[Music]
[Applause]
so I’ve experienced a lot of success in
my life over a decade ago I started a
business with my mate straight out of
uni with my mate Scott
now having no prior business experience
and not really any grand plan in fact
our goals when we started were not to
have to get a real job and to not have
to wear a suit to work every day check
and check
today we have thousands of amazing
employees and millions of people use our
software around the planet and
technically even outside the planet if
you count those that are currently on
their way to Mars so you’d think that I
know what I’m doing every day when I go
to work well let me let you in on
something
most days I still feel like I often
don’t know what I’m doing I felt that
way for 15 years and I’ve since learned
that that feeling is called imposter
syndrome have you ever felt out of your
depth like a fraud and just kind of
guessed slash bullshitted your way
through the situation petrified that at
any time someone was going to call you
on it well I can think of many examples
where I felt like this interviewing our
first HR manager having never worked in
a company that had an HR department
terrified as I walked into the interview
thinking what am I going to ask this
person or attending board meetings in a
t-shirt surrounded by suits and acronyms
are flying around feeling like a
five-year-old as I surreptitiously write
them down in my notebook so I can look
them up on Wikipedia when I get home
light up
or in the early days when people would
call up and ask for accounts payable
I would freeze and think wait are they
asking for money or giving it to us and
I would I would cover the phone cover
the mouthpiece of the phone hey Scott
you’re in accounts and pass it across
we both did a lot of jobs back then so
for me imposter syndrome is a feeling of
being well well out of your depth yet
already entrenched in the situation
internally you know you’re not skilled
enough experienced enough or qualified
enough to justify being there yet you
are there and you have to figure a way
out because you can’t just get out it’s
not a fear of failure and it’s not a
fear of being unable to do it
it’s more a sensation of getting away
with something a fear of being
discovered that that at anytime someone
is going to is going to figure this out
and if they did figure it out you’d
honestly think well that that’s fair
enough actually
the writer one of my favorite writers
Neil Gaiman put it so beautifully in a
commencement address he gave at a
university called make good art and I
want to make sure I get is quite correct
I was convinced that there would be a
knock on the door and a man with a
clipboard would be there to tell me that
it was all over but they caught up with
me and that I would now have to go and
get a real job now when there’s a knock
of my door I still feel like some sort
of dark suited clipboard man is going to
be there to tell me that my time is kind
of up and being a crap cook I’m quite
relieved when it’s just someone with a
pizza for the kids but it’s important to
note that it’s not all bad there’s a lot
of goodness I think in those feelings
and this isn’t some sort of a kind of
motivational poster type talk a
beginning now where it’s more of an
introspection to my own experiences of
impostor syndrome and how I’ve tried to
learn to harness them and turn them into
some sort of a force for good and a
great example of those experiences is in
the early days of Atlassian’s history
we’re about four years old and we had
about 70 employees and at the advice of
our auditors the most good stories start
with advice from an auditor we we
entered the New South Wales Entrepreneur
of the Year competition now we were
surprised when we won the New South
Wales Entrepreneur of the Year in the
young category for entrepreneurs under
40 there were eight categories and so
surprised in fact having looked at the
list of people we were up against I
didn’t even turn up to the award
ceremony so Scott collected the gong by
himself and then we traveled off to the
national awards I thought I should
probably turn up to those so we rented
some suits I invited a girl that I had
just met we’ll get to her in a second
and off we went to the big black-tie
gala
now our surprise turned to shock in the
first award of the night the young
category when we beat all of the other
states and won the Australian Young
Entrepreneur of the Year and when the
shock went off we got a lot of champagne
to the table and the party began and the
night was surely over we were having a
royally great time so fast forward to
the last award of the night and our
shock turned into everybody’s shock when
we won the Australian Entrepreneur of
the year against all of the other
categories now so shocked was everybody
else in fact that the announcer the CEO
of Ernst & Young opened the envelope and
the first words out of his mouth were oh
my god and then he reset himself and
announced that we had won so we knew we
were in way too deep and from there the
water got a lot deeper because we jetted
off to Monte Carlo to represent
Australia in the world entrepreneur of
