Daniel H. Pink is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including his latest, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. His other books include the New York Times bestsellers When and A Whole New Mind — as well as the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. Dan’s books have won multiple awards, have been translated into 46 languages, and have sold millions of copies around the world. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.

Daniel Pink

You don’t build a great company by hiring “professional managers.” You build it by growing great contributors into leaders.
The best managers aren’t chasing the title, they’d rather keep building. But they step up because no one else can do it as well as they can.
Great leadership is earned in the trenches, not in the boardroom.

#1 New York Times bestselling author of 7 books.

After 30 years studying business and human behavior, here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Some of the most popular advice doesn’t help you.

It holds you back.

You can’t be anything, but you can become something meaningful.

Do great work, follow what challenges you, and let skill lead.

You learn more in one month of doing something than in three months of thinking about doing something.

After 30 years studying human development, here’s the most underrated skill:
Design your environment, or it will design you.
You don’t need more discipline. You need fewer obstacles. Make the right thing easy, the wrong thing hard, and behavior changes on autopilot.

Here’s your reminder to spend your time intentionally.

How much time left

"Follow your passion" is a fast track to going broke, and "You can be anything" is a lie. 

After 61 years, here are the 5 pieces of popular advice I’ve learned to ignore.

Your need to be right is costing you.

We often confuse "intelligence" with the ability to win a debate. But in the real world, stubbornness isn’t a strength. It’s a liability.

Intellectual Humility

After 30 years of creative work, here’s what actually works:
Protect your best thinking time. Start before you feel ready. Step away so ideas can catch up.
Creativity isn’t talent. It’s timing, momentum, and recovery.

Here’s a question most career advice ignores: who did you marry?
Research shows your partner’s discipline and dependability quietly shape your success by reducing mental load and creating a stable base to perform from.
Choose wisely, and just as important, be that person because who you love can shape how far you go. Inspired by @profgalloway

You just have to unlearn what dimmed your creativity.

Solving all your problems won’t make you happier. Your brain just finds new ones.

We’re wired for challenge, not comfort. Do something hard, then come back and notice how different your ordinary life feels.

Shouts to Michael Easter!

Citation: Levari, D. E., Gilbert, D. T., Wilson, T. D., Sievers, B., Amodio, D. M., & Wheatley, T. (2018). Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgment. Science, 360(6396), 1465–1467. https://lnkd.in/gXyap59X

Prevalence

I’m a keynote speaker and leadership trainer who helps people come alive at work. I activate clarity, confidence, and courage so leaders and teams stop holding back and start speaking up, taking initiative, and contributing at the highest level at work and in the world.

If you’re a meeting planner, association executive, program director, or speaker bureau agent, here’s what you need to know: I deliver motivational, story-rich, interactive keynotes that leave audiences energized and equipped. My sessions blend research, relatable storytelling, live audience engagement, and (sometimes) music. Attendees walk away with tools they can use immediately to increase confidence, clarity, and connection. I'm not just a motivator; I'm an activator.

For nearly 20 years, I’ve helped organizations navigate change, strengthen culture, and develop people-first leaders. Before launching UNMUTED, I spent 13 years leading award-winning culture and wellbeing initiatives inside corporate America.

🎙️ What I speak on:
• Self-leadership & employee engagement
• Boosting confidence and contribution at work
• Leading through change / resilience
• Human-centric, character-driven leadership

My signature keynotes include: UNMUTED: Come Alive at Work, UNMUTED Leadership, Be the Difference, and The Power of Borrowed Belief in Leadership

🎯 Why planners book me:
I don’t just “give a keynote.” I create a transformative audience experience. I personalize every session through pre-event interviews, weave in industry stories, engage the room throughout, and leave people with practical next steps, not hype. Planners often say I’m engaging, authentic, memorable, and incredibly easy to work with.

⭐️ Who I’ve worked with: Deloitte, Sherwin-Williams, Citizens Bank, SHRM, American Heart Association, Adventist Health, Indiana Apartment Association, and hundreds of associations and organizations.

Recognitions include Best of Stage Speaker (Smart Meetings), Forbes Next1000, and #1 Health Promotion Professional in the U.S.

As a TEDx speaker and singer-songwriter, I sometimes blend music and message to create moments audiences never forget.

