Monique Ruff-Bell: How TED Transforms Ideas into Movements

Guy Kawasaki:
Monique, thank you very much for being on Remarkable People. How about you just give yourself a short little introduction?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Sure. So I am Monique Ruff-Bell. I am the chief program and strategy officer for TED. And if you love a good TED Talk, this is what I get to do every day and participate in bringing these magical experiences to our community and to the global audience.
Guy Kawasaki:
I love that. I love TED, I have to tell you. So you worked at Ringling Brothers, and we had another guest named Derek Sivers who also was a ringmaster. So am I seeing a pattern here? Is it like great presenters and great speakers, they have a background in the circus?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
You got to have experience with a little bit of crazy and chaos and there you go with the circus is just a part of that. So I think it just makes you a stronger people person, a people lover and a stronger entertainer.
Guy Kawasaki:
And what exactly did you do for Ringling Brothers?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
So I was the promotion manager for Ringling Brothers. So I like to say I ran away with the circus. So people don't know there's actually two circuses, one on each side of the country and then they switch.
And so whenever the circus came to the East Coast, I would go with the circus across the different cities and basically help do PR events and just get the community excited about the circus coming to town. And after about a year or two years of that, you get burnt out with walking with the elephants and the tigers and the crazy and all that other good stuff. So then I had to not run away with the circus anymore.
Guy Kawasaki:
Now tell me when you are with the circus, isn't it like all of you are on a train and you're just all traveling together and it's one big dysfunctional family?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Those are the actual performers that live on the train. I do not. So we actually work out of our offices, and we have little micro offices all around the country, and I was one of those people that worked out in New York.
And then when it came to the East Coast, you just worked and traveled with the circus. And wherever it showed up, whether it's Connecticut, New York, Boston or whatever, that's where you went. And our office was actually in the animal pen, so you smelled a lot of things when you were with the circus.
Guy Kawasaki:
So when you were on duty, you were actually traveling in the train. You were part of the family.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
I was part of the family. Another cute story is the elephants can't ride on trucks. They're too heavy. How you get the animals from the train to the venue, they have to walk. And so you have to close down the streets at night. It is two in the morning, and we were the security guards for the elephants. So we had to walk the elephants from the train station to the venue, and I'm like, "How am I supposed to protect the elephants?" But that's what we did, and it's a story to tell.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wait, but what if the train depot is like ten miles from where the circus is? You walk ten miles.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
You had to walk it. There's no other way to get them to the venue. You can't put them on any type of truck or anything. You have to walk.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, man. Okay. Enough of your checkered past about being in the circus. So I have a question for you now. I'm going to have to ask you some questions that I know the answer, but what exactly is TED today? Because some people think that TED is the one main conference and other people, TED in their mind is TEDx. So can you just define TED for us right now?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Sure. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. And it started in 1984 and it literally was this one conference that happened every single year. And now it is a generalist conference, and it is multiple conferences that happen globally.
And so you have what we call TED flagship conferences, and then you have TEDx conferences. There are two different things for us, and as a flagship, I oversee all of the flagships. And now recently now I oversee all of the TEDx programming. But the flagships are ran by the corporate organization and TEDx are 100 percent volunteer ran.
So if you have a love for TED or TED Talks, you would apply to get a license from us. To host a TED event in your city. You have to follow certain rules and parameters, but outside of that, you are 100 percent a volunteer who are putting on a lovely one-day TEDx event. Our TED flagships are usually longer, three to five days.
They happen currently in Vancouver and another in Atlanta. And this is for thousands of people. It's multiple experiences that happen within a TED event, but all of the talks usually get platformed from a TED event. And for TEDx, certain talks get platformed from a TEDx event.
Guy Kawasaki:
And what is TEDNext then?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
So that's our new flagship. So that's the one that was recently launched and based in Atlanta. And so we wanted to create an ecosystem of experiences for people who love TED. And so you first start out probably in school hearing from TED-Education. You learn about our animations and how we explain certain things that happen within society.
