[0:00]well first off it's really a privilege to be here I think that the energy in this room it's palpable um and it's throwing a lot of ideas through my head um and and last night actually after
[0:11]sharing dinner with some of the speakers um you know I uh ended up changing my entire talk last minute so when we're talking about add and having ideas swarm through your head and kind of grabbing
[0:23]hold of one I think I I fit into that but I'd like to begin my talk with with this man this is George Bernard Shaw he's the 20th century Irish playright um he's famous for a lot of things he said
[0:34]a lot of brilliant things but the quote that we've really latched on to at the unreasonable Institute is this one George Bernard sha he said that the reasonable man adapts himself to the
[0:44]world the unreasonable one persists in adapting the world to himself therefore all progress is dependent on the unreasonable person and so at the unreasonable Institute we work with
[0:54]about 25 entrepreneurs a year we help accelerate their companies how do you go from a, customers to a million customers right these entrepreneurs they cultural
[1:04]their political their their intellectual Misfits right they're wielding entrepreneurship and Market Force is to really have an impact on the world and so we bring our entrepreneurs from all
[1:14]around the world from Nigerian working with a quarter million small holder rural Farmers to woman and Rural Pakistan working on the prevention of Honor killing to brilliant
[1:24]biotechnologist in Argentina working on Ultra affordable DNA Diagnostics devices now and normally in a talk like this I jump really deep into the unreasonable Institute i' tell you what we do how we
[1:36]do it a little bit of our story more about our entrepreneurs but I wanted to do something a little bit different you know Ted is always dedicated to to ideas worth spreading and something that I've
[1:46]seen today kind of felt throughout all the talks is this tilt towards action right and so instead of talking about our entrepreneurs I kind of want to talk about ourselves a little bit instead of
[1:56]just telling stories focusing on some of the models that we use at the reasonable Institute in terms of determining what it is that ignites us that gets us on fire that makes these entrepreneurs so
[2:06]damn obsessive with their ideas that they work 110 hours a week um and so Jim Collins who here is familiar with the Hedgehog concept with Jim Collins that there's a couple right so Jim Collins
[2:18]says that to find out what you could be best in the world at to be really great at you need to find the intersection of three circles a typical V diagram right so the first thing he says that you
[2:28]really should focus on ask yourself a question what am I naturally wired to do right what's my biggest talent this isn't just what am I good at right this
[2:38]is what he says genetically encoded I actually have a similar story Jim Collins and that I love math right I was I was always a couple years ahead in math and I remember I stepped into a theoretical math class and I quickly
[2:50]realized I may be good at math but I'm not genetically encoded to do this right so what is it that you just always had this natural talent to and the second
[3:00]Circle that he says is is think about where you really add value right this this isn't riches this is make a living that's it right what how can I combine my talent with making a living right
[3:11]because if you can't survive off of this you can't really lead it um and I think that this is something important to point out this is really dangerous if you just have these two circles I was just talking to Jose is Jose in the
[3:21]audience still maybe not um now just talking to Jose though um he was telling me a story he was a banker right so he took what he was really talented with at and he combined that with making a living but he had stopped there for most
[3:32]of his life right he's missing something Andrew similar kind of story right you're good at advertising you're making a living out it but you're missing something right and Jim Collins says that what you're missing you're missing passion right you're missing flow you're
[3:44]missing that thing that if you woke up every morning you would think to yourself oh man I am so lucky I get paid to do this this is crazy right so Jim
[3:55]Collins he stops here at the unreasonable Institute where we think that he's missing one critical one critical ingredient we call this CTF W it's an acronym and it stands for change
[4:06]the [ __ ] world and I say that intentionally and I want you all to say it with me once just change change the [ __ ] world there it is right it feels good right if you can combine all four
[4:17]of these things you're the luckiest person Al alive right and this is my problem with v diagrams is that that's a really really really small point right so I'd like to change that and say you know really if we could kind of bake
[4:29]that cake with with these four ingredients we could do incredible things but you know how do you go from realizing that how do you go from ideation to actualization right how do you really make this a reality and I
[4:40]think it's a huge mystery right sometimes we'll find that thing that ignites us that lights us on fire but how do we really take that to the next level how do we do what what Andrew did right through his personal story um and
[4:51]we really focus on three things the first the reason I believe that entrepreneurship is the answer to most every issue we face today is because at the root of entrepreneur right the
[5:01]reason the word so hard to spell is because its roots are French and and what it stands for is to take into one's own hands right so that's the first thing is once you find that thing that
[5:11]lights you on fire it's up to you to make this thing really a reality right and to ignore the Skeptics into persevere through you know Martin Luther King when he was taking his master's course in public speaking he got a C