👉 If you’re planning a conference, association meeting, leadership summit, or annual event and want an engaging, motivational speaker who delivers both inspiration and action, let’s connect: www.RachelDruckenmiller.com, rachel@racheldruckenmiller.com.

💪 CliftonStrengths: Achiever, Strategic, Ideation, Significance, Activator
❤️ Married to Bill, my college sweetheart
🎶 Singer-songwriter
🦚 Peacock enthusiast
✨ Enneagram 3

Rachel Druckenmiller 🗣

Eeek! I just earned my Certified Speaking Professional™ (CSP®) designation, the highest credential in professional speaking! 🎉

Only 17% of National Speakers Association members ever earn it. It takes 5+ years of hitting revenue minimums, hundreds of speaking engagements, video footage showcasing your skills on stage, and nearly two dozen clients willing to vouch for you in writing.

But this journey didn’t start on big stages making the big bucks.

It started in 2008 with a $75 guest lecture to graduate students before I even had a graduate degree myself.

It was musty conference rooms and lunch-and-learns for 12 people about eating for energy. Unpaid 8am Thursday workshops for HR leaders on building thriving cultures at work.

It was saying yes to my first national keynote in 2016 with no professional speaking training, even though I wasn't the most qualified person on paper.

It was burning out in 2017 and realizing I wasn't living the life I was meant to live.

In 2018, I spoke at an event for my employer at the time. I thought it was going to be my tryout, a chance for the higher-ups to finally see me do my thing. After I got off stage, one of the leaders pulled me aside and asked, "What do you really want to be doing?"

"Oh, this," I said without hesitation. "I want to be doing this all the time."

That same year, I cleared out my savings account to invest in professional speaking training because something in me knew it was the step I needed to take.

It was leaving a 6-figure corporate job of 13 years in 2019 to bet on myself and launch UNMUTED.

It was turning my mess into my message, speaking through a spinal fracture during the pandemic, teaching resilience as I was building it myself.

And now, after reaching tens of thousands of people around the world with messages of courage, confidence, and hope, this moment feels so special.

To every client who hired me, who bet on me, who gave me a shot when I was still figuring it out: you made this possible. You believed in me, and for that, I’m grateful.

And to the version of me giving that $75 lecture in 2008, wondering if any of it mattered:

Keep showing up.
Borrow other people's belief in you.
Allow the unfolding.

Unmute yourself.

This is what you were born to do.

🎉

Rachel Druckenmiller, CSP®

Keynote Speaker | Get UNMUTED and Come Alive at Work | Self-Leadership Expert | Singer-Songwriter | TEDx Speaker

My Lyft driver, David, shouldn't be alive today.

He's a former U.S. Marine who survived an IED attack in Iraq that killed most of his unit. He wasn't supposed to make it. He died on the operating table…and came back to life.

For years after coming home, he slept two hours a night at best, didn't leave his house, and wrestled with PTSD and addiction.

Today, he spends his time helping other veterans heal. And after doctors told him his injuries would make it biologically impossible for him to have a child of his own, he became a dad at 51.

The fact that he’s alive is a miracle, and his daughter is proof of that, too.

As we pulled up to my hotel, he told me this:

"I don't live in the past because I can't change what happened ten seconds ago. I don't live in the future because I can't control what happens ten seconds from now. I live in the present because it's all we really have."

Wisdom from someone who really gets what it means to feel alive.

Before I walked away, I handed him a little You Matter star sticker and told him, "You're here for a reason. Keep living like it."

He smiled.

Every day, we meet people carrying stories and struggles we know nothing about. 

That’s why it’s so important to be the kind of person who makes everybody feel like a Somebody.

Because everyone you meet is a miracle.

💛

"Oh hell no. Competitions are where I'm least stressed because people get to see what I do. That's why I do it. So I can share my work."

That's what gold medal figure skater Alysa Liu said on whether performing stresses her out.

She's not skating to win approval. She's skating to share her art.

And the joy she exudes on the ice, the way she smiles and has fun, makes that so clear.

I think about this a lot with my music.

Someone asked me recently if my music has been successful.

I didn't even know what they meant. Downloads? Streams? Followers on Spotify? Revenue?

Why does any of that matter if I'm doing the brave thing instead of the safe thing and sharing my art with the world?