the year against 40 other different
countries now in another rented suit I
was at one of the dinners and sitting
next to a lovely man called bill nero de
azevedo who was the winner from portugal
total champion at 65 he had been running
his business for 40 years he had 30,000
employees don’t forget at the time we
had 70 and he had four billion euro in
turnover and after a couple of wines
I remember admitting to him that I felt
that we did not deserve to be there that
we were well out of our depth and at
some times someone was going to figure
this out and send us home to Australia
and here I remember just paused and
looked at me and said that he felt
exactly the same way and that he
suspected
all the winners were feeling that way
and that despite not knowing Scot awry
or really anything about technology he
said that we were obviously doing
something right and should probably just
keep going now this is a pretty big
light bulb moment for me for two reasons
one I realized that other people felt
this as well and two I realize it
doesn’t go away with any form of success
I had assumed that successful people
didn’t feel like frauds and I now know
that the opposite is more likely to be
true and this isn’t just a feeling that
I have at work it happens in my personal
life too in the early days I was flying
back and forth to San Francisco every
week for Atlassian and I racked up a lot
of frequent flyer points and got access
to the Qantas business lounge now if
there’s ever a place that I don’t belong
it doesn’t help when I walk in and they
generally look at me in shorts and jeans
and say or jeans and a t-shirt and say
can I help you son and you are you lost
but anyway sometimes life happens in the
Qantas lounge when you least expect it
one morning over a decade ago I was
sitting there on my regular weekly
commute and a beautiful woman from way
out of my league walked into the Qantas
lounge and continued walking straight up
to me in a case of mistaken identity
she thought I was someone else so in
this case I actually was an impostor but
rather than freeze as I would have
historically done instead or
chivalrously maybe inform her of her
error I just tried to keep the
conversation going and classic
Australian became some sort of
forward movement and a phone number and
I took that girl to the awards ceremony
earlier a couple of months later and
more than a decade later I’m incredibly
happy that she is now my wife and we
have four amazing children together
but you’d think that when I wake up
every morning I wouldn’t roll over and
look at her and think she’s going to say
who are you and who gave you that side
of the bed get out of here but she
doesn’t and I think she sometimes feels
the same way and apparently that’s one
of the reasons that will likely have a
successful marriage you see in
researching this talk I learned that one
of the attributes of the most successful
relationships is when both partners feel
out of their league they feel that their
partner is out of their league they feel
like imposters and if they don’t freeze
and they’re thankful and they work
harder and they stretch to be the best
partner they can it’s likely to be a
very successful relationship so if you
have this feeling don’t freeze try to
keep the conversation going
even if she thinks that you’re somebody
that you’re not now feeling like or
people thinking I’m someone I’m not
actually happens quite frequently a
great example for my more recent past a
few months ago I was up late at night
with one of my kids and I saw something
on Twitter about Tesla saying that they
could solve South Australia’s rowling
series of tower crises with one of their
large industrial batteries now without
thinking I fight off a bunch of tweets
challenging them and saying were they
really serious about this and in doing
so I managed to kick it kind of a very
small rock off a very big hill that
turned into an avalanche that I found
myself tumbling in the middle of because
you see a few hours later Elon tweeted
me back and said that they were deadly
serious that within a hundred days of
contract signing they could install a
hundred megawatt hour facility which is
a giant battery on a world class size
one of the biggest ever made in the
planet and that’s written all hell
really broke loose within 24 hours I had
every major media outlet texting and
e-mailing and trying to get in contact
with me to get opinion as some sort of
expert in energy now
at the time I couldn’t really have told
you the difference between a
one-and-a-half volt double-a battery
that goes in my kids toys and a hundred
megawatt hour industrial-scale battery
facility that goes in South Australia
that could potentially solve their power
crisis so I was now feeling a chronic
case of impostor syndrome and it got
truly bizarre and I remember thinking to
myself
kind of started something here and I
can’t really get out if I if I have been
in the situation I’m gonna sort of
setback renewables in Australia and
maybe just look like a complete idiot
because of my like idiocy on Twitter so
I thought the only thing I could do was
to try not to freeze and to try to loan
