- [Announcer] Our next speaker's reputation
actually precedes itself, a verifiable OG of the
YouTube space, Jenn Im is an industry leading
content creator with global reach.
She's been named one of Forbes' top 10 fashion influencers,
and her clothing line, Eggie,
grossed over one million dollars in sales in 2018
and recently launched a collection at Urban Outfitters.
As is her way, Jenn is here today to give great
insight and great humility,
plus a helpful dose of pro-tips.
Welcome to the stage please, Jenn Im.
(applauding)
- Everyone is afraid to fail.
No one wants to feel stupid or mess up or feel exposed.
We see these quotes on Instagram and Pinterest
and we don't bat an eye.
If you're not failing everyday,
you're not trying hard enough.
And they have a point.
Are these quotes going to convince you to get out there
and risk it all and get rejected
just to learn something?
I don't know, but I am a firm believer
that failure is important, because it puts you
back on course.
I would say that the biggest lessons I've learned
wasn't when I got a big pat on my back,
it's moments like this,
where I smashed my face on cobblestone,
these are the things that really stick with you,
and so for today's talk I'm going to be talking about
five mistakes that I have made as an entrepreneur
and the lessons that I've learned.
My first mistake is focusing on the negative.
I just want to get the negativity out of the way
and let you guys know that I can be a very critical person.
I just notice things, especially when things go wrong
and in my career it's helped me,
because when I put out a video,
before I export it, I make sure
that I scrub through the entire video,
making sure that each frame is great.
For Eggie, my clothing line,
I go to every fitting and meeting
and I make sure that the fabric and the fit
is up to par,
because that way we can minimize defects
when we have the final launch.
I found it very helpful, because,
noticing things that are wrong is a strength,
if you can understand how to hone it.
There are entire careers based off this.
Auditors, business consultants,
they'll go into a company and they'll call all the shit out
and they get paid really good money.
For a while it was working for me,
but as I was really scaling up my business,
I noticed that my problems started to evolve.
It was problem after problem after problem after problem.
It was very overwhelming
and when this happens, it turns into a popcorn of negativity
and I call it a popcorn,
because you know when you're cooking up popcorn?
Once one pops, they all start popping everywhere
and when I get in this state,
suddenly all that negativity flows into my personal life.
Suddenly I'm thinking, oh God, I have to get my car checked,
it's been a year, I need to text my mom back,
it's been a month,
there's calcium buildup on my shower head,
the negativity just bled through my entire life
and it really sucked,
because when people would ask me how I'm doing,
I'd be like, "Oh it's terrible."
even though my life is great
and I started to realize the way I was talking to myself.
The way you speak has a lot of power,
because you become the stories you tell yourself.
I started to realize every time I had to do something,
I would say this, "Oh my God, I have to film today.
"I have to edit.
"I have to go to this meeting."
and when you have to do something,
it really strips the joy away from doing anything.
It's kind of sad that even someone like me
who has a sick-ass job,
when I dread doing what I do,
that's a moment where I really need to reflect.
One thing that has really helped me is
have to versus get to.
This is reprogramming your mind,
so now when I start my day, I say, "I get to film today.
"I get to edit.
"I get to go to this meeting.
"I get to do this talk."
(laughing)
and this takes time, it takes a lot of practice,
because our brains, they like to keep it the same way,
but applying this has really helped contain the negativity
and make me see my life and my work in more of
a positive light.
So, my first pro-tip, the next time you find yourself
in a ball of negativity, try typing it out
instead speaking it out.
When you say something out to the universe,
it holds a lot of power
and when you get upset,
let's say you're checking someone's work
and they come back with errors all over.
Instead of calling them, being like,
"Hey, you did this wrong!"
try typing it out in a nice bullet form format
and then send it off,
strip the emotion away from it
and don't get yourself irrationally fired up.
My second mistake is wearing my emotions on my sleeve.
I am a very expressive person.
I am very transparent, and a lot of people
have called me out on this.
The positive is that if I like you
and I'm enjoying your company, you will know.
However, if I am feeling stressed, displeased, judgemental,
surprised, sad, you will also know
and in business it's very important to have a poker face,
because poker face is important leverage.