I'm creating for the sake of creating. To share my joy and to play, not to meet some external standard of success that someone else made up.

So many of us hold back and mute what’s inside of us because we're afraid of what people will think.

We don't share the thing we made. We don't say the thing we wanted to say. We wait until it's perfect, until we're sure other people will approve of it.

But that's not our mission.

Our mission is to create. To put our art into the world, whatever form it takes. To make the contribution only we can make.

And here's something else Alysa said that resonated with me deeply in my own journey as an artist:

"I love struggling, actually. It makes me feel alive."

The struggle isn't the obstacle to the art. The struggle IS the art. It's part of the story.

Most great art was born out of deep struggle. And when we struggle, when we have to dig deep within ourselves, we come alive.

So stop holding back or waiting for something to be flawless before you express it. 

Sing your song.
Write the post.
Share your art.

Unmute yourself.

✨

What would you create and share if you weren't afraid of what people thought? What are you waiting for?

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She walked back into the classroom and burst into tears.

A little girl was feeling low on confidence. Her classmates noticed, and instead of ignoring it, they did something about it.

While she was out of the room, they covered her entire desk and chair with dozens of sticky notes to remind her of who she really is:

"You're kind."
"You're a hard worker."
"You have a great personality."
"Keep being you."

When she walked back in and saw what they'd done, she covered her face with her hands and cried. Then she ran over to the friend whose idea it was to do this and gave her a hug.

Her teacher shared the moment on social media: "This was 100% their idea. When students learn to champion each other, that's the real win."

🥹

I know how that little girl felt.

I struggled with confidence and feeling like I belonged for most of grade school. I felt alone a lot. It was a tough time in my life.

In 8th grade, my teacher handed each of us a rectangular piece of paper. We wrote our name at the top and passed it around the room. Every single classmate wrote something affirming about their peers.

Almost 30 years later, I still have that piece of paper.

And reading what they wrote reminds me that sometimes people actually like us more than we realize. My classmates wrote these things about me:

“Always there looking out for you.”
“A great friend and very smart.”
“She’s really cool and funny.”
“Kind-hearted.”
“Trustworthy.”

Re-reading their words as an adult still means a lot. It’s a reminder of who I've always been in the eyes of others, even when I couldn't see it myself.

Like a lot of people, sometimes I focus on all that I’m not instead of all that I am.

Sometimes we lose sight of who we are. We doubt ourselves. We feel small.

That's why we need mirrors, people who reflect back to us what we may not see.

You can be that mirror for someone today.

Send a text.
Write a note.
Tell them what you value about them.

Your words might mean so much that they’ll stick with them for decades.

Unmute yourself.

Speak life over someone today.

Be the reason they feel like a Somebody.

🩷

They saw it before I did.

Because so many of us are blind to our own brilliance. That's why we need other people to reflect it back to us.

Years before I left my job to speak full-time, people asked me when I was going to make the move. They believed I could do it. I just didn't have the courage at first.

That's what made this week so special.

I'm so humbled by all of the comments and congratulations you shared in response to my CSP announcement. I wouldn't be here without you, all the people who believed in me before I believed in myself.

People who hired me for events even though I had no speaking training. Booked me in industries I had no experience in. Saw something in me I couldn't yet see in myself.

All of us have people who have done that for us. We borrowed their belief before we had our own. And I couldn't have done this without the following people: 

Alyssa and Nathan, who did the tedious work of putting my application together.

Shelby, who answered a thousand questions about the process.

Dawn, my CSP mom, who shepherded me through the process.

The speakers who earned their CSP before me and made me realize: if they can do it, I can do it, too.

When you doubt yourself, call on someone else.

Borrow their belief in you.

Who believed in you before you believed in yourself?

Send them a note to thank them today.

None of us gets anywhere of significance alone, and too many people don't know the positive impact they've had on us. It's time to let them know :)

🩷

Thank you, National Speakers Association!

Some people go to bat for you. Some people show up and cheer you on. And then there are the people who do both.

People like Angela and Courtney Goble.

They took a chance on me and invited me to keynote a conference for one of their clients. That alone meant a lot, but what they did next was even more meaningful.

They showed up the day of the event, on a Friday afternoon, when they could’ve been anywhere else.

