Now, I don't want to complain,
but it's really scary being an entrepreneur.
As a business owner,
you're constantly worried that people are going to make fun of your products,
even if one of those products
is a book called Knitting with Dog Hair -
it's a real book.
I don't know if you guys can see the call-out, but it says,
"Stop vacuuming and start knitting."
As a business owner,
you're constantly worried that people are going to realize
when you didn't think of everything,
like the fact that the acronym to your business name spells ASS -
it's a real hair salon.
And many like me are worried
that people are going to find out that you've made a mistake.
I'm here to face one of my greatest challenges
and admit that I lost 250,000 dollars
because I didn't understand a fundamental principle
about how business products were made.
And I'm not here just to get that off my chest;
I'm here because I think that understanding my mistake
can help save your job -
save it from robots,
save it from downsizing, globalization, all kinds of things.
Now, I'm going to explain, but first we have to go back,
way back, to my first big business idea.
I was at Carhop at Sonic, 14 years old,
looked like I was a solid 10 years old
and very excited to embark on my new career in the service industry.
So my first big idea was to wear rollerblades to work.
I know, I was 14, okay? That was my first idea, okay?
And nobody was wearing rollerblades to work,
unlike what you've seen in the advertisements
or the old-timey commercials.
And this was going to be a win-win.
I was going to make more money in tips because of the novelty,
and my business's would benefit for people would come from all over town -
none of the other fast-food chains had anyone on rollerblades.
So it's a good situation.
The only problem was that the owner of my Sonic said
that under no uncertain terms was anyone allowed to wear rollerblades to work.
Small problem.
So after a number of these fruitless negotiations,
one day I just showed up to work
in a pair of rollerblades, with nothing to change into.
Yeah, I rollerbladed the three miles from my house
to work, uphill,
with no other change of shoes.
The only thing I did bring with me
was a legal release of liability that I had drafted,
channeling my inner lawyer at 14,
which I had presented to the only manager on duty.
Now,
picture a 17-year-old Napoleon Dynamite-looking character
with real greasy hair
who just stared at this document for like a minute and finally said,
"Whatever. Just do whatever you want."
I was pretty proud of myself.
Big success, right?
Just up until the moment that I actually had to start working.
So the way it works at Sonic is you pick up this tray of food,
and then you back up
through these two really, really heavyset doors;
they're made to close real fast so that flies can't get in.
So the problem was because I had rollerblades on,
I didn't have any traction to actually open the doors.
I tried to go sideways, but I just couldn't get them open.
A couple of times my co-workers helped out,
but then they got quickly annoyed because they had their own stuff to do.
So let's recap my big idea:
my manager is really upset with me
for putting him in this difficult position;
my coworkers are upset with me for giving them extra work to do
and holding up the line;
and I, I'm exhausted.
After wearing rollerblades for five straight hours,
I had to rollerblade home
three miles, uphill,
in the snow.
(Laughter)
Okay, now this is the audience-participation portion
of my talk.
What do you think it feels like to have the world's dumbest business idea?
What do you think it feels like in your body?
What do you guys think?
Audience: Sad.
Sad.
You're nauseous.
You're embarrassed,
like you don't even want to go work the next day.
Yeah, that's what you think it feels like,
but it actually feels just like the world's best business idea
right up until the moment that reality smacks you in the face
and tells you otherwise.
So this big point, this big difference of not understanding
that your ideas could feel really amazing but actually be quite awful,
I didn't understand that until I made a much, much bigger mistake.
So let's fast forward to about five years ago.
I'm this eager 29-year-old entrepreneur with a number of successes under my belt,
enough to have 250,000 dollars to invest.
Pretty good.
Now, did I put it away for a rainy day?
No, entrepreneurs don't do that.
Did I buy a fleet of Teslas for my company?
Entrepreneurs do that, but I didn't.
Did I hire a marching band to follow me around
everywhere I went for a year?
No, but that would have been an amazing way
to start today's presentation.
No, it's actually a really funny story.
I took all that money,
and I invested it in a young startup called Facebook.
And over the last five years, I’ve actually grown my money
like a thousand times.
Yeah, that actually did not happen either.
(Laughter)
I wish.
No, what I did was I used the money
to build software for lawyers and their clients, legal software.
And I would have been way better off not just investing in Facebook stock
but hiring the marching band because I lost all that money;
it was another one of those ideas that felt really good at the time
but turned out to be a terrible business idea,
and I didn't realize it until all the money had been spent.
Now, legal software is kind of difficult to explain in a 10-minute talk
so I wanted to come up with an equally bad analogous product
so we just had something that we mutually understood
was kind of like the product I created.
