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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2012-04-17
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDvoGev5_tk
this is a list I made when I was ten how to retire before your twenty baby sitting yard sale walk dogs and you'll see I guess number twelve buy stocks and I stopped figured that's it I don't need anything else most of thought the stock market was a sure thing and we can't ignore my starred note on the bottom left and every transaction I have to
have a calculator it as you can see I wasn't the typical ten year old most girls my age played with Barbies and yeah I did that's you but when given the choice I wanted to learn about the way things worked about the people around me and I was particularly interested in making money do this when I was five Kristin is a waitress well it didn't take
me long to realize I could just skip this step all together and start a restaurant steak and shake where we didn't have steaks or milk shakes but we did have pork chops all you can eat chicken and ribs and our most popular dash carrots in debt when I was in first grade I was fascinated with Elmer's glue I thought if I put a tiny drop in
my desk at school when I came back in the morning I could peel it off and sticking on my nail what do you know fake nails so if anything else from my desk every morning and I remember it like it was yesterday walked into my classroom early like usual only to find that my teacher had completely rearranged all the seats I watch my classmate what great
aunts my fortune you sold everything that day but don't feel bad for me because after school I went and bought glitter glue which happens to be much more popular than plain white pines and put her right out of business when I was six I always wanted to be a babysitter baby sitters club I don't know what about this flyer doesn't say hi you can trust me
I have a lot of experience and I am definitely because I'd watch your child how about the girls club not only did you have to pay to be in it but you also had to follow me thirteen rules yeah I started out okay keep your hands to yourself don't say bad things to other people get a little bit bossy here be obedience raise your hand if
you need to say something and then I become a dictator when you sign something with thanks your leader Kristin the only person that's gonna join your club is your little sister and it's because she doesn't know how to read yet we got aboard the summer before third grade so I started a lemonade stands made this sales web you know because lemonade is such a complicated business
and my favorite part is happier customers pick the price you get more money smart cookie realized early on that people buy cute so I set my prices low until my customers they wanted to pay a little extra that was certainly okay and they did people paid five dollars for a four ounce drop of lemonade you pick the price worked like a charm lemonade got boring and
I wanted to go into retail so I picked my little sister Lauren to be my victim really my partner but poor Lauren we because Elke ride the storm out for her name pay for mine my dad built us a wooden stand we painted it and we sold various household items on our street corner every weekend actually Lauren sold various household items in the heat while I
sat and AC and collected the money this got old after awhile so she resigns you'll see my friend Ashley in this picture little did she know that when I invited her over to play store I was being serious also for not to mention that these household items belonged to my parents who didn't know that we are selling them so when my mom eventually caught on which
you say she was very quick to shut us down as you can see I have an insatiable curiosity as a kid and as I got older the projects continued but they became more meaningful when I was fifteen a teacher of mine who taught me for six consecutive years in the field of science was diagnosed with breast cancer she had to get a double mastectomy but even
with that the outcome did not look very good myself along with five other friends who were also her students gathered together to start projects pink we decided to remain anonymous but we worked behind the scenes to get our entire school to wear pink on Tuesdays the day that she went and for chemotherapy treatments after class it was pretty incredible but are pink initiative spread throughout the
community you go to the grocery store on a Tuesday and you'd see people wearing pink we were only kids but we thought that if we could show her that the entire community supported her maybe it would keep her strong months passed by and we learned that she Peter cancer so we decided it was time to store that we were the ones behind projecting we got our
school band to come into her classroom where we revealed our identity and presented her with a quote we made of all of our memories throughout the years the band trickled from her classroom into the courtyard in the entire school watched as she told us that we saved her life it was absolutely amazing this is the first time in my life where I felt a powerful and
I mean powerful emotion overcome me at fifteen I didn't know what it was or where it came from but man was it incredible and I made a promise to myself that I would only work on things in my life they gave me this feeling and now when I look back I realize it was passion when I came to college at the university of Florida I wanted
a pair of very expensive blue jeans I ask my parents to buy them for me they said no way get a job and instead of applying for one I put an ad on Craigslist a clean houses for pocket money I never minded seeing as a kid because I thought I was getting paid well for it but now when I look back at my parents' Breanna so
what's up with the receiver for hours anyway mom dad I know think about myself for awhile and then I decided to turn into a real business hired some friends and things slowly grew when it came time for my college graduation I was offered a job in finance in a company with a very well known popular brands it was a dream job during that time in two
thousand ten when they didn't exist and I immediately turned it down because there is one thing missing that feeling that I promised myself I would always follow if you have it when I thought about finance you see I was passionate about my house cleaning business as silly as that may sound and trust me many people didn't understand why I turned down a dream job to stick