so I spent a week trying to learn
everything I could about
industrial-scale batteries and the
electricity grid and renewables and the
economics of all this and whether this
was even a feasible proposal I talked to
the chief scientist the truck to the
CSIRO at multiple ministers and premiers
trying to give me their side of the
story from both sides of the aisle
managed exchanged tweets with the Prime
Minister even managed to pull off a
passing impression let’s say of an
energy expert on ABC Lateline but as a
result of all this South Australia did
put out a battery tender and they had
more than 90 applications for that
battery tender and the national
conversation of a period of a few months
moved from this sort of theatrical lumps
of coal in the parliament to discussing
kind of which industrial scale battery
chemistry was the best for building
large-scale renewable batteries so I
think that the important lesson is by
that time in my life I knew well that I
wasn’t impostor
I knew I was miles out of my depth but
instead of freezing I tried to learn as
much as I could motivated by my fear of
generally looking like an idiot and
tried to turn that into some sort of a
force for good so one of the things I’ve
learned is that people think that
successful people don’t feel like frauds
but I think especially knowing a lot of
entrepreneurs the opposite is more
likely to be true but the most
successful people I know don’t question
themselves
but they do heavily question regularly
question their ideas and their knowledge
right they know when they’re when the
water is way too deep and they’re not
afraid to ask for advice they don’t see
that as a bad thing and they use that
advice to hone those ideas to improve
them and to learn and it’s okay to be
out of your depth sometimes I’m
frequently out of my depth it’s okay to
be out of your depth it’s okay to be in
a situation where you just can’t push
the eject button so long as you don’t
freeze so long as you harness the
situation don’t be paralyzed and try to
turn it into some sort of a force for
good and it’s important that I say
harness here because this isn’t sort of
pop psychology BS about conquering
imposter syndrome for me it’s merely
about being aware of it in fact I’m
extremely aware of feeling like an
imposter right now
as I’m up here some sort of pseudo
expert on a feeling that I couldn’t even
put a name to a few months ago when I
agreed to do this talk which if you
think about it is kind of the point
isn’t it thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
so I’ve experienced a lot of success in
my life over a decade ago I started a
business with my mate straight out of
uni with my mate Scott
now having no prior business experience
and not really any grand plan in fact
our goals when we started were not to
have to get a real job and to not have
to wear a suit to work every day check
and check
today we have thousands of amazing
employees and millions of people use our
software around the planet and
technically even outside the planet if
you count those that are currently on
their way to Mars so you’d think that I
know what I’m doing every day when I go
to work well let me let you in on
something
most days I still feel like I often
don’t know what I’m doing I felt that
way for 15 years and I’ve since learned
that that feeling is called imposter
syndrome have you ever felt out of your
depth like a fraud and just kind of
guessed slash bullshitted your way
through the situation petrified that at
any time someone was going to call you
on it well I can think of many examples
where I felt like this interviewing our
first HR manager having never worked in
a company that had an HR department
terrified as I walked into the interview
thinking what am I going to ask this
person or attending board meetings in a
t-shirt surrounded by suits and acronyms
are flying around feeling like a
five-year-old as I surreptitiously write
them down in my notebook so I can look
them up on Wikipedia when I get home
light up
or in the early days when people would
call up and ask for accounts payable
I would freeze and think wait are they
asking for money or giving it to us and
I would I would cover the phone cover
the mouthpiece of the phone hey Scott
you’re in accounts and pass it across
we both did a lot of jobs back then so
for me imposter syndrome is a feeling of
being well well out of your depth yet
already entrenched in the situation
internally you know you’re not skilled
enough experienced enough or qualified
enough to justify being there yet you
are there and you have to figure a way
out because you can’t just get out it’s
not a fear of failure and it’s not a
fear of being unable to do it
it’s more a sensation of getting away
with something a fear of being
discovered that that at anytime someone
is going to is going to figure this out
and if they did figure it out you’d
honestly think well that that’s fair
enough actually
the writer one of my favorite writers
Neil Gaiman put it so beautifully in a
commencement address he gave at a
university called make good art and I
want to make sure I get is quite correct
