Translator: Hélène Vernet Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
Stand up please! All, everybody stand up.
Come on! Come on! I command.
Okay. Let's separate into two groups.
First, people who, like most people, chose their careers,
what to major in, which university to go.
If you decided and nobody else decide for you, you can sit down.
If destiny or somebody else decided for you,
you can remain [standing].
Okay, as I supposed, a big majority [sat down].
There're of people that decide by themselves.
For me, it was a little bit different.
I am the son of two poets.
My mother was a poet.
My father was a poet.
And I write poetry.
So I was inclined, naturally, to go to something humanistic,
to something like psychology, literature or philosophy.
But in Argentina, back then,
there was a military dictatorship,
and our dictator considered that people like philosophers or psychologists
are dangerous people.
Well, he had a point because philosophers think,
our dictator didn't.
(Laughter)
The thing is that I tried to go to philosophy.
And when I went there,
I was asked for the special ID I didn't have.
I was asked to go to the Police Department to get it.
So I went there.
As you may imagine, there was a long queue.
Then, when I was finally at the top of it,
there was this lady who had a friendly face like
"Uh-uhww, what do you want?"
In retrospect, I think that she had eaten the night before
something poisonous, rotten, radioactive or the three things at once,
and she was having trouble digesting it.
(Laughter)
So, I explained: "I need this special thing, bla bla bla..."
- There is no way. It's going to take weeks.
- No, I need it now."
She said she was sorry but I couldn't get it.
I was kind of...
But I insisted, I went back and I tried to get into literature.
The last day of admissions.
Here is a tip: don't go the last days of admissions.
It turned out that I arrived one minute late.
One minute late!
When I arrived, there was this kind gentleman
who explained to me the value of 60 seconds.
(Laughter)
I think he was not from Argentina but from Germany or Swiss,
because was really respectful of time tables.
I was there, so I tried.
I looked around for departments where admission was still open.
And it turned out that the computer sciences department was open.
Can you imagine? I didn't know anything about computers at that time.
And I'm a poet. So, what a poet is doing there?
Well...
Fast forward to the 22nd of February last year,
I sold my software company.
It was a multi-million dollars business
and we had hundreds of employees around the world.
We sold products to the largest corporations in the world,
in more than 50 countries.
How come, because I was a poet?
I was not supposed to be in the software business.
I've never received a formal training as an entrepreneur.
I'm not the top entrepreneur, top marketer, top salesman,
not the top communicator, or top technician.
I don't even speak English.
(Laughter)
I speak Argentinean English which is a kind of Italian.
(Laughter)
If you do this you will speak Italian no matter what you say, right ?!
So how come?
How come,
(Laughter)
that with my ordinary talents,
I was so successful?
I think that I discovered something very interesting in the process
that I really want to share with you today.
I think the fact that I was a poet in computer science
was really a factor of my success,
because I added sensitivity,
I added empathy,
I added writing skills and other things,
- my sense of humor you can say -
to a field that normally, does not have it.
This is what I consider the "Cocktail Effect"
or the hidden secret of success,
because we all know about these things such as focus, hard work,
find your passion, things like that.
That's pretty good but I think that there's something missing.
Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to be an expert
or number one in your profession.
You don't need any extraordinary talent to be successful.
That's very important.
There is a lot of frustration in trying to be number one in your profession.
But what you need is a mix,
a cocktail mixing the elements: your ordinary talents.
If you look closely,
you will find that most successful people are like this:
not very extraordinary at something but not bad at many things.
Think about our best sales rep.
Our best sales rep was not our best sales rep.
His selling techniques?
His knowledge of complex software products?
(Laughter)
His knowledge of music and movies?
(Laughter)
He sold more than anyone in the company.
He connected with customers just by using music and movies.
He sold millions of dollars worth
of software products he does not quite understand.
(Laughter)
Ordinary talents produce extraordinary results.
The best chef in the world is not the best chef in the world.
Ferran Adria has been considered the best chef,
but he's not a traditional chief.
He created something called "Molecular cuisine"
which basically is chemistry.
He used ingredients like gelling agents,
liquid nitrogen,
and other things that you don't want to know.
"What did you put in my food...
(Laughter)
Ferran?
But he is not a Nobel Prize in chemistry.
He is not even a chemist.
These are my drawings by the way. I hope you like them.
(Laughter)
I like the pig. The pig looks like a little bit Italian.
(Laughter)
"What are you doing, Ferran?
(Laughter)
So that's something very interesting about Ferran Adria,
which is the distance between ingredients:
food and chemistry. Very interesting!
I mean if you have a cocktail of Coca Cola and Pepsi,
it's not interesting, right?
But selling software and music and movies, then you have something interesting.
For Steve Jobs, it was technology
and aesthetics, a sense of beauty.
It's very interesting.
The largest the distance between the ingredients on your mix,
the better.
How do you know the ingredients of your mix?
Well, here is an exercise for you.
You have to write down 10, 20, 30 things you think you are good at.
If you think you are good at... you write it on the list.
If you are terrible at something, don't put it on the list.
(Laughter)
Then, and here is the interesting part,
ask three co-workers,
three family members - but not your mother,
and three friends, to add to your list.
And you'll discover things that you don't know about you.
And if they say you are good at something, don't argue with them.
You are good at whatever they put in there.
Imagine! This is really, really powerful.
I was in a speaking trip last year, in North and South America,
and after my session in Ecuador,
there was this guy who approached me and told me,
"Hey, my friends always tell me,
'Oh, you are such a great story teller!
Oh, we love it when you tell us stories!'"
He didn't know that, but he listened.
So he created this blog and in just three months,
he had more than 15,000 followers.
Alright. As I said, this is your homework.
So you have to do this and collect as many ingredients as you can.
What happens - and this is really, really interesting -
what happens if you don't feel passion for any standard profession?
Create your own! Invent one!
Make it a mix, a cocktail of the things that inspire you.
This is my favorite example.
It was this lady who thought she could't make money out of dancing.
She loved dancing but she was not extraordinary talented, right?
But she also loved to travel. She loved to speak foreign languages.
So, she created this specialty travel agency,
through which you can go to a foreign country,
learn typical dances and the language at the same time.
And it was a success. And she is happy with that.
That's the important thing because happiness is the ultimate success.
The last thing would be to remember to put soft skills in your mix.
Soft skills are human skills.
They are more important than technical skills.
Really, much more!
Take Warren Buffet, the second richest guy on the planet.
He says,
"If it weren't because of my learning of soft skills,
I wouldn't be Warren Buffet."
There is a saying from a doctor in Argentina, Ramon Carillo
who said that you can't be a better doctor than you are a human being.
I really believe that.
You can't be a better professional than you are a human being.
I hope you will remember this:
ordinary talents, extraordinary results.
Repeat with me:
"Ordinary talents, extraordinary results."
Yes, it's such a good audience! I love you.
(Laughter)
Who am I?
I am a poet who got lost ...
on his way to college.
And it was wonderful for my mix.
Now that I sold my company, I look forward for my next mix.
I learned that you don’t need any extraordinary talent to be extraordinary.
I learned that if you connect with yourself, you'll connect with others.
You will be you.
It is frustrating the efforts some people put to be another person.
The more of you on your mix, the more You you are.
The more You you are, the more unique,
the more extraordinary,
the happier you are.
Please don't discard anything,
because talent is a terrible thing to waste.
You.
You, and you, and you...
You all are unique solution to problems.
That's why you're on this planet.
So who are you? How are you going to be extraordinary?
What's on your mix?
A poet said this,
much more beautifully.
He said,
"If you
were truly you,
who would you be?
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Have a great life! Thank you.
(Applause)