Then you probably in your city, you hear about TEDx, and you go to a one-day TEDx event. The next thing was the big TED in Vancouver, which is a premium ticket price. It's five days long and it's a little bit harder for the everyday person to have access to.
And so it was about the future of what is happening in technology, society, entertainment, healthcare and all of those things. But we didn't have a conference that talked to the builder. How do you become the builder so you can plug into the future of?
So what does that next version of yourself look like? Not just from a professional standpoint, but from a personal standpoint? You might want to evolve and do something completely different than what you're doing now. Where is a place where you can find that community, that information and be inspired and motivated for your own next evolution? So that's where TEDNext came from and we launched that this year.
Guy Kawasaki:
So how many flagship conferences are there?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
So it could be two to three a year. You have what we call Big Ted, which is the Vancouver. You have TEDNext, which is the new flagship, and then we have something called Countdown, which is every other year annually, and that is our Climate Change Sustainability Conference. And we have that all over the globe every other year.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Now push comes to shove, what is the global mission or goal of TED in general, the whole thing?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
It's all about we're a storytelling platform, and we really believe that ideas change everything. That's our new slogan. And so when we talk about TED, we talk about how do we get more ideas so it could be inspiring and motivational for others to either think different, challenge their thinking, be inspired to create a different path for themselves to help make society better?
Our mission is to give you the ideas and then you take it and run with it in whatever you need to grow within your own personal development.
Guy Kawasaki:
Now, this may be a strange, difficult question, but where do you draw the line? If Steve Bannon said, I want to speak at a TED flagship or Stephen Miller or Rudy Giuliani or God help you, Donald Trump or the president of Hungary, do you say, "Okay, we want to present diverse views?" Or do you say, "Man, we don't have TED fascism?"
Monique Ruff-Bell:
A really good question. So our tagline used to be Ideas That Matter, and now we recently change it to Ideas Change Everything. And so the reason why we've changed and had that evolution with our tagline because all ideas don't really matter in the same way in our new polarized society.
And so it is all about we have no problem platforming people who might not necessarily be progressive or liberal or they might be more conservative or anything like that. That's not a problem for us. But we want to make sure you're coming to the table as a solution-oriented person and you are talking about something where it inspires people to think about how to be better at doing something differently.
So even this past year we had some controversial speakers that I would say who've been in the news from time to time about their opinions. But what they brought to the TED stage was it was like, "We wanted to explain where our thinking is and how we've gotten to that conclusion instead of just platforming an idea that might be controversial."
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Now just hypothetically, if you were to give a TED flagship Talk, what would be your topic? You as the speaker?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
How to have a wonderful robust vacation, and let me tell you why. I just literally came back from Bora, and I put this little video together to show my colleagues and my work people and they were like, "You look so happy, so refreshed. You are glowing." And usually a vacation, sometimes people need vacations from their vacations.
And I was like, "Nope, this is what I did to make sure I completely plugged into this vacation." So this is the only reason why it's top of mind because I literally just came back from this and I feel like a whole new person, and I would love to just give a TED Talk and how to really enjoy a real vacation.
Guy Kawasaki:
And is eighteen minutes long enough for you to cover that topic?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
I would make it fit. This was magical what I just experienced so I would share with the world.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. For those of us who are not familiar, what are the parameters of a TED Talk, the length and can you use notes? Are there teleprompters? How's the whole thing work logistically?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
What makes us a different type of platform from other events or conferences is that we actually have a full-time curation team. It is 100 percent their job to go find speakers who are just inspirational and motivational and then to train them on how to give a proper TED Talk. So you could go through a couple of months of training on how to really perfect your story.
It doesn't matter if you've been speaking for ten, twenty, thirty years, giving a TED Talk can be really difficult for the simple fact you're only allowed to share one idea. And people like to go on tangents and talk about other things and splash extra things into their story instead of just sticking with that one idea. A TED Talk can be, we've had as little as five minutes, seven minutes, twelve minutes up to eighteen minutes of a TED Talk.
But it's really taking that person on a journey who's sitting in that audience who might've never been interested in this topic, and you have sparked some interest from them because you started with your own personal story, which then segue wayed into what is it that you're trying to change or what were you inspired by or what was the actions you took from your personal story and development?