[5:23]right if he would have listened to the Skeptics right you would not have gone on to become one of the greatest orators of our time the second thing I want to talk about is risk and failure and how important that is to success and the
[5:34]last is luck right how important luck is but I'll make an argument it's a little bit unreasonable I believe that you can really make your own luck and that luck actually doesn't exist how we think but it can be strategic so we'll go into
[5:46]some stories with that the first person I'd like to talk about is Babe Ruth because I think his story is really interesting you know he's best known for having the world
[5:55]record for home runs for 75 years what people don't know is that although he doesn't hold that record he still holds one record it's the most strikeouts in the history of baseball right like
[6:06]that's incredible talking about the importance of failure towards success and really embracing it there's another story Tom Watson he was the CEO of IBM this is a really fun story um he had an
[6:17]employee she was new to the company she'd come in a couple weeks into working at IBM she made a big decision a pivotal decision she didn't ask for anybody's approval or advice well she
[6:26]lost IBM $10 million lost l the company $10 million in the first couple weeks Tom Watson calls her into his office right she walks in what does she expect
[6:36]she expects that he's going to fire her right so she sits down he goes what do you think I'm going to do she goes you're going to fire me he goes no we just spent $10 million on your education
[6:47]right if we can if we can Embrace failure and we can learn from our failures wow we can do incredible incredible things you know another good
[6:57]story is is Thomas Edison uh he he worked on creating the light bulb and he tried thousands of different ways and there's a report of that asked him and he has this famous line where she asked him she says you know you failed
[7:07]thousands of times like you must be crazy right you must be unreasonable and he says I didn't fail a thousand times I learned a thousand ways not to make the light ball right it's that it's that level and that kind of embracing of
[7:19]failure as lessons that really really leads to us actualizing these dreams um you know I often find that is interesting you're talking about travel and and I always talk about the saling
[7:29]Paradox right is which is when we set sail we always wish for smooth tranquil peaceful season good weather right but when you come back to shore when you dock up what are the stories you tell
[7:41]you never ever ever tell those stories right it's always about the tumultuous season the storms and the Pirates um you know that those are the things that we remember and so to get out of our comfort zone right that's where life
[7:52]really really lives um and it's something that we really adhere to is you know what what is it that 20 years from now when you look back on your life what is it that you'll regret and won't
[8:03]regret right and often times it's about setting free and getting out into the Seas um so I wanted to do a couple experiments couple experiments in luck um there's a scientist his name is Dr
[8:14]Weissman he's out of the UK he wrote a book called The Luck factor and his question was eight years of experiments on luck his his question was can you teach luck right can people you know are
[8:25]they actually lucky and there's unlucky people in there have a black cloud over their heads or is there something more behind luck so I wanted to start with this experiment that they ran it's called the bank robber um so I'll just
[8:35]ask you guys okay so five years from now things have really changed um you're no longer in Fort Wayne you're on Wall Street right you're an i banker and you're doing incredible things and you're really good at your job and
[8:46]you're making tons of money and your boss one day he asked you he says hey can you take this check down to the bank we need to cash this they needs to get deposited before the market closes right so you're in a big hurry you're a really
[8:57]busy person but you're like okay you listen to to your boss so you take that check you go down to the bank you're in New York city so the bank you walk into the doors and it's massive right there's there's marble pillars marble walls everywhere and there's actually there's
[9:09]a pretty big line because there's only one teller that day so okay you know you're busy but you have to wait in line but that's okay so about 20 minutes later you get up to the tell you're at the front of the line you're about to
[9:19]give her the check and then all of a sudden boom right bank robber busts into the bank and he's got two massive guns two M16s and he takes these guns and
[9:28]he's like there's a robbery listen up he starts shooting right and what he's doing he's he's actually not a bad guy he's just trying to scare you right he just wants you to take him seriously so
[9:38]you dive to the ground but one of these bullets it ricochets off a pillar right hits hits one of the walls comes back hits you in the arm right hits you in the left arm you got you got shot right
[9:48]this this hurts pretty bad so you pass out so you wake up in the hospital the next day and you wake up you're alive right you got shot on the left arm but what goes through your head are you
[9:58]lucky or or are you unlucky and just take a second just think about that are you lucky or are you unlucky so how how many people here think that they're unlucky raise your hands don't be shy
[10:09]why why do you think you're unlucky you didn't get the cash to the check you didn't get the cash the check anybody else unlucky unlucky yes you were in the bank you were in the bank when it got robbed wrong place wrong time wrong place wrong time that makes a lot of
[10:21]sense who who who here thinks that they were lucky wow this is a really lucky audience yes why why were you lucky you're live you're live right because you got shot on the left arm your heart
[10:32]is right here why why why else are you lucky who else raised your hand yes quality of life is not as bad as it could have been sh in your arm not in your head not in your heart not in a V organ you recover yeah yeah absolutely
