It's organized chaos. Everything is different. You have a sound check—a very thorough sound check—to make sure that everything is worked out so smoot… - Erika Jayne

After a year of working in the restaurant, one night I decided to slip Tom my telephone number. We were standing in front of the giant fireplace. 'Did you hear I was single?' I asked. The next day his secretary called me and said, 'Mr. Girardi would like to know if you're free to have dinner this evening.' 'Absolutely not,' I told her. 'Tell Mr. Girardi if he wants to take me out on a date, he needs to call me himself and ask me and give me enough time to prepare.' You know how men are, especially if they are successful. They expect you to drop everything right away. That's not how I work, I don't care who you are. He did call me back himself, and he asked me out on a date like a gentleman.

But surprisingly, once I started to reveal a little more of my unguarded self, people didn’t really seem to mind. I found that I could connect to them on a more human level.

So TED Pasadena reached out to me in the spring of last year and asked if I'd be interested in doing a [TED] Talk. I was totally blown away because I would have never thought that would even come across my universe. I said yes, and it's the hardest thing I've ever done. I thought that talking about my own life wouldn't be that challenging but it turned out that it was. If anyone gets a chance to do [one] I highly recommend it because it's very challenging. You know, I still haven't watched mine. I still won't watch it.