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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-09-05
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPxPRNNw0tI
two hundred eighty million people the approximate number of adults the United States that regularly use the internet it's eighty four percent of our adult population and that number jumped to a staggering ninety six percent when you only consider young adults ages eighteen to now that's just US census data it's not that fascinating on its own but what it means is something profound what it shows is
that we live in a time where each of us all of you have missed almost infinite resource of information just available at your fingertips and this is made even greater by the fact that it's not just information its resources and offer to embrace technology in integrated into your community good evening or afternoon if it's your preference money facing Liliana sophomore not studying computer science at the
university of Kansas and also the CEO and founder of excel company a small nonprofit that focuses on producing prosthetic devices for families in need I started this company back during my junior and senior years of high school after a series of both fortunate unfortunate events and it's really opened my eyes to the ways that you can use technology to improve your community and it's also allowed
me to grow as a person in ways that I would never expect it's let me lead it's looking manage I got an introduction to business and entrepreneurship I've got to communicate with people form interpersonal relationships and get that taste of engineering that I would have never gotten anywhere else and it's been a crazy ride but my experience isn't unique there are hundreds if not thousands of
people across this nation doing incredible things that would both humble and amaze the best of us but their experiences don't have to be unique either as already mentioned we already have these resources in these opportunities waiting at our fingertips we just need to tap into and that that's what I want to talk about tonight I would tell my story when I talk about how I went
from being a sophomore junior senior high school to a sophomore in college giving it had XPG but I want to focus on my failures don't focus on the mistakes I made along that journey and for him what I learned so that I can give that out to you guys so maybe the things that I had to learn the hard way you can just take for granted
and go out on your life so my story what is my story well for me it really began at a very young age because I've always been a tinkerer avoid had come to that engineering heart I grew up Dixie motorcycles and cars with my dad playing video games on my grandparents cuter building lego sets in dissembling furniture with tool kits that I was quickly restricted access
to I've always been tacky for lack of a better word but the spark that really moved me towards you and technology to improve communities didn't come actually until my junior year of high school during a Friday night football game of all places you see I played safety and if you're familiar the job description of a safety is a lot of fast open field hips and I've
given a lot of them in taking a lot of them in my career but one night in a mid October to my junior year I gave one of hits and it did not agree with me and during halftime of carted off to a hospital it could be diagnosed a priest of your concussion it took me out of school for over a month and ended my contacts
were career and initially this was devastating to me because I love football I love basketball and I could still run track but two thirds of my athletic career would just cut they were gone now I was exceptionally lucky to find a wonderful concussion specialist and she's out here somewhere but she helped me make amazing recovery within just the first two weeks I was regaining a lot
of my basic function I still couldn't do school though because of the light and noise and just you know general mental straight strain so I was still confined to a dark room really just staring at the ceiling trying to sleep away that concussion it was really just a dark time but not one opportunity came knocking for me the one my mother's friends and co workers had
a son who was born with any other band syndrome which you if you're familiar again is a congenital disease or disorder where you basically born %HESITATION potentially without parts of limbs in this case his right hand's functional severely limited as he didn't have a thing to the fingers on and he'd grown up very well adapted to this condition he was able to do a lot of
things that no one would ever expect him to be able to do with that but there are still obstacles they couldn't overcome with essentially just one fully functional hands so they were looking for a prosthetic now prostitutes are really expensive I mean that's it from the get go anything kids with growing so you might need to buy more than one in the course of couple years
so suddenly that it's really expensive it just wasn't feasible and on top of that that brought their devices don't look cool and when you're in elementary school cool is kind king county cool so they found rubble hand which was an Australian company that was building an open source three D. printable prosthetic hand and they loved it looks kinda like legos he really liked the look of
it it was fully mechanical didn't electronics they wanted to get at him the problem was that robot hand was still very small organization and most of the production in the U. S. at least was being done by third parties who also wanted a lot of money to build the fan but that's right came in I had a lot of new found downtime and they knew in
the past and helping them with computer issues in video games with their other kids and they knew me as kind of that engineering type and this is right up my alley and with the beauty of open source I could take these files into whatever I wanted so I download the file to download the programs that allow you to edit these files and I modify them to
fit the kids hand it took we can how who's kind of ten twenty minute increments of work right to just focus while my head was good take a break and I got tired and was beautiful I'm still taking my downtime of still recovering but I was actually being able to do something so I got these files done I knew what I needed but now I needed
to print them and I wouldn't lose for Kansas which if you're familiar with the areas kind of rural and where they can find a three printer what turns out to Johnson County behave very at the maker space with a public three printer just thirty minutes from my home you've got to go to libraries are very understated but there are also a little bit ahead of me
in realizing that embracing technology could immunity so give me a call I went up there with a flash drive a files and in basically no time I was leaving with a bag of fuel a plastic and parts it was way too simple let anyone to harvest or pick up a nothing both ordered a sheet of orthopedic plastic which could be molded into a gauntlet some nylon
strings for the mechanism and was kind of time to build and this seemed like they should be one of the harder parts elect to use part because after staring at a set designs for a week and a half you kinda know how they're gonna put together and it becomes a lot like legos where you like you know we need they'd they need to go and within
