How to Future Proof Your Life And Your Career | Jacob Morgan

before we get into the show i wanted to let you know about a new resource that i created it is a pdf that will walk you through how to create your own personal definition of leadership and why this matters now

more than ever funny enough when i interviewed 140 of the world's top ceos this was actually the hardest thing for them to do i know crazy right but this is also something that we have to do because you

cannot build and you cannot become what you don't define so in this pdf not only will i walk you through a framework for how you can define leadership but i will also

share with you some of the definitions from ceos i interviewed including from the ceos of organizations like oracle

like verizon and kpmg so you will see and hear exactly how these other ceos are thinking about leadership if you want to grab that pdf you can go to define

leadership.com and of course please don't forget to subscribe to the youtube channel today's episode is a rather personal one

and those of you who follow my content subscribe to my channel listen to my show you know that i usually don't share a lot of personal stuff even on social media i'm just not someone who shares a lot of personal

information i don't know it's just how i was raised i've been burned a few times in the past but i'm trying to get a little bit better i'm trying to work on this trying to open up a little bit more because a lot of

people actually ask me very personal questions and a lot of people who listen to my content or read my books or whatnot they even come up to me and they say hey how are your kids i'm like wait a minute

how do you know i have kids and i forgot that i you know i mentioned it in my book i talk about it on my show so i'm trying to get better you know sharing personal stuff opening up a little bit

uh but this was one of the first times or one of the first talks that i've given where i really actually opened up to an audience this talk was given in 2018

and it was for ted academy and i think there was around 2000 people this was an event that took place in greece in a huge amphitheater uh so beautiful beautiful venue but of course

you know i was quite nervous giving this uh giving this talk and they asked me to share something personal so i put together a talk on how to future proof your

career but i shared a lot of personal stories and anecdotes and insights and things that i've had to go through or things that i have gone through over the years i've only given this talk

once in my entire life and that was for ted academy so i never gave this talk ever again i think i've talked about some of the themes in this talk again in the future but as far as the tacos

never ever did it again it was 15 minutes and as you can imagine for ted i was very very nervous so i practiced consistently i must have practiced this talk over a hundred times

i was practicing while i was driving in the car i was practicing while we were giving a bath to our uh to our child to our daughter naomi my other kid noah wasn't even born yet i

was practicing it all the freaking time so much so that i actually think my wife could have given this talk on my behalf and just had the exact same

words down word for word like she she knew it that well uh that's how much um how often i spend practicing it and she helped me quite a lot with it and gave me a lot of wonderful ideas

and usually i don't practice or rehearse a talk you know usually i have some specific points that i know i want to hit in a talk but i don't rehearse it i don't script

it i don't plan it out word for word but for ted it has to be 15 minutes otherwise they come out with the hook and they yank you off stage so i really had to

practice all of this stuff to make sure that it stayed at around 15 minutes and not too much under or not too much over thankfully with my acting background

when i was a kid i was in drama class i was an extra in a couple movies and tv shows i spent pretty much my young

childhood doing a lot of drama and doing plays in theaters so i spent a lot of time rehearsing and practicing and memorizing scripts and doing that sort of stuff so that that kind of paid off a little bit when

i was getting ready for this talk it was also quite stressful because i was gone for 10 days right after this talk that i was supposed to give in greece i was giving another talk in mexico

so i had to leave a couple days prior to get to greece then i gave my talk then i had to fly out the next day after my talk in the evening at like 10 o'clock at night it was around a 36 hour

journey to get to mexico where i was doing something for the president of mexico there vicente fox and i had to stay there for a few days and then came home and in total it was around 10 days of not

being with my family of eating food at airports i'm not getting able to to do my usual routine that i like to do so it was tough

it was tough and i mean i suppose that's one of the benefits of doing a lot of things virtually nowadays is i have my my creature comforts uh so it was it was fun i mean i'm glad

i ended up doing this talk i think it was i received a lot of great feedback from everybody who said that they learned a lot about me and they really enjoyed my opening up

which is uh which is great my wife is always encouraging me to you know open up and share a little bit more so i wanted to share this personal talk with you in the hopes that it'll give you some ideas and inspiration for how you

can future proof your career and your life and also so it'll give you a little bit of insight into who i am as a person where i come from where my family comes from

and so that we can build a little bit of a better relationship together since you know me on a little bit more of a human level so i hope you enjoy this talk that i gave for ted academy in 2018 let's get right into it

[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 the 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 zookeeper but it gets better if you look up the word work 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 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 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

were 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 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 the moment something amazing is going to happen and so i run 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 work so hard in school is to

get you a cup of coffee get your own stupid cup of coffee that's what i thought on the inside on the outside i said of course i would love to get you that cup of coffee of

course that's i'm dreaming of getting you coffee [Music] and that was one of the last full-time jobs i've 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 is 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 hello 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 sashfili 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've 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 with 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 head 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 fifteen dollars an

article i did whatever i could to try to make money the reality of the situation was that 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 and 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 experience 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 going to 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 a 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 website 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 let 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 it 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 as 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'm 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 [Music]

he goes over to him and he says my goodness what do you do and the person stops their work wipes their brow takes off their hat looks up 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 thanks for tuning in to this show i really do hope you enjoyed it and don't

forget to head over to define leadership.com to grab a copy of my brand new pdf that's going to walk you through a framework on how to create your own personal definition of leadership

and why that matters now more than ever you will also see the definitions of leadership from some of the ceos i interviewed including

from the ceos of organizations like kpmg oracle and verizon again you can get that pdf at define leadership.com and of course

i would love it if you subscribe to this youtube channel for more videos just like this and for interviews with some of the

world's top business leaders

thank you for watching