I was convinced that there would be a
knock on the door and a man with a
clipboard would be there to tell me that
it was all over but they caught up with
me and that I would now have to go and
get a real job now when there’s a knock
of my door I still feel like some sort
of dark suited clipboard man is going to
be there to tell me that my time is kind
of up and being a crap cook I’m quite
relieved when it’s just someone with a
pizza for the kids but it’s important to
note that it’s not all bad there’s a lot
of goodness I think in those feelings
and this isn’t some sort of a kind of
motivational poster type talk a
beginning now where it’s more of an
introspection to my own experiences of
impostor syndrome and how I’ve tried to
learn to harness them and turn them into
some sort of a force for good and a
great example of those experiences is in
the early days of Atlassian’s history
we’re about four years old and we had
about 70 employees and at the advice of
our auditors the most good stories start
with advice from an auditor we we
entered the New South Wales Entrepreneur
of the Year competition now we were
surprised when we won the New South
Wales Entrepreneur of the Year in the
young category for entrepreneurs under
40 there were eight categories and so
surprised in fact having looked at the
list of people we were up against I
didn’t even turn up to the award
ceremony so Scott collected the gong by
himself and then we traveled off to the
national awards I thought I should
probably turn up to those so we rented
some suits I invited a girl that I had
just met we’ll get to her in a second
and off we went to the big black-tie
gala
now our surprise turned to shock in the
first award of the night the young
category when we beat all of the other
states and won the Australian Young
Entrepreneur of the Year and when the
shock went off we got a lot of champagne
to the table and the party began and the
night was surely over we were having a
royally great time so fast forward to
the last award of the night and our
shock turned into everybody’s shock when
we won the Australian Entrepreneur of
the year against all of the other
categories now so shocked was everybody
else in fact that the announcer the CEO
of Ernst & Young opened the envelope and
the first words out of his mouth were oh
my god and then he reset himself and
announced that we had won so we knew we
were in way too deep and from there the
water got a lot deeper because we jetted
off to Monte Carlo to represent
Australia in the world entrepreneur of
the year against 40 other different
countries now in another rented suit I
was at one of the dinners and sitting
next to a lovely man called bill nero de
azevedo who was the winner from portugal
total champion at 65 he had been running
his business for 40 years he had 30,000
employees don’t forget at the time we
had 70 and he had four billion euro in
turnover and after a couple of wines
I remember admitting to him that I felt
that we did not deserve to be there that
we were well out of our depth and at
some times someone was going to figure
this out and send us home to Australia
and here I remember just paused and
looked at me and said that he felt
exactly the same way and that he
suspected
all the winners were feeling that way
and that despite not knowing Scot awry
or really anything about technology he
said that we were obviously doing
something right and should probably just
keep going now this is a pretty big
light bulb moment for me for two reasons
one I realized that other people felt
this as well and two I realize it
doesn’t go away with any form of success
I had assumed that successful people
didn’t feel like frauds and I now know
that the opposite is more likely to be
true and this isn’t just a feeling that
I have at work it happens in my personal
life too in the early days I was flying
back and forth to San Francisco every
week for Atlassian and I racked up a lot
of frequent flyer points and got access
to the Qantas business lounge now if
there’s ever a place that I don’t belong
it doesn’t help when I walk in and they
generally look at me in shorts and jeans
and say or jeans and a t-shirt and say
can I help you son and you are you lost
but anyway sometimes life happens in the
Qantas lounge when you least expect it
one morning over a decade ago I was
sitting there on my regular weekly
commute and a beautiful woman from way
out of my league walked into the Qantas
lounge and continued walking straight up
to me in a case of mistaken identity
she thought I was someone else so in
this case I actually was an impostor but
rather than freeze as I would have
historically done instead or
chivalrously maybe inform her of her
error I just tried to keep the
conversation going and classic
Australian became some sort of
forward movement and a phone number and
I took that girl to the awards ceremony
earlier a couple of months later and
more than a decade later I’m incredibly
happy that she is now my wife and we
have four amazing children together
but you’d think that when I wake up
every morning I wouldn’t roll over and
look at her and think she’s going to say