And then wrapping that with a nice bow to make it entertaining or engaging, captivating or motivating. And that's not always easy for a lot of speakers no matter how long you've been doing this for. So it's training that comes into that.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, so the length is eighteen minutes. Can I use a teleprompter?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
No teleprompter.
Guy Kawasaki:
Can I use notes?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
We do allow people sometimes to use notes. And what on YouTube is an edited version of a TED Talk. These are all filmed at conferences. People think these are filmed in studios. This is at a live conference and people mess up. Sometimes you don't always have that straight eighteen-minute flow, and the audience cheers you on and tells you it's okay, keep going and all this good stuff.
It's really an emotional rollercoaster when you're sitting in that theater to see these people pour out their hearts and their ideas. And sometimes they're so nervous because that TED circle can make you a little bit nervous and they come through like a champ. And so sometimes they have to pull out their notes because they forgot a word or two, you just don't happen to see that on YouTube.
Guy Kawasaki:
And who is in the Monique TED Talk Hall of Fame?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Reshma Saujani. I don't know if you are familiar with her, but her TED Talk is Teach Girls Bravery, Not Perfection. And the reason why that resonates a lot with me personally is because we are taught as women and girls usually to be nice and to always think about the nice way of how you deliver things, and niceness comes with perfectionism, not all the time.
But a lot of the time I was like, I'm not going to go for something unless I'm 100 percent buttoned up, together and perfect at it, and we lose out on a lot of opportunities. But boys are taught to be brave. They are taught to take risks. They are taught to try different things.
And she was like, we need to teach our girls that same thing. For us to move through this new way of society by bravery because it is a lot of risk taking. It is a lot of intentionality and choices and to make sure that you're making the right decision. But when you don't necessarily make the right decision, how can you bounce back quickly? And that's what I love about her talk.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Now, you say you have these people who are coaches and teachers and they select speakers. So are you telling me that this is like a MacArthur Fellowship? You don't apply for a MacArthur Fellowship. You don't apply for a Nobel Prize. You just hope the phone rings. So is that how it works for you?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
So three ways: our curation team goes out and looks for speakers that they might come across through reading about them, hearing about them, referrals, or what have you. Then we actually have past alumni speakers who will suggest other speakers to us and that we should explore and think about. And then the third way is we actually have a speaker form.
You can nominate yourself for a TED Talk at TED.com at our speaker nomination form. But this is the kicker. The thing that people don't do when they do the speaker nomination form is do your research. Has that talk already happened? We have thousands and thousands of talks on thousands of different topics, and it is up to that person to research and look at our archives, look at past YouTubes to see if someone already spoke about that topic.
If they have, and you're going to speak in a similar way, you're not going to be platformed. We're not going to repeat it. It has to be something that's different and unique. And so you might think you have the greatest idea and you're the greatest speaker, but believe me, there might've already been someone who thought they had the greatest idea and the same idea that you had.
And so it's really important that if you apply to speak that you really talk about the idea. This is not about your PR campaign. This is not about how many talks you've given. It is all about the idea you want to present and why that is different and special and unique than what has ever been seen on a TED stage.
Guy Kawasaki:
And are you therefore seeing that TEDx is not the farm system for TED flagship? If you gave a TEDx Talk, you cannot give it as a TED flagship Talk.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Now Brené Brown was discovered from a TEDx Talk.
Guy Kawasaki:
Right.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
She wasn't on a TED flagship talk and we've had her for a flagship talk. So it doesn't mean that you are completely out of the running for a TED flagship opportunity. You might have to come with something different. But we've discovered plenty of people out of the TEDx platform many times, but it's about the idea.
So you could be one person that has several different amazing ideas. And so like you said, you've given multiple TEDx Talks. I'm sure they were on various topics. And it's the same way here as in we like fresh ideas. It could come from the same person multiple times. It's all about the idea.