a couple hours we had a working and within probably five seconds to put it on because already grabbing a water bottle in using it and grab a pencil with learning to write with that and as I later learned he learned to play stickball it not holding a bat but actually using the hand as a bat which led to me needing to do some repairs in the
new but he was doing incredible things with it and it all worked it was remarkably both and now that product was done school starts back up my %HESITATION medical clearance on the concussion was about twelve track season life was going to go back to normal mother talking you guys so clearly that didn't exactly happen like didn't exactly go back to normal so I mention my concussion
specialist she really loved that I was doing something with my time other than just sitting in a dark room staring at the ceiling Lebanon's going out doing something to help someone else with this downtown and she former contact we can fix our reporter and I can lead and that led to a front page article which then kind of Richard covered with KCTV five to fox four
news a bunch of online news articles picked up the story and it all culminated with two articles in separate editions of people magazine so small project that I kind of just started on a whim concussion suddenly become this very large thing that a lot of people are taking notice of if you're calling a school they're sending letters because if you don't let anybody contact it mention
that of the student there and they're sending me money to help my cause I didn't have a cost I was just thinking about track season so I quickly realize that I needed to do something I couldn't just keep going and maybe like okay I could have just pocketed the money and run they did know me but that would be the right thing to do so I
had to think about how to formalize and what we want my classmates mother was an accountant with a nonprofit experience the contacted her and we started setting up Bible one C. three decks delicately I read all the by laws the proper legalese and we got it approve I also add about one C. three non profit textile company and that's really where I am today we sense
purchased around pretty printer and we help people as they come in it's not some booming industry with thousands thousands of customers every week or month it's people have become and often times we don't even need to build them hand because we make it clear that they can build it themselves we help them along the and it's been an amazing experience but what I did was I
only have highlights I only told you the good things in the smooth storyboard style of here's how everything went well but there were a lot of pitfalls that during that especially the nonprofit side that get left out of the stories and don't get told but I didn't learn things from being successful in doing things I apparently already kind of knew how to do I learn things
from when I made mistakes so that's one one focus on and there were really two kind of categories of mistakes that I made that little lump all them into for the sake of time because there's too many b's takes the count the first of which was that I bit off more than I can chew only one person and it's something that's easy to forget but you
can't do everything and I was trying to run track if a paper from college applications general high school life and all the sudden now I own a nonprofit now is trying to build a website file tax documents and just market and bill hands I was very much a free heli been and I quickly realize that I was running the days where there were five things to
do if I really set my mind to it I probably could have done three or four of them but just the fact that there were five looming on the horizon intimidated me and I only get one or two done I think since he was dropping drastically just because of the sheer load of work I had so quickly remedied this by enlisting people that knew more about
the field that I did I had a web developer help me with the website I kept my accountant friend working on the taxes and business side of things so that I could focus more on my school life and the actual like if engineering side of the it worked beautifully it could be adapted to a point where I actually could handle it looking to rectify that mistake
but you still think that had a lot of impact early on the second mistake I made was that I overestimated my market you see when I was getting all these letters these calls all this publication it seemed like this with this really big experience and that a lot of people cared this is going to be big look for the nonprofit and I'm usually come thought Hey
this should be growing really quickly this should be a big thing really quickly but that was the case I kinda forgot that I was doing a really niche market of people that needed essentially one specific three printable prosthetic hand that really didn't have a big market so initially I kind of hit me in my own ego I I thought I was doing something wrong I thought
this is a growing quick what am I doing wrong and it hurt my morale and I wasn't doing as well again my fishing to drop because I did this even matter why am I even doing this no one seemed to care about it but once I kind of got past and realize you know what I'm helping the people that I help and if we could live
in a world where people didn't need prosthetics I'm going to business but that would be a better world so I had to get past that and I did it all openly went well apparently so those are my mistakes and I kind of gained what I would consider three pieces of knowledge from them and a lot of them have been things that you probably heard before but
I like receded because these are important things I learn from it and that you need to remember if you try to do something similar or just apply to generalize the first of which is to know your limits you see I would let my mantra kept pushing my limits and I love that saying push your limits you for the stars but a lot of people interpret that
to mean ignore your limits or act like they don't exist and the analogy I use is running because I'm a runner has TV to go to for me but I can't run a for minimum I can't do it I can maybe run a seven minute mile on a good day so I went outside right now and tried to run a four minute mile buttons and running
shoes Oakley I would feel miserably I would hit how half a mile in at a full sprint and then collapsed and crawl the rest of the way and probably end up running a nine or ten minutes if I just started on pace for my seven I would have run a seven because I ignored my limit I did poor in the long run now I know my
limits and I train intelligently I can go for a seven two six fifty to six forty five Whittle that down and suddenly now maybe my limits a four minute mile but if I didn't go out and run for an in house over over again to keep collapsing I might get there eventually but it's not gonna be nearly as quickly so you gotta know your limits and
you got a train effectively with that knowledge the second piece of knowledge against would be to do your research in this ties directly into my overestimation of my market had I gone in and done my research and know everything I would have been so blind sided by the fact that I wasn't as big as I thought I was going to be if you go in blind