Lenny Rachitsky: evaluation

Transcript context

…Some things have happened in work, are very memorable at the time and they don't really scar you. This goes in the book that have scarred for life. Yeah, let's go long story short, I was at Facebook just over a decade ago, loved it at the time. I think it was a great place to be at the time. And basically San Francisco, I did a lot of talks for Facebook internally and externally. Facebook had a keynote slot, always have a keynote slot at Cannes, the world's biggest advertising festival. And the year prior, Zuck had been interviewed. He was the speaker, he'd been interviewed, gotten a hard time on privacy. It didn't go well, as well as they'd hoped. So the next year they asked me to do it, maybe it was the Irish accent that made the offer come my way. And yeah, I got out into front the stage of the world's biggest advertising stage, and I'd say I was like three or four minutes into the talk, a talk I'd given, a very similar talk that I'd given lots of times. And I just froze. I couldn't remember what I was supposed to say. It was the first ever time in my life I'd rehearsed a talk word for word. Usually, I have talking points and I'd ad lib and things get mixed around and it's kind of informal. This was media trained, do not say the wrong thing kind of talk. And I just could not remember what to say. I had some version of a panic attack, walked off stage, I was still mic'd up, cursed. I was laughing. I was like, "Geez, are they laughing at me. Oh my God, this is..." But I can manage to turn it around, I walked back out, I'd kind of been disarmed internally in my head, and the rest of it went well. And I was famous that night out in Cannes afterwards on whatever the seafront, it's just like rosé everywhere. I was famous and infamous for my performance. I feel like you lived the worst nightmare that everybody has when they're thinking about giving a talk. And I think what's interesting is you survived, and I think that's a really interesting lesson is you could freeze in front of thousands of people, walk off stage, and then it works out okay. And it all happened organically, I guess, or very naturally. But yeah, ever since then, every time I walk out onto a conference talk stage, still today, I ask myself, I have this tiny doubt in the back of my head. It's never happened since. But yeah, I think you have to go with it with these things. When life kind of throws you these whatever curve balls you have got to kind of adapt, and it's not that big a deal. None of these things are that big a deal. At the end of the day you kind of move on, live and learn. Yeah, but I still hope it doesn't happen again.…

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