I'm in Medellin today to speak at the Seedstars Conference event.
But that's not what this video is about.
This video is about the reason that I get to travel,
and be the CEO of a cool tech startup.
A lot of that is because I can express
myself comfortably in English, and English is not my native language!
My native language is Spanish, and I've been trying and worked most of my life...
to get rid of my accent... and thanks to the fact that I speak English, I got my first job...
...which allowed me to pay for college, which then allowed me to start my first company,
and we did a Kickstarter campaign for that which was of course in English,
and it then allowed me to start Slidebean, and then raise venture capital
from US investors, and host the now somewhat successful Slidebean YouTube channel.
So I want to use this trip to talk about how I got rid of my English accent.
Now major disclaimer time: I didn't grow up in the US, I only came to the States
for the first time when I was 21, I didn't go to any bilingual school or
anything like that, no exchange programs.
I actually learned English in high school and elementary school...
on a 2-3 hour, a week system like most foreign speakers do.
And education is, I believe, the first of four major...
cornerstones to really master a language.
While you can kind of force yourself into learning a language, like if you have to
move and just learn by force, I believe that just formal education really helps
to speak properly. Another core variable here is that when I was a kid...
...my dad used to play for the Bundesliga.
So my family and I moved to Germany for two years.
so at a very early age, I was forced into learning a second language.
I don't have any proof of this but I believe that that second language,
at such a young age really helps to eventually, master other languages.
The next cornerstone, I believe, is Immersion: so do your best to immerse
yourself in the language that you're trying to learn.
Ever since I was a kid I've used all my devices in English, so this is this basic
vocabulary, phrase and idiom training that you get to experience every day.
I believe it's just lazy to use your devices in your native language,
just use that opportunity to study and immerse yourself
in the language that you're trying to learn. It's like the easiest thing.
Which brings me to my next point,
which is movies and TV.
So I've always been a bit of a cinephile, and I think
that you should always watch movies in their original language,
and most of the time that language is English!
Easy hacks like doing closed captioning,
you start to automatically, without any effort, memorizing how things are written.
That also extends to pronunciation, vocabulary, idioms,
and if you're like me that like to watch movies again and again,
you're eventually gonna memorize some of that.
I remember when we were doing prepositions in high school,
that the answer would come to me not because I knew the answer, or because I studied,
but literally, because I remembered a quote from a movie that I loved,
and that used that preposition in the correct form.
It's just been really useful.
Which brings me to my last point...
The last cornerstone of this is of course practice,
so I get to practice and I speak English pretty much every day of my life,
I run a New York startup I get to talk to customers, and to our team,
and English has become this essential part of my life.
I'm thinking in English probably half or more of my day
but I understand that's not the case for everybody,
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So the company CEO Vladimir flew down to
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Like I said English has become a...
...fundamental part of who I am. I believe that expressing yourself in another language,
opens a huge range of opportunities that...
you might not have access to otherwise, and then for us in Latin America speaking English...
is pretty much fundamental, for most of the jobs that you can aspire to.
So I don't know if I'm shooting myself in the foot here, but please let
me know in the comments if you're still able to catch my in Latin accent,
and where... I guess that that's always room for improvement.
Thanks a lot for watching and see you next week.