Not distracted in the back of the room checking emails on their laptops. Not popping in for a few minutes before running off to the next thing.

They sat in the front row, eyes on me, smiling, laughing, clapping — showing their support through their presence the entire time.

They made me feel valued, like I was Somebody who mattered to them.

Think about your own life.

Who's gone to bat for you?

Who’s said your name in rooms you weren't in? Vouched for you? Showed up and cheered you on when it mattered most?

Keep those people close.

Because when someone believes in you enough to bet on you AND shows up to support you in the moment, it makes you want to become the person they believe you to be.

You become better by borrowing their belief in you.

You can be that person for someone today. 

Go to bat for them. Make an introduction. Open the door to an opportunity they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

And then sit in the front row to cheer them on. Show up and be the kind of person who makes them feel like a Somebody.

🎉

Who's done that for you?
(Have you thanked them lately?)

I used to think I had to impress people with how smart I was, that if I could just show them how much I knew, they'd listen to me.

I was wrong.

Here's what I've learned about what they actually care about.

Before every keynote, I ask a handful of people who will be in the room a simple question that changed how I show up on stage:

✨ What do the people in that room most need to hear right now?

I've probably never worked in their industry or done what they do, so I want to make sure what I share is relevant and relatable, and the only way to know that is to ask them. I don't want to assume anything.

You know what people never say when I ask that question?

"We need more charts, data, and information."

Nope. No one says that.

Sure, people say they want “tangible takeaways,” but the speakers we remember don't just inform us, they transform us.

You know what they tell me their peers need to hear, regardless of industry?

"We value you. You’re worthy. You're doing a great job."

"You're a good person. Give yourself some credit."

"We're going to get through this."

"Your voice matters. Use it.”

"You're not alone."

People don't need us to be impressive.

They're not sitting in the audience thinking about how smart we are. They want someone on stage who genuinely cares about them, "gets" them, understands what they're up against, and can help them overcome it.

They want to walk away feeling clear, capable and confident, compelled to make changes in their life or work. 

And if that’s going to happen, they need us to be open, honest, vulnerable, and real.

They need us to be human.

Because that's what connects us and wakes us up: feeling seen, valued, and supported, knowing we're not alone.

And that's what I want every person in the room to walk away feeling.

✨

What's something a speaker said or did that stuck with you after you left the room?

His silence drove me crazy, and my explosions scared him. The more he withdrew, the more I pushed. The more I pushed, the more he shut down.

For years, Bill went silent during conflict, and I let it eat away at me before I blew up. Neither of us knew how to handle it well.

We kept repeating the same cycle, frustrated and wondering why nothing ever got resolved. We were both muting ourselves, and it wasn't working.

Then, two years into our marriage, we went on a couples retreat where we finally started to understand each other. I learned that Bill needed space to process, and I needed reassurance, to know he had my back and wasn't going to pull away when things got hard or I felt scared.

At that retreat, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly-Hunt said something that forever changed how we view conflict:

✨ "Conflict is growth trying to happen.” 

From that perspective, conflict can be a catalyst for growth and connection. And what matters most isn’t the rupture. It's how you repair it.

Sometimes we awkwardly stumble through hard conversations like a baby learning to walk. But if we can push through the discomfort, we build greater trust on the other side of being honest and vulnerable.

We often silence ourselves to protect relationships from conflict, but that silence actually starves us of depth and true intimacy. And explosions don't help either. They just create more distance and make the other person feel unsafe.

Real connection requires honesty, not perfect words or perfect timing, just saying, kindly and clearly, "This is what I need to feel connected to and safe with you."

And when we mess up or fall short (because all of us will), we show each other grace and compassion, own our part, and say, "I care about you. Can we have a do-over?"

That's what repair looks like.

This isn't just true in marriage. It's true in any relationship that matters.

Bill and I aren't perfect. We still have uncomfortable conversations. But we've learned that the goal isn't to avoid rupture; it's to get to repair and reconnection as quickly as possible.

So unmute yourself.

Ask for what you need.

Speak the truth with care.

Own your part in what's not working.

And commit to kindness, grace, and repair.

💛

What's something you've learned about navigating conflict in your closest relationships?

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Rachel Druckenmiller 🗣

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The Battle

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