Julie Zhuo: belief

Transcript context

…Thank you. I had this dream that I would write the great American novel. I still want to do that someday. One day, I really do want to sit down and hopefully write a fiction book. So, I always had that on my mind. I don't think I ever thought that I would write a non-fiction book. I never thought I would write a business book, right? That really came about organically, and it came about because I was writing this blog and I was publishing these letters to myself that I was again putting on the internet, and then occasionally, I would have publishers or various folks reach out and say, "Oh, this was a really great article. Have you ever thought about developing that into a book?" And my answer for the longest time was always like, "No, because I don't think I have the stamina to make this one topic into this huge thing. I don't think about myself as kind of like a career writer." Honestly, there wasn't necessarily anything that I felt that differentiated or maybe a unique angle. I also felt that most books that I read, there was always a huge amount of research that went into it, and I was like, "I just..." I know this about myself. I don't love research, not great at it. I don't want to sit there and compile a bunch of stats and whatnot to make an argument. But one day, a publisher reached out and they were like, "You know, we had some ideas about the fact that you're writing really, especially the part about for new managers, your advice for new managers or for people new to leadership, it really seems like it strikes a chord for that particular audience, and we have some ideas. Why don't we get on the phone to discuss?" I took that call and actually really was... That call just did change my perspective because it gave me a particular angle on something that I felt was missing in the market. Right? Again, most of the stuff that I'm writing, again, they're advice to myself, but I was brought back to when I first became a manager, and I went back, I went to the bookstore one day, I was looking for resources on what it means to manage and stuff that would help me become a better manager, and not a lot of it spoke to me because it seemed like most management books were written by CEOs who had been leading their company for years and years, or it was by management consultants who didn't really seem like they had been in the situation of just like, "Hey, I was an IC on the team, and now next week I have four reports that I'm going to be working with." There just wasn't that much for the completely new manager who didn't have an MBA, wasn't on some sort of ladder, and just one day got dropped and asked to kind of go and support a couple people who were starting next week. much for the completely new manager who didn't have an MBA, wasn't on some sort of ladder, and just one day got dropped and asked to kind of go and support a couple people who were starting next week. I was brought back to that moment in time and realizing there really isn't that much that is great out there that is particularly geared for new managers, and I felt that I had to really learn and make a lot of these mistakes on my own, and even very fundamentally, I don't think that people ever really explained to me, what is a manager, what does it mean to do a good job as a manager of a handful of people. Right? And so, it sparked this idea that this was something that was somewhat missing in the market, that there was an opportunity to just really write something that could speak to people like me and people, again, similar to me who maybe weren't on this ladder for 10 or 12 years, especially in tech, right, I knew many people who had gone through that. Then the second thing for me is I realized that I would likely also become a better manager through this process because it would force me to think about management a lot every single day. It would force me to reflect on my frameworks for management, and whenever you think about something all the time in the back of your head, it's just more top of mind. I was looking to become a better manager myself at that point, and that was the additional boost that I needed to commit to the project. Has that last piece bitten you in the butt at all, when you maybe make a mistake as a manager and people are like, "Julie, you wrote this book on management. What the hell's going on?"…

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