In this motivational talk, Jillian Manus recounts a pivotal experience while speaking to a large audience. As she steps onto the stage, she feels a mix of nerves and determination, emphasizing that confidence stems from practice, knowledge, and experience. Mid‑speech, a woman in the front row waves a shoe, revealing a long strip of toilet paper stuck to Jillian’s shoe that trails across the stage. Instead of losing composure, Jillian acknowledges the mishap, asks the audience if anyone lost the paper, and continues unabated. The audience remembers the incident, and a listener tells her that the moment taught them about resilience. Jillian uses this story to illustrate that embarrassment only takes hold if you allow it, and that entrepreneurs must constantly face challenges—competitors, fatigue, criticism—and must own each moment, turn setbacks into respect, and stay mission‑driven. She concludes that confidence is built on preparation, that respect is earned through handling unexpected disruptions, and that believing in oneself is essential for leadership.
Chapters
Yes. Years ago, I was walking across the stage and I was, I literally was talking to 15,000 people. And I was a wee bit nervous, not a lot nervous, but I was a wee bit nervous. So I'm walking and, you know, they're introducing me and like, you know, like a gazillion people, but you can't see the gazillion people. You can only see the first row because the light is on, right? And I think to myself, all right, everything I teach, everything I believe them in, I've got to own right this second. I've got to be confident. I've got to exude energy. I've got to remember my shit. Sorry. I've got to remember all my points. I've got to get them across fast. I've got to distill it. I've got to own this stage. I've got this. All right. Not too much. Set. I walk, walk, walk. I'm walking, I'm walking. I'm feeling like really good. I plant myself there. I'm in front of the podium and I start talking. And I'm feeling good because I know See, the whole point of being confident is what? What makes you confident? Practice. Knowledge and experience. The knowledge in what you are saying. If you don't know what you're saying and if you don't know your numbers, if you don't know your finance, if you don't have a knowledge of the marketplace, if you don't know everything cold, you're not going to be confident and you cannot fool it. But on this particular day, I really actually felt really confident. So I'm standing in back of the podium and there is a woman. And I only see the first row. And she's holding up her shoe. And she's waving her shoe at me. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, I am not going to let this take me off, right? I'm going to keep focused, focused, focused, Jillian. And I have 5 billion people. And she is waving her shoe the entire time. Well, I got through this because I was laser focused and I had a purpose and I had a mission. And I'm very mission driven. And that's military. You've got to be very mission driven. I've got this. Toward the end, She took a little hanky out of her purse or wherever, and she put it on the shoe, and she's waving the shoe with the hanky and going like this to me. All right, now I'm finishing, so I'm good to go, all right? But I'm thinking, okay, this is a crazy person. I just looked down for a moment because she's pointing down. I thought, I don't know, I'm looking down. What I saw was a piece of toilet paper about this long that I trailed across the From the stage, on the back of my shoe, up to the podium. But you think the podium? No, the toilet paper, all the way out like a tail. I had a toilet paper tail. Oh. And I thought to myself, this is a moment. This is a moment. So I looked down, saw the toilet paper, and I thought— so I reached down, I picked it up, and I said, did anybody lose this? And to this day, I get people coming up to me and saying, I learned so much from that talk you did. That toilet paper did everything. I learned about— all they remember was the toilet paper. So, and you know why? There was this one woman who said to me, because you bounced back. You didn't miss a beat. You showed people— and I always say this to people— nobody can make you embarrassed, okay? The only way you get embarrassed If you let people embarrass you, right? And that moment, the one thing I wasn't going to allow is for someone to rob me of my power, okay? And if I had like crumbled, and this is really important for you guys because as an entrepreneur, people are taking chips out of you every single day. People are going to— you're going to have to pour in like a pitcher into the people who work for you. You're going to have to pour into your VCs who are investing in you. You are going to have to pour into your You have to believe in yourself and know that every moment someone's going to try to take you down. The competition is going to try to take you down. The lack of sleep is going to try to take you down. Everything actually does that. But if you can remember the toilet paper, and I'm sure now you're going to remember this, the only thing I'm going to remember today is that in a moment, there's a defining moment for every person, I think almost every day. And it's how you handle that one moment. Are you going to Are you gonna let it take you? Are you gonna let it walk you? Are you gonna let it take you down? No, you're gonna turn it around. You're gonna take that towards the apron and raise it. You're gonna turn around that moment. And I have to say that you try to gain a lot of respect in life, and you can't tell anybody to respect you. You just have to earn it. And interestingly, I earned it in that moment, and I didn't realize it. But it's all about believing in yourself. Owning that moment. Okay, the why.