who are you and who gave you that side
of the bed get out of here but she
doesn’t and I think she sometimes feels
the same way and apparently that’s one
of the reasons that will likely have a
successful marriage you see in
researching this talk I learned that one
of the attributes of the most successful
relationships is when both partners feel
out of their league they feel that their
partner is out of their league they feel
like imposters and if they don’t freeze
and they’re thankful and they work
harder and they stretch to be the best
partner they can it’s likely to be a
very successful relationship so if you
have this feeling don’t freeze try to
keep the conversation going
even if she thinks that you’re somebody
that you’re not now feeling like or
people thinking I’m someone I’m not
actually happens quite frequently a
great example for my more recent past a
few months ago I was up late at night
with one of my kids and I saw something
on Twitter about Tesla saying that they
could solve South Australia’s rowling
series of tower crises with one of their
large industrial batteries now without
thinking I fight off a bunch of tweets
challenging them and saying were they
really serious about this and in doing
so I managed to kick it kind of a very
small rock off a very big hill that
turned into an avalanche that I found
myself tumbling in the middle of because
you see a few hours later Elon tweeted
me back and said that they were deadly
serious that within a hundred days of
contract signing they could install a
hundred megawatt hour facility which is
a giant battery on a world class size
one of the biggest ever made in the
planet and that’s written all hell
really broke loose within 24 hours I had
every major media outlet texting and
e-mailing and trying to get in contact
with me to get opinion as some sort of
expert in energy now
at the time I couldn’t really have told
you the difference between a
one-and-a-half volt double-a battery
that goes in my kids toys and a hundred
megawatt hour industrial-scale battery
facility that goes in South Australia
that could potentially solve their power
crisis so I was now feeling a chronic
case of impostor syndrome and it got
truly bizarre and I remember thinking to
myself
kind of started something here and I
can’t really get out if I if I have been
in the situation I’m gonna sort of
setback renewables in Australia and
maybe just look like a complete idiot
because of my like idiocy on Twitter so
I thought the only thing I could do was
to try not to freeze and to try to loan
so I spent a week trying to learn
everything I could about
industrial-scale batteries and the
electricity grid and renewables and the
economics of all this and whether this
was even a feasible proposal I talked to
the chief scientist the truck to the
CSIRO at multiple ministers and premiers
trying to give me their side of the
story from both sides of the aisle
managed exchanged tweets with the Prime
Minister even managed to pull off a
passing impression let’s say of an
energy expert on ABC Lateline but as a
result of all this South Australia did
put out a battery tender and they had
more than 90 applications for that
battery tender and the national
conversation of a period of a few months
moved from this sort of theatrical lumps
of coal in the parliament to discussing
kind of which industrial scale battery
chemistry was the best for building
large-scale renewable batteries so I
think that the important lesson is by
that time in my life I knew well that I
wasn’t impostor
I knew I was miles out of my depth but
instead of freezing I tried to learn as
much as I could motivated by my fear of
generally looking like an idiot and
tried to turn that into some sort of a
force for good so one of the things I’ve
learned is that people think that
successful people don’t feel like frauds
but I think especially knowing a lot of
entrepreneurs the opposite is more
likely to be true but the most
successful people I know don’t question
themselves
but they do heavily question regularly
question their ideas and their knowledge
right they know when they’re when the
water is way too deep and they’re not
afraid to ask for advice they don’t see
that as a bad thing and they use that
advice to hone those ideas to improve
them and to learn and it’s okay to be
out of your depth sometimes I’m
frequently out of my depth it’s okay to
be out of your depth it’s okay to be in
a situation where you just can’t push
the eject button so long as you don’t
freeze so long as you harness the
situation don’t be paralyzed and try to
turn it into some sort of a force for
good and it’s important that I say
harness here because this isn’t sort of
pop psychology BS about conquering
imposter syndrome for me it’s merely
about being aware of it in fact I’m
extremely aware of feeling like an
imposter right now
as I’m up here some sort of pseudo
expert on a feeling that I couldn’t even
put a name to a few months ago when I
agreed to do this talk which if you
think about it is kind of the point
isn’t it thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
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