with it but it just felt right fast forward to today two years after my college graduation I own a company called student made we're the largest cleaning and concierge service in Gainesville we employed three hundred students last year and I know you're thinking her parents must have owned several businesses for her to turn out this way not true my dad is a lawyer and my mom
ran a preschool before she left her job to become a stay at home mom I just lived in a home where my curiosity was nurtured I remember when I was this big that my parents would get a new appliance my dad would take the big cardboard box it came in and would stick it right there in our living room floor he lead up for for weeks
at a time my sister and I would play that yeah it's just a box but when you're for castle and you can be the princess it teaches you to use your imagination and they encouraged us to play pretend the see hear myself my sister and our friend playing dances with my dad he was a flossing Emily came to homework forget about it he never gave me
the answers but it gave me the confidence to solve any problem on my own no matter how big or small they were afraid to see me fail like when I wanted to run for a fourth grade president there's a lot of competition very big chance of my very good chance I might lose but they encourage me to rhyme and that's because in failure lies some of
the most important lessons of all like how to get back up and try again so when I did lose a fourth grade wasn't afraid to try again in fact and I want but most importantly my parents walked their talk there wasn't one thing they told my sister and I to do the deed into themselves they said to always follow our curiosity and passion watch my dad
turned down cases because they didn't interest ten and I watched my mom leave her job when she was a passionate about it anymore there's no doubt in my mind that the only reason I'm standing where I am today is because I lived in a home where creativity and chaos city where value more than anything else so why is it then the curiosity has such a bad
rap we all know the story of Pandora's box right it's given to this chick named Pandora contain all evils in the world don't open it she did I don't know because I would want that my house either would you where how about curiosity killed the cat awful close no wonder why we're trying to think the curiosity is a bad thing people have mistakenly for generations only
used a part of the cloak the full quote actually is curiosity killed the cat and satisfaction brought it back so curiosity isn't a bad thing actually brings us to life and I'm not the only one that's jumping on this curiosity bandwagon now Sir recently launched a two point five billion dollar rover to Mars and what you think they named it curiosity or how about curious George
games cartoon curious George also goes by very rich George right a little on the subject line sure they were motivated by a more efficient trade problem of la I'm sure it was curiosity that was really really behind their voyage I challenge you to ask yourself are you curious do you allow yourself to pursue the things that make you excited July yourself to dream and I mean
really really during or are you convinced that this is the best it's going to get Houston a job you're unhappy and because it's too late in your life to make a change or because you're afraid of what others might think you don't find yourself dreaming anymore and you don't really know what you're to passion is and I don't care to find it you don't find yourself
curious anymore it's time to give your inner child a wake up call and here's why I believe but the more curious you are the more creative you will be with greater curiosity comes new experiences creative people don't invent something new they just take what they've learned from you unrelated experiences and upon the other the more curiosity you have the greater chance you have a connecting the
unusual dots that means the greater chance you have a creating an idea that could completely changed the world we were most human when we were kids we worked on our out for our art for hours without taking breaks because there is nothing getting in the way of our creative spirit and the fact is that same spirit is still there it hasn't gone anywhere just might forget
what it feels like and whether you're twenty three or your eighty three it's never ever ever too late to wake up I challenge you to stop worrying about the past and the future the two things that you absolutely can't change and just focus on this very moment does your self to different people places and things and the easier it will become read more ask more questions
be open to new experiences but most importantly follow your inner child okay if you don't know what you're doing or where you're going you just got to trust that feeling because it knows where you're headed I will start to see the pieces come together but for now you can just trust that there's always a bigger picture I can see the piece of clearly for myself looking
back I I now realize I was destined to own a business and I can see a piece of each child and enterprise incorporated into my company today more importantly I learned from project pink that my true passion is doing something good for other people which is why we clean free for cancer patients and why our employees have donated four thousand hours of community service in the
past two years a meaningful life it's never about the end results it's always about the journey if you can honestly surrender yourself to your inner child and I mean really surrender it it will take you places beyond your wildest dreams and that's my promise and then before you least expect it you'll find your passion and you'll be doing things that you never thought were possible I
want to close with the same list how to retire for your twenty and a way to look at number six house cleaning when I wrote this at ten years old I had no idea that I would be standing here on the stage thirteen years later saying that I own a cleaning service and it's pretty incredible but I think that my inner child has always known what's