[10:42]absolutely yeah I got one hell of a story to tell people you got one hell you're uh you're you're standard deviation off in the experiment so so there's two big groups
[10:56]of people actually the most common is actually unlucky right yeah you're in the wrong place at the wrong time bake robbers don't exist right like you you got shot and that just doesn't happen right and it was It was kind of just
[11:07]this perfect scenario where you know kind of a little bit of a course that happened to you but statistically it's unlucky right the second most common answer is I'm pretty lucky I'm alive right like thank goodness and I I'm I'm
[11:18]you know there's nothing permanent um but where it gets really interesting is they surveyed about 2,000 people and it's the standard deviations that were fascinating right you had this one side
[11:29]of far far far to the left where they're saying that mathematically you can't consider yourself lucky right they look at the people who are lucky and they say you're an idiot because this is impossible bank robbers don't exist you
[11:40]had to be in the perfectly wrong place at the perfectly wrong time your odds are one in a trillion if that actually getting shot and they actually they'll get aggressive about it right they'll say you can't think you're lucky they can't understand that and then you get
[11:52]this other standard deviation the other crazies right over here who don't even say they're lucky they say this is awesome I got a killer story scar now nobody gets shoted
[12:04]by amazing and what's so interesting about this experiment is everybody was told the exact same story put in the exact same situation and you went from
[12:14]somebody who said it's impossible to think you're lucky to somebody who thinks it's awesome that they got shot right so half of luck half of luck is perception right it's about how we perceive the different events in our
[12:25]life our interactions with people and and so on um you know another really interesting experiment it had to do with relationships um so there is this guy who's you know he loves women but he's
[12:37]he's just so so scared of them he can't talk to women he stutters he sweats he's never kissed a girl in his entire life he's four years old he's never been on a date we need to name this guy does anybody have a name it could be anything
[12:48]here name Leonard what was that Leonard Leonard oh that's awesome so so so Leonard right so so he's just over 40 he loves women he's never been able to approach them so he has a pretty big
[12:59]issue and he goes and he sees this lady who's kind of like the real world hitch right she's she helps out men who are struggling through relationships and he goes and sees her and she tries all these experiments on him these different you know different ways to solve his
[13:11]problem and after the eighth session nothing's working right and so at the eth session session she tries something totally different she goes Leonard we're going to do something new and she's like but what I'm going to ask you to do you have to promise me that you're going to
[13:22]do you have to promise right and Leonard looks at her you can kind of imagine the kind of guy Leonard is and he's like I'm not going to promise you I'm going do this I don't know what it is right and she goes no you have to promise me she goes you know what I'll guarantee you if
[13:33]if this doesn't work right the thing I tell you to do if it doesn't work all of your sessions are free and in fact I'm going to pay you what you're paying me right so you're going to make money if this doesn't work so Leonard says oh yeah of course it's not going to work so
[13:44]I want to get paid so you know no problem of course and she goes no Leonard you have to promise right he goes okay I promise she goes okay I want you take the next 30 days and over the course of the next 30 days ask 75 women
[13:55]out on a date and fail 75 times you have to get rejected 75 times in 30 days right for the first time in his life Leonard's like well okay you know I can do that
[14:06]um she says Leonard Leonard you can't you can't be creepy right like I'm going to give you a one liner um and you just have to use that so it's scripted right what you have to do is go up to a girl
[14:16]say hey I think you're beautiful my name's Leonard I'd love to take you on a date would you go on a date with me that's it really simple right and so it's interesting Leonard says okay yeah of course I can do that right because two things have happened one she's
[14:27]flipped the Paradigm of success ESS right she said that it's successful to get NOS right for the first time in his life he can actually do this he can get rejected and the second is she scripted it right he can't talk to women so she
[14:38]scripted it so he doesn't even have to think right so he gets out of her office goes to the coffee shop you know Hears A girl laughing in the corner goes up there he's like hey you know I think you're really beautiful my name's Leonard I'd like to take you on a date would you go on a date with me she goes
[14:49]no right of course no but what's important is that is the first woman in his entire life that he's asked out on a date right and so he goes out again he ask another girl she says say no ask
[14:59]another no no no no no right he gets to the 10th ask and all of a sudden he gets a yes right so he calls up a psychiatrist and he's like oh my goodness you know I'm cured I got a date I got a date and she goes okay Leonard that's great but how many times have you
[15:10]failed and he goes 10 times or nine times right and she goes no you promised me 75 times right go back out there and fail he's like oh okay so he goes back out there ask a woman out of date you
[15:21]know no no no no no yes right no yes no no no no yes and then she has about five days right he calls her back up and says no really I'm curious have five dates right it's been two weeks five dates so