Guy Kawasaki:
And for the people who apply, what percentage actually make it?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
We do about eighty TED Talks at our Vancouver conference, and we do about forty to forty-five TED Talks at our TEDNext Conference, so that's 120. So we have 20,000 people who have submitted for TED Talks through our online forum.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
And it's only one hundred plus speakers, maybe 200 speakers that we do every year. So it's extremely competitive. So we always say you have to really have a tight idea for the flagship opportunity, but it's a little bit easier to go through the TEDx route because there's more of them.
There's 3000 TEDx events around the globe and it's basically based on that particular city or region, and you probably have more access that way. But don't give up trying to get to the flagship. Just keep applying and coming up with new ideas.
Guy Kawasaki:
And what happens if, I don't know, take an extreme, if Michelle Obama or Steve Jobs or I don't know, Elon Musk or Bill Gates, they don't apply. Their people's people tell you, "Would you like Steve Jobs at TED?" "Would you like Elon Musk?" "Would you like Michelle Obama?" "Would you like Malala?" Do you get those kind of calls? Do you turn them down sometimes?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Elon spoke in 2022, and he spoke previously before there. So we get that level of people speaking at our conferences. No, we do not turn them down. We figure out how to make it work, especially if they have something really interesting to share and to say. So like I said, our curation team goes out and finds these speakers or they're connected to these speakers. And as long as the idea is strong and it makes sense for the theme of that conference, we invite them in.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. I have spoken many times, so I'm very familiar with how the circuit works. And lots of speakers have, I think just outlandish writers. I heard a story that when Barbara Streisand spoke at the San Jose Shark Tank, she wanted a straight shot from her dressing room to the stage, so they had to bust open a wall.
When Prince spoke there, he wanted all the background rooms and all the green rooms, everything had to be painted purple. And Steve Jobs, he wants a special stool made by Tibetan Monks and he wants water from, I don't know, some special spring in Nicaragua.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Oh, my God.
Guy Kawasaki:
So do you get those kinds of things? Do you just shake your head and you say, "We are fricking TED, we don't do bullshit like that."
Monique Ruff-Bell:
I've only been at TED going on three years, and I have never seen any writer like that. So I'm sure there might be a story or two that someone from the curation team could tell, but we're pretty basic with backstage. I haven't seen anything crazy like that, and TED is not that type of platform, so I don't think we even get anything like that. But I could be wrong. Like I said, I'm only three years in.
Guy Kawasaki:
Don't get me wrong, I find it just amazing that if Barbara Streisand said, "Yeah, I'll speak at TED, but this is what I need," I can see her doing that anyway. I get the message.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Let's get Barbara. I want to get Barbara on our stage, so I don't want to stop anything. Let's see how we could work something out with Barbara.
Guy Kawasaki:
I can't tell you that I'm her BFF, so I can't help you. I knew the editor of her book and let's just say that was an interesting job. She's a very interesting person to put it mildly.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
There's some stories to tell I can tell, okay.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, I bet. Yeah. Okay, so now are you telling me that seriously, if Donald Trump said "I want to be on TED, I have a lot to say. I have very different ideas." What do you say?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
You are asking the tough questions, Guy. I don't know about that one. Chris Anderson is the chairman of TED. He is the one that took over TED in the early 2000s. He was all about sharing ideas that were really impactful, and so it would go all the way up to him. I wouldn't have anything to say or do in this situation. It would go all the way up to what he wants to do here. So I can't even give you my own personal opinion because it would never come to me.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. I had to try.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
I understand.
Guy Kawasaki:
Listen, I've never been asked to speak at TED flagship. I'm trying to figure out, I'm going to be 20,001.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Yeah, we got to get this together, Guy. I got to approve on that one. I'm surprised at that.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm surprised too. Don't get me wrong.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
You got to work on that.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. We'll follow up with that. When I was early in my career, I figured, okay, this is how you're a baller and you've got it made. You spoke at Davos and you spoke at TED. And after that you can die, and the rest of your life is anticlimactic.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Mission accomplished.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, so I'm 50 percent there. I've spoken at Davos twice, but I have not yet spoken at TED in Vancouver, and Canadians love me. I never met a Canadian I didn't like, and I love hockey. I can talk hockey all day long for your Vancouver audience.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
I'm sure more than the Canadians love you, Guy. We will have to just work on that one.
