorite one the
zookeeper but it gets better if you look
up the word worked in the dictionary
synonyms include daily grind drudgery
and struggle so if you put these three
things together we are all cogs working
for a zookeeper as we go about our daily
drudgery what work sucks
and this is literally how we have built
our organizations over the last 50
hundred and 150 years on top of these
outdated ways of thinking about work and
it’s no wonder that so many people
around the world don’t like their jobs
or their careers
it’s literally ingrained in all our
culture it’s in our society it’s how we
even talk about work now I was never a
good student in fact for the majority of
my life I was a rather terrible student
the only two subjects I seemed to be any
good at more drama and physical
education but when I got to university I
realized that this was my last
opportunity to do something in school
and if I ever wanted to get a good job
that I really need to perform well in
university so I studied really hard I
graduated with honors with a dual degree
in economics and psychology I had these
big crazy dreams of one day becoming the
CMO of an organization like Coca Cola my
first job out of college
the one where I felt so lied and
betrayed to during the interview process
I was told that I would be meeting with
executives and entrepreneurs traveling
across the country and doing all sorts
of meaningful and impactful work a
couple of months into my job I’m stuck
doing data entry cold calling PowerPoint
presentations combine that with a
three-hour daily commute in
bumper-to-bumper Los Angeles traffic
that was my life and I’ll never forget
this one day the CEO comes out of his
beautiful corner office and he says
Jacob come over here I have something
really important for you and I got
excited I thought this is it this is a
moment something amazing is gonna happen
and start running over to him and I say
yes what is it and he puts his hand into
his pocket and he takes out his wallet
and from his wallet he gives me a crisp
clean ten dollar bill
slaps it right in my hand and says I’m
late for a meeting I need you to go to
Starbucks and get me a cup of coffee
and get something for yourself as well
what are you out of your damn mind this
is why you worked so hot in school is to
get you a cup of coffee get your own
stupid cup of coffee so what I thought
on the inside
on the outside I said of course I would
love to get you that cup of coffee
quarter that’s a dreamy of getting you
collie and that was one of the last
full-time jobs that had working for
anybody else and that was around 10
years ago and looking back I suppose I
should be very thankful to that
executive into that cup of coffee
because it taught me a very important
lesson there is no such thing as job
security in fact the only security that
can exist is the one that you create for
yourself today’s world that we live in
work is life and life is work the two
things are blending they’re becoming one
and it’s why I find it so fascinating
sometimes when I have conversations with
people and I say how are you and I’ll
say well my personal life is going great
but my work life is terrible but
consider that you spend almost as much
time on planet earth working as you do
living and if the work side of your life
isn’t going well chances are your life
in general is not going well
so over the last 10 years I discovered
three strategies that allowed me to
shape my work and as a result to create
a better personal life for myself first
is you cannot rely on educational
institutions or on companies to teach
you everything you need to know about
personal or professional development you
have to become a perpetual learner you
must learn how to learn this is perhaps
the most important skill that you can
possess and it’s taking control over
what that looks like my family’s from
the Republic of Georgia now usually when
I say Georgia people think of hey y’all
I’m from the south kind of Georgia in
the United States but I’m talking about
the halo of Mother Russia kind of
Georgia right it’s a very different part
of the world in fact my last name my
original last name isn’t even Morgan
it’s mommy Steffi Lee
I try saying that three times fast and
my family came from the Republic of
Georgia in the 80s as refugees and they
went from the Republic of Georgia to
Italy to Australia to finally ending up
in the United States now as refugees
when they came to America they knew
nothing and they had nothing
my dad learned how to speak English by
watching a popular talk show the Johnny
Carson show with a English to Russian
translation dictionary so that he could
understand the words that Johnny Carson
was saying right that is the ultimate
perpetual learner and this is for the
days of Google this is before we had
access to all of these amazing tools and
resources at our disposal but being a
perpetual learner also means paying
attention to the tangential now how many
of you had this happen you’re in
conversation with somebody and at some
point during the conversation the other
person says I am so heads down in fact
I’m willing to bet that most people in
this room have even said I’m so heads
down but the problem was saying that
you’re so heads down is that you miss
everything else that’s happening in the
world it’s no longer good enough to be
heads down you need to be heads up you
need to be heads side to side and you
even need to be heads behind you you
need to be aware of how your skills and
abilities can be applied not just to
what’s right in front of you but to
things that are a little bit on the side
