(Photo: David Firestine/Firestine Photography)
At age 12, Molly Bloom confidently told her father that she didn't have a hero. She decided that her hero would be her future self, the girl she will become. At the same age she was diagnosed with scoliosis, which put her competitive mogul skier career in jeopardy. Her first question out of surgery was "when can I get back on the snow?" The doctor told her to get a new hobby, but skiing wasn't a hobby, it was a dream. For the first time in her life, no one was her cheerleader, so she had to cheer on herself. She describes this relentless voice in her head saying she was done.
In her BenefitsPRO Broker Expo keynote presentation, Molly Bloom says that you can start investigating in the thinking mind and decide what to believe, and what to dismiss. Molly decided to believe in herself and her abilities. At 19, she made the U.S. Ski Team, and at 20, she made the Olympic qualifiers.
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"If I hadn't decided to take control of my life, I wouldn't be there," Bloom says.
While many know her as the 'Poker Princess' and the author of the book Molly's Game, she knows herself as someone who values integrity and resilience. Her boss in L.A. saw that in her, too. After he asked her to run his underground poker games filled with millionaires and celebrities, Bloom saw an opportunity "to get in front of powerful people and create a network".
Bloom succeeds in creating this network by using effective presence which is the science of how you make people feel. She says "everybody is going to affect people in a negative or positive way; positive effective presence is incredibly important when dealing with other people, trying to build a community and having a customer-based career." She started solving problems she wasn't asked to solve, making deep connections, and started to cultivate true relationships with these people. Then, she created her high-stake poker games in L.A. from these skills.
After eight months, she got information from real poker players to find the holes in the current system. She took a calculated risk and moved her games to New York, and created the biggest poker games in the U.S.
"If you don't take a risk, you don't win. No risk, no story," Bloom says.
Two years after her last poker game, Bloom got arrested by the FBI. Speaking to her lawyer, she asked what their angle and strategy was going to be in her case. His answer is simple: integrity. One simple word was her wakeup call. She had lost herself and all she wanted was her integrity and her name.
"This was my fault. These decisions I made were completely my fault… I had to accept that and then I had to forgive myself," Bloom says. "I had to keep elevating my mindset and re-narrating it over and over again, until I was willing to believe in myself again. Stop looking for the evidence of whether or not you are good enough and just go.
"Don't let failure and life with all of its uncertainty and injustice, and even your own bad decisions, scare you away from taking another calculated risk. Risk is how we live and how we stay alive."
But, Bloom didn't want to let her story end there, it couldn't end there. She had more in her, so she decided she had to take an informed risk. She wrote her book, which didn't do too well. However, she contacted the best screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, to bring her story to life. From her persistence and resilience, came the Oscar-nominated film, Molly's Game.
Molly's story and words aren't just about poker. They are about perseverance, believing in yourself, and valuing integrity.
