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Introduction
Hi, my name is Jennifer Turliuk
and I am a Startup Chile participant
Today, I'd like to talk to you about the theme of my recent article in Forbes -
- bad decisions related to your career and how they can help you.
A good example of this is my presentation today -
- I have been speaking Spanish for 7 months and this is my first time giving a presentation in Spanish.
The organizer of this event asked me a week ago if I could give a talk in Spanish
I asked him if he was serious and if it was a good idea.
He told me yes, that is the theme of this TED.
So I decided to use my months of classes of Spanish and take a risk to share my message with you.
I wrote my presentation and many people helped me with translating and practicing,
but I wasn't able to memorize it all, so that's why I have my iPad.
Also, I hope that you all can understand me...
And if not, I'm really sorry...
and I can add another failure to my list.
And yes, I know that my accent is the most '***' in the world.
So, in my 7 months of Spanish, I've had lots of big failures.
For example, when I tried to say I was excited with my new friends
I accidentally said that I was very sexually excited / ***.
And also, in church, when I tried to say "I'm scared",
many times I accidentally said "I have the ***".
But with these errors, I learned Spanish much faster than many of my friends.
And we can apply the concept of taking risks when we're learning a new language
to our lives for grand benefits.
More than 80% of the people in the world are very dissatisfied with their jobs
and this is bad for their health and happiness, for productivity in businesses, and for innovation.
So, the principal objective in the world should be for people to find work that they are passionate about.
And how can they do this?
Taking risks to try lots of different things in a hands-on way.
My story is, when I was in university, I accepted a job in a big corporation
Months after starting, I was really dissatisfied
and after I won an interview with Dave McClure - an investor who is very famous in Silicon Valley - I decided to leave my job.
and start a self-education program in something more important -
What do I want to do with my life?
I spoke with a Stanford professor who does coaching and he told me that
I needed to apply the concepts of 'design thinking' to my career decisions,
to think of my favourite options and try each one on a small scale.
So I thought, "What do I want to do?"
"Do I want to work in a small company? Or a NGO? Do I want to start a startup? I don't know!"
And then, I organized small experiments - prototypes -
to try my hypotheses.
After all, I could predict what I liked, but I couldn't know with conviction without experimenting.
I wrote to many businesses and founders in Silicon Valley to meet with them and learn about their work.
I had 1-5 days with 6 organizations, including Kiva, Causes (of Sean Parker), Ashoka, and the Stanford d.school
and also, I had meetings with the founders of Airbnb, Square and Mint.
Oh, sorry, I lost my...uhh...ahh...
I volunteered at conferences, visited classes at Stanford, and lived in an alternative communal house in Palo Alto.
If I didn't take risks, I wouldn't have gotten into Startup Chile and Singularity University.
And also, I wouldn't know what I want to do with my life, which is
to help other people to find work that they are passionate about.
But during these programs, I had failures also.
Actually, I see my career like this graphic: a series of ups and downs that are each time bigger and bigger.
This concept is similar to "The Emotional Rollercoaster of Entrepreneurs" by Cameron Herold.
I was very dissatisfied in a big corporation
After, I started a self-education program with Kiva and Airbnb.
I lost an investment from Dave McClure because my co-founder abandoned me
But three days later I won financing from Startup Chile.
My Startup Chile team split up
But one week later I won a scholarship to Singularity University.
I had a depression after the program
But later I was in the New York Times, Fast Company, and national television
for my launch of a SMS tool to help victims of Hurricane Sandy, called NeedMapper.com.
You can see that each failure comes with a success of equal magnitude.
And if you want more success, you need to prepare yourself to have more failures too.
And the more you fail, the more you will have success.
Thanks to a job that was bad for me, I decided to leave and start this adventure of successes
Without this situation, it wouldn't be possible for me to be here today at TEDxSantiago, possibly failing at speaking Spanish to you.
My recommendation is to view your career in the same way as the process of learning a new language.
You need to try many things, and take many risks and bad decisions
to know what makes you happy and have a big success. Gracias.