Why you should take a risk every day with Julie Zhuo
Worklife with Molly Graham
TED
4.8 • 9.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When you think about risk, you probably think about big, dramatic moves: quitting your job, moving across the country, saying something controversial. But the people who are actually good at taking risks are the ones who practice small challenges every day. Julie Zhuo was one of the earliest product and design leaders at Facebook, and is now the co-founder of Sundial, a company that uses AI to help organizations make better decisions. In this episode, Molly and Julie dissect what it actually means to take a risk and how you can build your risk-taking skills through daily practice. Julie reflects on her own risk-taking journey, the ways she has honed her abilities to challenge fear, her thinking on when you shouldn’t take a leap, and the important distinction between courage and fearlessness.
Featured guest
- Follow Julie Zhuo on Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, and at juliezhuo.com/
- Learn more about Sundial.ai
Connect with the team
- Follow Molly on Instagram, LinkedIn, and at glueclub.com/
- Subscribe to Molly’s Substack Lesson
- Watch WorkLife videos on YouTube at TEDAudioCollective
- Follow TED on X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok
For the full text transcript, visit https://www.ted.com/podcasts/worklife-transcripts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Most of us think about risk-taking at work the wrong way. |
| 0:05.6 | We imagine it as this big, dramatic thing. |
| 0:09.1 | Quit your job, start a company, say the thing that could get you fired. |
| 0:14.5 | And yes, I will admit that I have probably helped cement that version of risk in my own TED Talk. |
| 0:20.2 | Sorry. |
| 0:23.5 | But that way of thinking about risk has a side effect. It becomes all or nothing. You're either a risk taker or you're not. |
| 0:29.6 | If we think about risk taking that way, a lot gets left out. The question you didn't ask in the |
| 0:35.6 | meeting because you were worried it would make you look stupid, the feedback you've been sitting on for two weeks, the boundary you've been meaning to set, we don't call those risks. We just call them things we didn't do. And here's what I've come to believe. The people who are actually good at taking risks didn't get there by making one giant |
| 0:56.7 | leap, or even by taking big wrists over and over again. They built a practice, small uncomfortable |
| 1:04.2 | swings over and over, not until it stopped feeling scary, but until the fear stopped getting in |
| 1:10.6 | the way. |
| 1:11.6 | I know that's been true for me. |
| 1:14.4 | So today I want to explore how do you actually get better at taking risks? |
| 1:19.7 | And is it something that anyone can do? |
| 1:26.2 | I'm Molly Graham and this is Work Life, a show where we untangle the messy human side of work. |
| 1:32.3 | Today I'm talking to someone who has thought more carefully about the daily practice of risk than almost anyone I know. |
| 1:39.6 | Julie Zhu was one of the earliest design and product leaders at Facebook, where she helped build and manage |
| 1:44.3 | teams through some of the most explosive growth in tech history. She later wrote The Making of a |
| 1:50.1 | manager, which has become a field guide for first-time leaders, and is now the co-founder of Sundial, |
| 1:55.5 | a company using AI to help organizations make better decisions. Julie is a craftsman and not just in design. When she wants |
| 2:04.4 | to understand something, she dives in deep and builds a whole practice around it. For example, |
| 2:10.0 | she did that with writing, one blog post a week for a year, and then landed a book deal. One of the |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 4 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.