You don't want everyone to know what you're thinking
all the time.
It's a strategic move, and it's also considerate at times
and not having a poker face can ruin a lot.
I'm going to use an example of something that happened to me
a couple years ago.
I was having dinner with an investor
and this was one of those get to know you,
feel the chemistry out dinners,
and things were going great,
but things took a sudden turn when the investor said,
"Hey, I want to show you these logos
"that I personally created."
and I was like,
"Okay, yeah, let's take a look at them."
and they were truly the fugliest logos (laughing)
I had ever seen, and even though what came out of my mouth
was, "Oh, wow!"
my face just gave it away
and it completely ruined the vibe,
because no one likes having their ideas shot down.
At the end of the day, people want to feel
heard and valued.
I have replayed this moment in my head (laughing) a lot.
I could've done these alternative solutions,
so my pro-tip is to study your face.
Have you ever really looked at what your face looks like?
Do you know what it looks like when it's resting?
Luckily, I have a lot of footage of myself (laughing),
so I can see.
However if you don't, I think a good activity is
to pop your camera out, your phone,
and let it run for 15, 20 minutes
and then work.
Then you'll recognize what your face looks like
when it's resting, when you're stressed,
when you're displeased, when you're happy
and then gather all that data
and once you understand what you look like,
you must master the default smile (laughing)
it's not a psycho smile (laughing)
it's a nice, neutral, palatable smile.
At that moment, at that dinner,
I should've braced myself for the logos
and I should've held my default smile
while looking at those many, many logos.
I also should've had a response prepared, like,
"Oh my gosh!
"That's amazing that you came so prepared.
"I actually want to take a closer look
"at these logos, so if you can email them to me
"and I can look at them at my laptop."
and then I could've just changed the subject.
Like I said, people want to feel heard, they want
their opinions to be valued.
Not necessarily used, but valued
and at that moment I made a very bad impression of myself.
Mistake number three, getting too personal.
I am a people person, I love chatting,
I love connecting, I love sharing
and when I'm feeling extroverted,
I have this curiosity to know everything about
that person, where they're from,
what their town looks like,
what they had for lunch, I find it really fascinating.
I think it's because I love character development.
When I started to work and expand my team,
we all were in close quarters.
My main objective was to be their friend,
my boss hat came second,
because I have this tendency where I want you to like me.
Sue me, it's something that we're all thinking.
In one example, with someone that I worked with,
I immediately treated them as my friend
and we opened up and things were great,
until they weren't (laughs)
things got a little bit too comfortable.
My biggest problem was my instructions
started to come more as asks,
then this person started to show up late
more frequently and then showed less and less
initiative at work
and then once we were working, it would be like
therapy sessions for each other
and the boundaries were totally blurred
and eventually the relationship didn't work out anymore,
but it was a big, tough pill for me to swallow,
because as such an open book,
it's so hard for me to contain myself.
In a working relationship, (sighs)
with your employees and your coworkers,
crating boundaries is crucial
and if you're the boss, you need to act like the boss.
I'm not saying be a dictator,
but there needs to be a level of leadership,
so that way you can confidently guide and steer the ship
and at work, work should come first.
That's why it's a job.
I'm not saying to not be friends
with anybody that you work with, that's impossible,
but it's so important to have that good work flow
and be able to trust in each other
that you guys can get things done.
If this foundation isn't ready,
then if you build a friendship on top of it,
it's going to completely crumble,
so an example is my campaign manager.
Her name is Van Anne
and she and I are currently great friends,
but, oh there she is (laughing) hello (laughs)
- [Anne] Currently?
- Currently (laughing) no!
Well, we're great friends, but it took us a while
to get to this level.
We were working together for almost two years,
but we were building credit and trust
in our working relationship.
We knew that we can get through any type of work wrench
and that trust was there,
and so it came really naturally when we were like,
"Hey, let's grab drinks, let's get dinner
"and get to know each other on a personal level."
so my pro-tip is, when it comes to the people
that you work with,
take your time with the friendship.
Build credit and trust in the work relationship,
and then the friendship will grow organically.
I am not very flexible.
I can't touch my toes.
It takes a lot of effort for me to change,
once I have my system I like to keep my system.