Guy Kawasaki:
All right, so now this is more of a serious question. So do you view being a TED flagship speaker as a reward or part of the journey?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Part of the journey. What is the special sauce of TED is platforming people that people don't know about. The people who are up and coming, the builders, the people that you discover and then you absolutely get to elevate and amplify some amazing things, and so we love being that type of platform.
Yes, we love to showcase those that have household names, but I'm telling you, when you sit through eighty TED Talks, you are really thinking about, "Okay, I think I'm going to like this." But when you're sitting in the audience and you listen to someone you never heard about, you are so inspired and blown away about what people accomplish.
As a standard human being who might not have all the resources that everyone else has who are popular and to know how they accomplish some of these wonderful things, it's just so amazing to sit in that audience. You go through these roller coasters of emotions. There's laughter, then there's crying, then there's anger, then there's thinking and pondering. It's a lot.
We have something called a TED-ache that happens after you leave Vancouver because you are just so overwhelmed by all of these amazing speakers and then they come off the stage and they sit right next to you. They literally stay for the entire conference. You get to talk to them. It's absolutely amazing.
Guy Kawasaki:
I have not even been to the Vancouver TED Conference.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
We've discovered a lot about this. We got to work on this. We got to get you there.
Guy Kawasaki:
I need to come out of my shell. Listen, dead serious now. My podcast is called Remarkable People, and it's not rich people and it's not famous people, it's remarkable people. So we have people, I don't know if you've heard of him, Halim Flowers. At sixteen, he was sentenced to forty something years for accessory to murder. He got out after twenty-two years, and now he's predicted to be the next Jean-Michel Basquiat.
So we have people like that. We have people who have become very successful overcoming prison and all kinds of stuff, people that you wouldn't have heard of. So tell your creation team to listen to my podcast. We do a lot of filtering. We reject about 2,500 people a year to get fifty. So we're not as selective as you, but we're up there in terms of selectivity. We can act as a first pass filter for you.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
That's amazing, and absolutely. Now I'm going to be a listener too, to make sure I refer some things, and I appreciate even being on the podcast myself. But yeah, it's those, the remarkable people the day-to-day of humanity and things that people accomplish really, and you sitting there and hearing their story, it really blows you away. So I love the undiscovered talent that comes across the TED stages.
Guy Kawasaki:
In a sense, I love TED and I also love The Moth, right? So you must listen to The Moth, right? That's also an interesting source of edutainment, shall I say. So now I would like to know what separates a good TED flagship speaker from a remarkable one.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Oh, it is how they start their story. So if you can grab people in the first ten seconds of your talk where someone is leaning in and not because they can't hear, they're just so engaged. And I've seen this live and in person and then I'm like, "Oh, she or he or they, they got them," because everyone in that audience is pretty much just leaning in because the first ten seconds just grabbed their attention.
And what always grabs their attention is how you personalize your story. You being a human and you weaving in your human aspect of what you personally were motivated and inspired by saw, conquered or whatever and really grasping that right at the beginning takes people on a wonderful ride. They are all in after that.
Guy Kawasaki:
So tell me some of your favorite first ten seconds.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
The unexpected, like saying, "I was trapped in a well and then I figured out that while I was pondering in this trapped place that I needed to think differently." Or "I was sitting by the bedside." The Death Doula, this was another TED Talk that is up on YouTube. So I never even knew that existed, that there's someone that walks you through death and grief before your loved one passes away. And how she started her story was that how she sits in that with someone.
And we've all experienced, most of us, if not all of us, have experienced grief. And for her, this is her day-to-day job and that this actually exists makes me think about, "Okay, I think I might need a death doula if I ever go through something like this."
I've just discovered so many things about how do you create beautiful, wonderful art with the most mundane things and how it just moved and challenged people. It's just amazing how resourceful so many people are with just a little bit of creativity or thought or resources and how big of an impact they can make on society and in humanity.
