Transcriber: Ilze Garda Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Money or meaning.
Which one would you choose?
On one hand, a well-paid job you don't enjoy doing.
Something that inflates your bank account,
but makes you realize that on the inside, something is missing.
On the other hand,
fulfilling, exciting work that pays little.
Something that makes a difference,
but makes you wonder constantly
whether the next paycheck will cover your bills.
Sound familiar?
It does to me,
and certainly to that legion of my brain cells
who have perished
thinking about this dilemma for more than a decade.
But finally, I think I might have figured it out.
I grew up in a working-class family in a building like this.
And yep, that's a full-color photo.
(Laughter)
The '90s were not an easy time in Latvia.
Our country had just regained its independence,
we had to restart the market economy from scratch,
and most people did not have a lot of money.
In 1995, when I started school,
the average Latvian was making 100 euros per month.
Now, don't get me wrong: we were not poor.
Prices were also extremely low, so our family managed to get by,
but we didn't have much left over by the end of the month.
So, what do you want to be when you grow up
was never an easy question for me
since I could never steer away from thinking about money.
But hey, it's still fun to think about the future
when you're a kid.
However, when you're in college,
that dreadful choice of what to do with your life
looks less like this beautiful thunderstorm somewhere on the horizon
and more like a hurricane slapping cows in your face.
As it turns out,
getting a great education does not help either.
There are just so many options.
In 2011, I was about to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania
and I had to make my first choice.
First off, I had to decide where I wanted to go next.
Money meant staying abroad.
That's where the money is, right?
New York, London, perhaps even Philly.
Certainly not Riga, even in 2011.
Certainly not Purvciems, my colorful little suburb.
And meaning meant Latvia.
When I left, I was determined to come back
or at least do something to contribute to our country.
Second, I had to decide what I wanted to do.
I was about to graduate with a degree in international relations,
a field I enjoyed and I cared about,
plus it would allow me
to represent Latvia internationally as a diplomat.
However, in 2009,
Latvia suffered terribly in the financial crisis
and the government cut the wages for all our diplomats in half.
So as much as my inner hippie would say,
"Just follow your heart, dude",
(Laughter)
I simply could not ignore the money.
So I joined an oil and gas publication
that for the next three years, took me country-hopping around the world.
Brunei, Ghana, Nigeria, Qatar -
no connection to Latvia whatsoever.
In 2016, I was ready to return home.
I'd quit my job; I got my master's at Columbia University.
I felt I was equipped well enough to start a business here.
Although I would not become a diplomat,
at least I could try to create some jobs in the country.
And that would give it all some sense of meaning, right?
However, it's not like I had a billion dollar idea,
a stellar team, six figures in seed money.
I kind of figured, you know, once I've settled in,
gone to a few hackathons,
something would come along.
And in the meantime,
why not do something meaningful with my spare time?
So as someone who had spent about a third of his life abroad
before coming back,
I was deeply interested in migration as it applied to Latvia.
You know, after all, if you care about your country,
then 15 percent of its population leaving within a decade
might seem slightly troubling.
So I dabbled.
With a few friends, we organized a meetup
that would bring together Latvians who had lived abroad.
We named it
"With Global Experience in Latvia".
And there comes my first lesson about what happens in life
when you do something that means a lot for you.
Our little meetup exploded.
Although we paid no money for ads, our venue was always packed,
the number of our followers grew by the hundreds every week,
and some wonderful friends would join the core team every month.
So give the devil your little finger, right?
Six months later,
I found myself leading an official non-governmental organization,
with a registration number and everything.
That was not a path I had ever imagined myself taking.
However, I relished the chance
to work on something that deeply interested me,
even if I had to do it for free.
Sooner or later, I would figure out what to do with my nine-to-five,
but for now, at least the six-to-nine part was covered.
And in the words of your favorite BuzzFeed headline,
"What Happens Next Will Surprise You."
(Laughter)
Early on in our meetups, employers started asking
whether we could share their job ads with our followers.
After all, migration and employment went hand in hand.
Wages in Latvia had been rising 10 percent a year,
the unemployment rate was critically low,
and media sites were full of posts about the lack of labor in Latvia.
So after some conversations, it all started to come together -
perhaps I did not have to choose between money or meaning.
If I could help talented professionals
return to Latvia
and connect them to their future employers,
the companies would surely pay for our services,
so with some luck,
I could do something meaningful and feed myself.
Aha! Don't you think?
So that's how the idea of Your Move was born.
Together with Reinis, my good friend and a fellow board member of the NGO,
we co-founded the job platform in 2018
with the aim of bringing talented professionals to Latvia,
both Latvian returnees and also foreigners who'd like to move to our country.