I think it's because I like to feel like I'm in control
and when I'm doing things my way,
I know exactly what to expect.
A very small example is my iCal.
Love it, it's just an app on your iPhone
where it's a calendar.
I found it so useful, however
it only is useful if you also have an iPhone
and the whole world was using GCal
and I resisted, I was like, I don't want to learn
a new interface.
I'm just going to stick with my iCal (laughs)
but that didn't last for long,
because as my team grew and I had more people
to coordinate with,
I had to learn how to use GCal.
It took like five minutes (laughing),
it was very simple.
It's actually amazing, I really recommend
everyone to use Gcal! (laughing)
But, my pitfall is familiarity is my security blanket,
but change is evolution and in technology it's so important.
Another thing that I found very difficult to change
was my rigid uploading schedule on YouTube.
I've always prided myself for being super consistent
and I had this rule where I had to upload a video
every week, every Sunday to be exact
and for a while I was hitting it all the time,
but in 2019 I was really struggling with it,
because uploading a video weekly is possible,
but uploading a good video every week is impossible,
because good videos take more thought,
they take more effort and planning
and so my example is the Dolan twins.
They are huge YouTubers
and they also had that same weekly formula
where they were uploading every week
and then finally they uploaded this video,
It's Time To Move On
and I was like, what is this?
And so I clicked it, and they were basically telling
their subscribers,
"Hey we can't do these weekly videos anymore.
"It's stunting the quality of our videos."
so now they take their time
and everyone loves it, including themselves.
In the past, YouTube's algorithm
favored prolific creators.
Post as much as you can and then you'll be rewarded,
but then it created this sea of mediocre content
and what stands out in a sea of mediocre content
is a good, thought out video
and Shane Dawson's videos, oh my God
you watch it and he uploads maybe a couple
of times a year, but when he does upload
everybody is watching.
They're like full on documentaries,
when he uploads them, like, oh my God I got to get
my snacks ready. (laughing)
It's a whole premiere.
So, my pro-tip is to be open to change.
My inadaptability was definitely stunting me
and if I don't upload a video every Sunday,
because I know that I'm working on a better video
that takes more time,
then so be it.
But to be honest I'm still working this,
because I still kind of upload every Sunday, so. (laughing)
My last mistake is thinking that the goal will
fix everything, like once I reach my goal
it would fix me, it would rid me of all my self loathing
and I will be magically cured,
but the problem with goal first mentality
means that you are putting off happiness
until you meet your milestone.
One of my friends, Ashley,
her channel is called bestdressed on YouTube,
she is so talented, you should absolutely check her out,
but she made a bullet journal video
and she wrote this quote,
"There is no goal.
"The goal will never make you happy.
"All we have is today and the happiness you feel in it.
"There is no success or failure.
"You are the only one
"who can make failure feel like a failure."
and when I saw this, I had to stop,
I was like whoa.
This is the reminder of the decade,
because I am constantly under this illusion
that a goal and reaching that goal
will make me happy forever,
but every goal that I reached,
when I did hit it, it did make me happy,
I was like yay!
It was a climax, but a very short climax.
When I hit one million subscribers in YouTube,
I was like, "Yes, I did it!"
and I felt good for the day,
and then the next day I was like, okay, I guess
two million?
And then I hit two million and I was like, woo.
I was like, okay, clearly this is not working,
because how many millions do I have to chase
in order for me to be happy?
That's why it's important to fall in love
with the process, not the product,
so that way you can be happy now.
Goals and direction are important,
but don't think that it's going to make you happy forever.
So my pro-tip is to give yourself permission
to be happy now.
And happiness is an inside job.
Only you can make yourself happy,
and if you don't know how to make yourself happy now
and you don't know why you're not happy,
then no goal, abstract goal or tangible goal,
is going to fix that need.
When I made these mistakes
I felt really shameful,
I wanted to quit, I wanted to peace out for a while,
but once that shame dissolved I realized,
okay, that happened, what did I learn from it?
So the next time you make a mistake,
don't be alarmed, it's going to suck,
but write them down, examine them, dissect them,
find a pro-tip and then
please DM me, because I totally understand,
because only by sharing do we realize that
we're doing this together.
Thank you.
(applauding)