Guy Kawasaki:
The best TEDx Talk that I gave, in my humble opinion, and I have given, as I said eight, my opening line was, "When I die, I want you to say that I helped you make a difference, that you made the world a better place." That was my first five seconds or so.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
And I bet a lot of people leaned into that too.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, what are you going to say? "No, Guy, you suck. That's why you're not a flagship speaker."
Monique Ruff-Bell:
I'm telling you, Guy, we're going to work on that.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'll give you my phone number. Okay. So now next question. How has the audience experience evolved in the last twenty, thirty years of TED?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Ted was basically a standard conference of just pure TED Talks. So you went there, you had about four days of about twelve sessions of people just talking about amazing things. And now we create this full-on experiential experience for our events. So when you come to the conference, you never queue in a line. We don't have lines, and we have thousands of people that come. It is a very unique concierge experience. You're met at the door with someone who asks you your name.
And as soon as you write up the escalator, there's someone there waiting with your badge, and you go right in. So we create and perfected the intrigue and entrance experience for our conferences. And then when you go there, there is opportunities for you to participate in discovery sessions where you get to do something unique that you've never gotten to do before. We've had welding classes.
We have tree doctors that take you out into the forest so you can listen to trees breathe. And we've had how you make your own sneakers. So we've had these very unique action-based discovery sessions. We have something called Brain Dates.
So you can put in an app that you want to talk about this and people will say, "I want to talk about that with you too, and they come and meet you for a brain date. And you have a wonderful conversation with someone you never met on a topic you never even thought would be present within TED. We have dinners, and so you'll go, and you'll have a hosted dinner with twenty-five, thirty, forty people of your best friends. We have game nights that happen within the conference, so you get to do some fun activities as well.
We have you scale buildings outside, so you can scale a building in Vancouver as an activity. And then we have reflection rooms and we have rest spots, and then we have experiential activations where you'll engage with something from robotics or someone has created this new product or new idea that hasn't even come out yet. So it's just this, like I said, the TED-ache happens because you are just overwhelmed from this very five-day experience of eighty plus TED Talks and a hundred other activities.
Guy Kawasaki:
And how many people go through this every year?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
About 1,800 to 2,000.
Guy Kawasaki:
And there must be more than 2,000 people who want to attend. How do you pick the attendees?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Yeah, you have to go through our application process.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, my God.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
So the thing is, but anyone can apply. That's the thing, people think this is very hush exclusive. No, anyone can apply to attend a TED flagship event. You have a little bit more of a robust application for Vancouver, but our TED Atlanta one, much more easy for you to get access to. But anyone can apply to any of our flagship conferences. And it's more about making sure we keep the right people out than it is letting the right people in.
Guy Kawasaki:
And how much does it cost if you, God forbid, that you get accepted.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
So the flagship is a premium conference, so our average ticket price is 12,500 dollars for that one. But our TED Atlanta flagship is 2,800 dollars. And so it is a pared down version of the Vancouver, but it still gives you the discovery sessions, the brain dates, the activities, the forty-five plus TED Talks.
So like I said, we were creating an ecosystem of events, and you couldn't just go from TEDx all the way to Vancouver. We needed to meet you in the middle to get you really acclimated and excited about the in-person experience, and that's why TEDNext was created.
Guy Kawasaki:
At TED in Vancouver, you could have just a very interesting breakout and you could take people surfing in Tofino because it's about, I think a thirty-minute little jog away and on a little sea plane. You could do that. I'll do that for you, or I could do a session about how to be a podcaster if you want to.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Oh, we got to be able to.
Guy Kawasaki:
If you can do welding, I can do podcasting. How's that?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
We have so many fun and unique things, but we have our own podcast initiative as well. And so a lot of our podcasters come and they might do a live podcast recording from our flagships, but people walk away blown away. I've been in the conferences and events industry my entire career and when I joined TED, I've never seen any event like that. That is a true connective tissue that you feel so immersed in something so special that you just want to keep having that feeling over and over again.