So let's just assume for the sake of this talk that what I invented
was the poo trap of legal software, okay?
(Laughter)
So yeah, I, Diana Kander, created the SNM-looking,
"never have to pick up after your dog
but none of your friends or neighbors will make eye contact with you
while your dog is wearing it"
poo trap of legal software.
Now do I have to take it off the screen so you guys will listen? Okay.
So ...
the problem that I had made was I misunderstood invention
for innovation.
You see, here's the key difference.
Invention is when you come up with a brand-new idea
but nobody cares.
It doesn't actually provide value for anybody.
It could actually cause havoc for people.
And innovation is where you come up with a new idea,
and it actually creates value for your intended audience.
That's the key difference:
whether or not your big idea is actually valuable for your customers.
And the thing is, you can't decide;
only your customers can tell you.
And while the poo trap of legal software was a novel idea
and had never existed before,
it provided about as much value as - well - the actual poo trap.
It was a Frankenstein-level invention
that the world didn't want.
My customers didn't think
that it was worth their time or money to use.
And this difference between invention and innovation
and whether or not what it is that you're doing
is actually creating value,
it doesn't just haunt entrepreneurs;
it affects all of us in our jobs every single day.
Let me explain.
At work, we confuse doing stuff,
doing our best at the tasks we've been assigned -
that's invention -
with actually creating value for the company where we work -
that's innovation.
So about two months ago, I conducted a study
where I asked over 1,000 business owners and managers
how many of their employees were irreplaceable.
An irreplaceable employee is somebody who's so valuable
that no matter what happens to the business, to the economy,
they're the absolute last person you would ever want to let go.
They're like the Chewbacca to your Han Solo,
the Mr. Smithers to your Mr. Burns.
Pretty important.
And these managers,
they talked about irreplaceable employees
as people who created value outside their job description.
They didn't actually talk about people who were incredible at their actual jobs;
they talked about what they did above and beyond:
how they constantly found new opportunities for the business,
how they created efficiency
and solve problems that other people didn't notice.
They talked about these employees
as having this entrepreneurial mindset,
like they saw their work as a product and their company as their customer,
and they were constantly checking
to see whether what they were creating was of value
or whether they needed to adjust it.
So ...
think about that for a second.
We all know that company you currently work for
needs to change to stay relevant.
They do.
Well, the same is true for your job.
In order to make it relevant on an ongoing basis,
in order to become irreplaceable,
we have to innovate our work and what it is that we do.
My research shows
that if you want to make this transition
from being a liability on the payroll books
to actually being an asset,
then you need to transition your thinking
from just showing up to work every day
and going down your to-do list, of what it is that you have to do,
to actually thinking strategically
about what you should be doing, right?
You need to go from playing defense with your to-do list
to playing offense on how to create value.
So it's great to talk about it, but how do you actually do it?
Well, I have a few suggestions.
I think you should spend at least 15 minutes each week
thinking about one of three things:
innovating yourself, innovating your job, and innovating your company, okay?
Let me give you some examples.
So if you're thinking about innovating yourself
as a way to create more value for the company,
why don't you make a list of 10 reasons you should be fired today?
I know, we don't spend much time thinking about this topic,
but think about it.
That list is like a blueprint for how you could create
new value for your company.
Next, think about how to create new value by changing your job.
Think about 10 ways you could change what you do at work every day
to save yourself five hours per week.
We've all got efficiencies,
but we don't spend enough time thinking about them.
And finally,
think about how to create new value by innovating your company.
Why don't you make a list
of 10 different things your department could do
to engage the employees
and then maybe offer to lead one of those initiatives.
These are incredible ways to create value for your organization
and become one of those irreplaceable employees,
but the list I've given you is just three suggestions.
The reality is
there are hundreds of questions you can ask
in each one of these categories.
The trick is to turn it into a habit.
The trick is to go from going down your to-do list every day
to thinking about what you should be doing,
like, Should you be going to all those meetings?
No.
Is this project the absolute best use of your time
or is there something on your wish list
that you think could create even more value to the organization?
I've come a long way
to deciding to wear rollerblades to work at Sonic
and coming up with a poo trap of legal software,
and it's all because I stopped inventing and started innovating.
This focus on creating value has allowed me
to not only get over my big failure
but write a New York Times bestseller, start and sell a company,
and become an innovation consultant to Fortune 1000 companies.
It's been an incredible journey but it doesn't just have to be my story.
I implore you
to take off the metaphorical rollerblades
and stop asking yourself,
Am I doing a good job?
Am I working hard at the things they've asked me to do?
And instead, ask, Am I creating value?
Thank you.
(Applause)