be a perpetual learner pay attention to
the tangential the second thing that I
learned is that you have to fake it till
you make it after my first job out of
college my whole goal in life simply
became how can I make a living without
having to work for anybody else ever
again
and at the time I was finding all sorts
of jobs online on websites like
Craigslist I wrote articles for $15
an article I did whatever I could to try
to make money the reality of the
situation was the I was a struggling
young kid without making much money but
what I told myself was that I was this
young entrepreneur building a life for
himself that he truly wanted to live and
I would repeat that phrase over and over
every single day all the time even to
this day what you believe in what you
tell yourself matters because it will
guide your behaviors it will guide your
actions and it will guide how you feel
about yourself I remember one time I was
actually on a stage much like this one
and I was behind the stage getting ready
to come on and the music was playing the
lights were beaming and from behind the
stage the announcer says and now please
welcome to the stage Jacob Morgan and
people were clapping and I came out I
looked at everybody and I thought am i
naked am i wearing any pants I had this
impostor syndrome moment that 70% of
people around the world at some point
experienced to be honest I don’t know
how I made it through my talk but I
thought I had given such a terrible
performance that my career was over I
thought nobody’s gonna want to hire me
after this and so I just wanted to get
off stage to not see anybody to not talk
to anybody to just go home and as I was
getting ready to walk off the stage
these executives were lining up to come
speak with me to shake my hand to ask me
for feedback to tell me that they
enjoyed my talk it was at that moment
that I realized I am wearing pants and
that I do belong in my situation though
it wasn’t just the imaginary voices in
my head I had that were telling me I was
no good I had real voices from real
people telling me I was no good these
are people today we call them online
trolls they would leave leave angry
comments on my web site create fake
Twitter accounts about me they would
message my wife then-girlfriend
telling her to break up with me because
I was bad for her career
you can imagine how angry they are now
that we’re actually married and for
months I would look these people make me
feel bad and for months after that I
would argue and fight and debate with
all of them and then finally I realized
nobody knows who these people are and
perhaps more importantly nobody cares
whether you are dealing with imaginary
voices in your head telling you that
you’re no good or real voices that are
telling you you’re no good you have to
remember to be optimistic you’re a beast
what you tell yourself matters you will
guide your behaviors your actions and
how you feel and you can think of
yourself as the struggling young kid
without any money or you can think of
yourself as the young entrepreneur
wanting to build a life for themselves
that they truly want to live it’s a
choice it’s how you think fake it till
you make it the last thing that I
learned is perhaps the most
controversial and that is don’t follow
your passion bring your passion with you
follow your passion is one of the
biggest business platitudes we keep
hearing about we’re always told to
follow our passions but the problem with
that is first it assumes that passion
lives outside of you and that you need
to go chase it second it assumes that
passion is one static thing right here’s
your passion go get it but as you grow
as you experience different things as
you become good at different things your
passion is going to change and lastly
most of us can’t even figure out our
passion before we choose what to pursue
I was never passionate about the future
of work or employee experience or
speaking or doing any of the stuff that
I’m doing but as I got involved with
doing these things I noticed that people
would start to share my ideas that
opportunities would start to unlock for
me and then I became passionate about
what it is that I’m doing I learned to
focus on the little things that allowed
me to see the
big picture of what I was trying to
create it reminds me a lot of a story
about a man who went to visit a
construction site and on the
construction site he sees three people
working and he goes up to the first
person and he says what do you do and
the person says I am laying bricks and
he goes up to the second person and he
says what are you doing and the person
says I’m building a wall and he goes up
to the third person and as he’s walking
up to the third person he hears him
singing a tune hmm he goes over them and
he says my goodness what do you do and
the person stops their work bites their
brow takes off their hat looks up at the
sky and says I’m building a cathedral
everyone is passionate about something
isn’t it better to live your life
bringing that passion with you to
everything that you do instead of
chasing it in a world where everybody is
told to follow their passion you can
instead stand out by bringing yours if
you can be a perpetual learner if you
can fake it till you make it and if you
don’t follow your passion you bring it
with you then you will take more control
over your work life and as a result you
will build a life for yourself that you
truly want to live and if this
struggling young kid without any money
was able to do it then so can you thank
you
[Applause]
you
[Music]
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