[15:32]she's like okay come into my office so he comes into her office Leonard sits down um and and she looks at him and she goes well how many times did you fail he's like 36 times 36 times Leonard you
[15:42]promised me 75 times go back out there right like wow okay so he goes back out asks again asks again and at the end of the story he can't fail 75 times right
[15:52]he stops at the 10th date he couldn't get 75 failures in 30 days comes back into her office after the 30 days sits down and it's like I'm Kieran and she goes yeah yeah you are Kieran uh and so
[16:03]so this story is one of my favorite stories what they did is they flipped the Paradigm of success it Embrace failure towards success um it shows the other side of luck which is Pursuit right Pursuit he had to make those asss
[16:15]a perception that he was perceiving failure as success so when I used to tell this story to my friends or whoever it was every guy in the room for the most part they go oh we have to do that right like every single
[16:26]guy that always came up uh and there's one time I was sitting down with a really good friend of mine um and and he's from Germany he's a really good-look guy he's really intelligent he has a huge heart but he's pretty shy
[16:38]right and he was telling me about this girl that he really liked and I was like well look look you know just ask her out on a date nothing bad's going to happen just tell her how you feel and he's like I can't do that and so I told him the story of Leonard right and then and then
[16:49]he like leans across the table we're having dinner and he's like we have to do that I need this right I'm like do you really want to do this you serious everybody says that he's like we have to do this and so the next day 10 of us we
[16:59]got together in this attic right we got a bunch of pizza and we started something that we called project Paradox right this this was a massive social experiment in getting over ourselves right like getting over social
[17:11]constructions of what is appropriate what is okay what is right and pursuing Success Through failure and so we all pulled in $100 which was a heck of a lot of money for for a bunch of sophomores
[17:21]we pulled in $100 and we said that the person who could get the most points and I'll explain this in a second who could f fa the most over the course of a month that they they would win right they
[17:31]would get the prize um and so how our point system worked was if you asked a girl out on a date and she said she said no you get one point if she said yes you
[17:39]get minus two points right now if if you took her out on the date you'd get your two points back it would nullify it the thing we were trying to do is make certain that you really were attracted to her that you really did care about
[17:51]her that you really didn't want to take her out on a date um if you're on the date and you moved in for a kiss and you didn't get a kiss You' get plus two points but you know this this was an incredible
[18:02]experiment out of it people have gotten married this has been replicated from MIT to uh Merl Lynch they had a bunch of bankers get together they all pulled in $1,000 dollar um and it was you know but it was an incredible experiment because
[18:14]what it did is it made us realize that if we would just get over ourselves we could do really amazing things right the rule that we had there was that you always had to be honest you had to be truthful with whoever you're approaching
[18:26]so if you asked a girl out on a date and she was like wow you're pretty good at that do you do this often you'd have like yeah actually I just asked four women out and I'm doing this big experiment you had to be honest you had
[18:37]to be sober and you just had to be genuine that was really really really important as part of this was you know can we bring back shivery right can young guys be good guys and still do
[18:48]well um what we learned throughout this experiment was was absolutely but the biggest lesson that we learned was that you know it was was a little bit like approaching strangers right talking to strangers
[18:59]um that that when you opened up to people that when you were vulnerable to people that they were vulnerable back to you right even if a girl said no right you may say no I have a boyfriend no I'm
[19:08]married we learned to look at rings but no matter no matter what no matter what worst case scenario you made their day right you connected with
[19:19]another person you gave them a genuine compliment and if you were okay with yourself it really did incredible things but so so the reason the reason I tell this story um is because I actually
[19:29]think that we can create our own luck right and a lot of people they they look at a lot of people who are really successful and they say oh they there they're just so lucky they do what they love they're you know passionate about
[19:39]what they love whatever it is but but I don't think that's true I think that they've created it that they' consciously consciously went out there right that they've given it their very best and that they've perceived failure
[19:50]in a different way um and so I I would challenge all of us to to really if you find you know what lights you up or that intersection of what you're talented at with you can make a living with it or
[20:01]you're passionate with it and you're changing the [ __ ] world right if you find that intersection of those four circles just do it no more excuses just do it just do what Andrew did his story
[20:11]was beautifully told and I'd like to end with one more quote it's Wayne Gretzky I've become a huge fan of Wayne Gretzky um I was born in Canada I only lived there for three days um but I'm still
[20:23]I'm still very much a proud Patriot of the north um and uh and I love Wayne Gretzky not for his ability to play Rock more for his really amazing cheesy on liners but he has a really good quote uh
[20:33]he said that you miss 100% of the shots you never take and so I just challenge us all you know there's a 100 ideas 100 seeds being planted here today let's do something with that right let's create
[20:43]something so thank you all so much it's really been a privilege [Applause]