Guy Kawasaki:
I can tell you that from what you described, it's much more interesting to go to TED than Davos. Because I got to tell you, Davos is just, in my humble opinion, it's just bullshit. There's so many egos there. And now it is true that you could go into the men's room and you look over and you're taking a next to the president of Uruguay or something. That is true. But that only goes so far. Wow, what a great experience. I'm going to save up my shackles so I can come on here.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
You have to come. One of the things for our first timers is we have something called our first-timers talk because people come and they have a little bit of an imposter syndrome, because you literally have these amazing people who get on the stage who stick around. And I hosted a dinner one time, and I had an astronaut, a guy that puts data on the moon, an Army psychologist, a comedian and then myself.
And we had some of the most funniest conversations you can imagine. But you have those type of people in the room and you might think you don't belong there, but if you're there, you belong there. And that's one of the things that we like to explain to people.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, Monique, I can tell you, and Madisun will confirm this, that I have many faults, but one of them is not having the imposter syndrome.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
You're like, "I belong here in this room."
Guy Kawasaki:
"Why wasn't I here before?"
Monique Ruff-Bell:
There you go. You have the opposite.
Guy Kawasaki:
I have the entitlement syndrome more than the imposter syndrome. Yeah. Okay. So my last question for you is that I look at your career, you've done so many interesting things. You have been exposed to so many remarkable people.
And people listening to this, it's like, "How can I be like her? How can I have such an interesting job? How can I have such joy in my voice as I describe what I do?" So pretend that there's somebody who's, I don't know, in high school listening to this and saying, "Shit, I want to be like her. Now what do I need to do?" So what do they need to do besides join the circus?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Let me tell you, Guy. I remember I was such a hard worker in my early career, and I sat down one day and I was like, "Damn, all of this hard work is doing nothing but getting me more work. What am I doing wrong?"
And I decided to have intentionality, and I think that was a real game changer for me. It was more about, "I need to start mapping out what I want my life, my professional development to look like. Not worry about the titles, but worry about what do I need to get from a skillset that's going to attract things to me?" TED came to me from a recruitment standpoint.
And so when I was thinking about how do I build that breadth of work that people will come to find me, it was, "Okay, I need to become better at understanding revenue generating, and I need to become better at how I communicate my story. And I need to become better at building my own personal brand and being a go-to for solutions."
And I would do things within each of these organizations to feed into those four buckets, and people would start noticing me for those four key things. And then I would just move on to another job and say, "Okay, now I want to be known as a P&L owner here." I would set out my intention about what I want people to know me for and then I would put smoke signals out to let people know that they should know me for this, and it actually worked.
And then each job that I was going to, I just wanted to grow more and more. There's still more growth in me. There's still more growth in me within TED and without TED. And so I just think once you set the intention about I'm not just going to flap my wings around and just exist, I'm going to live and what does living look like for me? Whether it's in my professional or my personal life, and I'm going to do it and put action behind it, and so far so good. It's worked for me.
Guy Kawasaki:
Man, Monique, I got to tell you something, man. If we could bottle your attitude, man. Oh, my God, we'd sell so much of that. We got to put you in a bottle. We got to get the Monique formula. My God.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Thanks, Guy.
Guy Kawasaki:
Listen, Madison and I, we interviewed 250 people, fifty-two people a year. When I tell you something, like that's not bullshit. I don't say that to everybody. My God.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Oh, man. I appreciate that.
Guy Kawasaki:
We got to bottle you. If I ran TED, I would put you in my flagship, for sure.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Aw, I appreciate it. I'm going to give my TED Talk at Guy's TED Talk.
Guy Kawasaki:
I would break the wall so you can walk straight to the stage. I would paint it all purple for you. I would get you Tibetan water. I would get you a handmade German stool for you to sit on. I'd give you more than eighteen minutes. I would do whatever it took to get through.
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Oh, wow. Oh, I appreciate that. This is the best day right now to hear that.
Guy Kawasaki:
All right, Monique, we got to let you go because we don't want to make too high a bar for all the other episodes that's going to follow you on Remarkable People. All right?
Monique Ruff-Bell:
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Guy Kawasaki:
Thank you so much.