The comedian Sarah Cooper has “suddenly” blown up. As recently as 2014 she was still “aspiring”, but now – six years later – she has published two popular books, has 148k subscribers to her YouTube Channel, has been name checked by Jerry Seinfeld, and been credited with being one of the few people who has figured out how to satirize President Trump.
She told her story on The Product Breakfast Club Podcast in 2018. The interview was rebroadcast recently on the Jake and Jonathan Podcast.
The first step of Sarah’s big break came in 2007. She was in a meeting at Yahoo when a manager got up and drew a Venn Diagram on a whiteboard that made no sense and had nothing to do with what they had been discussing. She wrote in her notebook, “how to look smart in a meeting, draw a Venn Diagram.”
Seven years later, “after leaving Yahoo, becoming an actress, going broke, and then joining Google (because she needed money)”, she came across the notebook. She decided to make a blog post out of her 2014 note called “10 tricks to appear smart during meetings” and put it online. It took off – within a week it had a million views. She was on her way.
During his interview, Jake asked whether Sarah thought it would have been better to write her post in 2007 instead of waiting seven years. Her response resonated deeply with me. Here’s what she had to say:
Looking back I had so many ideas, you know, I have so many notebooks with all these random ideas. (Finding the notebook) was kind of a moment of, wow, there's a lot of things that I think of and I create that I don't take seriously enough to share and I don't take seriously enough to do something with.
And I think that it was kind of a revelation for me and that there's probably lots of missed opportunities every day that we all have that we never really pursue.
Ideas are powerful. Innovation comes from the edges – when someone doing the work recognizes a better way. Change happens when we stand up and act.
We need your ideas. We need the changes you see. Are you ready to get started?