Mike Cannon-Brookes shares his personal experience with impostor syndrome, illustrating how he's learned to leverage this feeling, rather than being paralyzed by it, to achieve success in both his professional and personal life. He uses anecdotes from his career and personal life to demonstrate how acknowledging and actively engaging with feelings of inadequacy can lead to positive outcomes.
Impostor syndrome is common, even among successful people: Cannon-Brookes reveals that even with significant achievements, he frequently experiences the feeling of being a fraud. He challenges the notion that successful individuals are immune to self-doubt.
Harnessing impostor syndrome as a motivator: Instead of letting self-doubt paralyze him, Cannon-Brookes uses it to push himself to learn and improve. His experiences winning entrepreneur awards and his interaction with Elon Musk highlight how using the pressure to learn and act can lead to unexpected successes.
Successful relationships and impostor syndrome: Cannon-Brookes suggests a correlation between successful relationships and both partners feeling like they're "out of their league," emphasizing the importance of using this feeling as motivation to improve and strengthen the relationship.
Learning from discomfort: The speaker repeatedly emphasizes the importance of actively engaging with feelings of inadequacy rather than avoiding them. He demonstrates how confronting discomfort, and utilizing it as a learning opportunity, can generate growth.
The value of seeking and applying advice: Cannon-Brookes highlights the importance of seeking advice from others, even when feeling insecure, as a way to overcome challenges and improve skills.
Mike Cannon-Brookes provides several examples of experiencing impostor syndrome: interviewing his first HR manager despite lacking experience with HR departments; attending board meetings in a t-shirt feeling out of place; handling accounts payable calls early in his company's history, unsure if the caller was requesting or providing money; and feeling out of place in the Qantas business lounge. He also describes feeling like an impostor when unexpectedly winning multiple entrepreneur awards and later, when engaging in a public Twitter exchange with Elon Musk about energy solutions.
Winning the Australian Entrepreneur of the Year awards, unexpectedly, and then traveling to Monte Carlo to compete internationally, intensified Mike Cannon-Brookes' feelings of being "in way too deep." A conversation with another award winner, Belmiro de Azevedo, who expressed similar feelings despite significant accomplishments, was a turning point. This realization that even highly successful individuals experience impostor syndrome shifted his perspective from viewing it as a personal failing to a common and potentially beneficial experience.
Mike Cannon-Brookes' interaction with Elon Musk began with a late-night tweet challenging Tesla's claim to resolve South Australia's power crisis. Musk's response, confirming their seriousness and outlining a plan to install a massive battery, propelled the situation into the public eye. Cannon-Brookes, feeling the pressure of being thrust into the role of an "energy expert," responded by dedicating a week to learning about industrial-scale batteries and the energy grid to adequately address the resulting media attention and public discussion.
Mike Cannon-Brookes suggests that successful relationships often involve both partners feeling like they are "out of their league" with respect to their partner's attractiveness, accomplishments, or other qualities. He argues that if this feeling motivates both partners to continually work towards being the best version of themselves for their partner, it fosters commitment and strengthens the relationship. His own marriage serves as an example.
In Monte Carlo, at a World Entrepreneur of the Year event, Mike Cannon-Brookes found himself sitting next to Belmiro de Azevedo, the Portuguese winner. De Azevedo, at 65, had been running his business for 40 years, employed 30,000 people, and had a €4 billion turnover. After a few drinks, Cannon-Brookes confessed to feeling like he and his business partner didn't deserve to be there and that someone would eventually discover their supposed inadequacies. De Azevedo responded that he felt the same way, suspecting all the winners shared those feelings. He assured Cannon-Brookes that their success indicated they were "obviously doing something right" and should continue their work.
The anecdote about Belmiro de Azevedo begins around 6:02 and concludes around 6:43 in the video.
There isn't one single quote encompassing the entire story but here's a compilation of the relevant excerpts from Mike Cannon-Brookes' speech:
"Now, in another rented suit, I was at one of the dinners and sitting next to a lovely man called Belmiro 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 time, someone was going to figure this out and send us home to Australia. And he, 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 Scott or I or really anything about technology, he said that we were obviously doing something right and should probably just keep going."