The first two years have not been easy,
but we have established good relations with more than 50 businesses,
helped dozens of professionals move to Latvia,
gathered a wonderful team of people,
and grown our turnover almost 200 percent this year
compared to the last one.
Turns out what we do even has a name.
So let me reintroduce myself.
Hi! My name is Jānis Kreilis, and I'm a social entrepreneur.
Working on Your Move feels right
because I don't have to choose money or meaning.
To us, both are important and both feed off and amplify each other.
First, what we are doing means a lot to me.
I like to shape my surroundings rather than be shaped by them.
The more talented people we could get to join us in Latvia,
the more our country,
instead of this,
will look like this.
And even if it's the first drops in the ocean,
we're helping Latvia develop, and that gives our work purpose.
But second, it's also how we are doing it that makes sense to me.
I think in systems,
and for me, building a business means building a sustainable system.
And ours goes like this.
The more candidates we attract, the more candidates we can place.
The more candidates we place, the more money we get.
The more money we get, the more we can invest in marketing
to get more candidates.
Voilà!
So let's complicate it a bit.
To make more ads or sort through resumes, we need more teammates.
The more money we get, the more people we can hire.
And our team definitely needs a nice office to work in,
so the higher the profits, the better the office.
Plus I know for a fact my colleagues love that upgrade
from the rich and creamy taste of Nescafé 3in1
to a nice little espresso machine.
(Laughter)
So, you see, money drives our model, which in turn makes more money.
The reality is that you can do very little without the money.
But what feels great about money in a company like ours
is that it ultimately helps change our society.
Without money, despite our best intentions,
we would achieve much less meaning.
This model is our shot at unleashing this internal energy
for this system to perpetuate itself.
We're not building a project;
we're building a business.
And here's the supercool thing: meaning also helps you make more money.
First, our purpose distinguishes us from the crowd.
We're operating in a very packed market,
and I'm absolutely convinced
I would not be standing in front of you today
if we had created
just another little job site without this clear social goal.
To be fair, businesses will almost never sign a deal with us
simply because of some warm feelings we might create,
but our purpose helps us open a lot of doors.
Second, helping our country overcome an existential social problem
gives us a chance
to share our story, our insights and our expertise with the media,
and this way we get the word out
to more potential candidates and businesses
so that the cycle can go on.
Third, meaning helps us attract some great teammates
and keep our own team motivated.
You know what they say about the millennials.
Supposedly, they need purpose in their work.
So it's rewarding in our own job interviews
when I ask about why people would like to join us
is to hear, "Because I love what you do."
And finally, meaning does two important things for me personally.
Building my own business
is by far the most difficult thing I've done in my life.
There have been times where I felt like a cell phone on 5 percent battery,
my eyes both glaring red like two indicators, no charger in sight,
but then I hear about
yet another smart person moving to Latvia with a good job offer
and I get this energy to keep going.
Having meaning also means you can get away with a little less money.
Hopefully, you noticed in this diagram
that more money does not mean a bigger car for Jānis.
I love what I do,
so I don't have to buy these temporary shots of meaning
in the form of gadgets.
So, sure, I draw a reasonable salary, but I'm happy to reinvest our profits
and let this system grow more to help us achieve more.
Let it grow big enough,
and I'm sure one day
it'll spit out a shiny new - well, not maybe a Mercedes,
but I don't know, a Toyota?
So to me, money or meaning is the wrong question to ask.
To really thrive, we humans need both.
Meaning gives you purpose and focus,
while money gives you the energy to keep fighting towards your goal.
And my best analogy for this is different forms of light.
Low energy and focus is like lighting a match.
You get a small flame, but it dies out very quickly, in a few seconds.
Now, low energy and high focus is like turning on a flashlight.
If you're the only person with the flashlight during a power outage,
I promise you
you pretty much become a modern-day Prometheus,
the bearer of light.
But the flashlight will only cover that little white circle
and the batteries will die out eventually.
High energy but low focus is like wrapping your entire house in Christmas lights.
Sure, they'll impress your kids,
or let's be honest, they'll impress the Joneses,
but the joy only lasts for a few weeks,
and let's just say
they're not quite essential to your family's well-being.
And high energy and high focus,
that's a laser.
Give it enough power,
and the highly concentrated beam of light
will cut through all obstacles in front of you like a laser.
I do admit that escaping the choice between money and meaning
can seem daunting.
However, by creating Your Move, our social enterprise,
I found a way to get out of this dilemma.
It's not the only way, but it is one way,
and one that I personally have found to be very enjoyable.
With some creative thinking and strategic planning,
I'm sure we can find other ways
out of this seeming prison of two alternatives.
So money or meaning is a false choice.
Look beyond it.
Thank you.
(Applause)