Good morning I am happy to be here.
First off, I wanted to digress for a quick moment and ask a few other questions.
Who of you is here
because you are involved in a Start-Up or because you are an entrepreneur
or you just want to try out different projects?
If you are on this path, put your hands up so I can see.
Okay, a few.
Who of you is an employee and here because you want to learn and
and be inspired how it may look like.
Oh, okay.
What about the rest? You are just here to be entertained?
Beautiful.
Okay.
I want to talk to you today about
what I think are five characteristics
that unite the Gamechanger a bit.
It's not like 'a Game Changer changes the game'.
That is a matter of definition.
Or 'a Game Changer challenges the Status quo'.
This is also a matter of definition.
I want to talk to you about
what are the five things you can learn, that you can learn very easily and clearly,
in order to
disrupt a certain field or to change a status quo,
to change things.
I am originally from Innsbruck in Tyrol,
grew up in an ordinary middle-class family.
I have a sister, we are a family of four.
My parents are not divorced,
that means I am absolutely average .
In Austria it is not out of the ordinary.
I am not from a poor family, I am not from a rich family.
Absolutely that, what would be called the Austrian middle class family.
Also, I am from Tyrol, whether that's a plus or a minus, that's an open question.
At the age of 17 I got in touch with a sport which may not be so well-known,
especially in Austria when it's winter time.
That is Kitesurfing.
Something
I noticed very early on, also when I did Kitesurfing, is that
and now pay attention,
it is more important
to identify the right timing
than to have a special skill.
That is really an important realization.
During the right time, many, many things happen to be much easier
than when you are the best during the wrong point in time.
It is the same in a lot of other different areas
and you will see with me again and again how important timing really is.
The reason why I haven't called it a 'Game Changer' yet, is that
I haven't figured out whether it's learnable or not and whether it is a gut feeling or not.
That is something you should visualize
Right timing is more important than having a special skill in something.
In my case, back in the days, when I was 17,
it was the year 2002.
It was the perfect time. Kitesurfing went through the roof.
A lot of companies were looking for professional Kitesurfers
and I was at the right place in the right time, I was the right age.
It made it possible for me to travel around the world
and have fun as a 20 year old, as one can imagine.
My mum always told me 'Julian, You have to do something real in life.
You cannot be a professional surfer forever.'
Then I said to myself 'Okay, I want to study medicine.'
So I combined the two
and in 2011 I graduated in Innsbruck and
I began to work as an accident surgeon for a short time.
And then ...
it was the first time that I asked myself this questions
which I want to discuss with you today.
Is this really that, what I want to do my whole life?
I respect the medical profession and I think it is great
but is it really something that will make me happy,
is it really something that I want to do until the end of my life?
Later I had a really
enlightening experience with a patient who lost both of his forearms.
For me it was like a wake up call.
I realized:
'Julian
maybe you should do that, what you did before.
Having fun ...
sure, there are many challenges
but maybe you should
go out there
and change things
and somehow change the Status quo'.
There came up this question:
'How does this work? Is there a recipe for it?'
Now I want to cover five things with you
The first thing
and everyone can do this,
is to bring the right people around you.
This is what I believe is what Game Changers do really well.
They surround themselves with people
who want to do the same.
The expectations of our fellow people define what we do ourselves.
When our friends smoke, we smoke too.
When our friends are physically fit, we are fit as well.
It is because we as human beings want to fit in.
That was a very important point.
Back in the days,
in 2012 I moved to Asia
and 2014
I got to know my fellow Game Changers.
Paul and Toby.
Paul from Thailand. Toby, as well from Innsbruck.
Together we realized that
we don't want to keep doing stuff from the past,
but rather do things together for the future.
That is the breakthrough.
The breakthrough is, having the right people around you.
Now,
this is crucial,
because of that I lost one of my best friends.
At that time, my best friend
didn't want to do the same things as I wanted.
If I kept him as my best friend
I am sure,
that I wouldn't walk the path that I am going today.
I don't want to talk badly on his path because he is incredibly happy today.
He has a kid, he is an incredible person and we are still friends today.
However, it is not the same deep level friendship as it was back in 2014
That is something one has to realize.
You can have everything in life,
but never at the same time.
This also applies to people.
So, skill number one:
Bring the right people around us.
Everyone one of you can reflect and think about 'Who are the people around me and what do they mean to me?'
Everyone can organize their friends, family and time individually.
Skill number two
is that Game Changers
have clear visions and clear goals
on what they want to accomplish,
The most of us
are motivated by potential punishment
The most of us are motivated by
'If I don't got to work I won't get my salary. I will be dismissed. So I keep going to work!'
The least of us think about all the good things
that lay at the end of the tunnel when you do things.
There is this famous quote:
'If you want to get people to build a boat,
don't teach them how to build the boat,
but teach them the longing for the sea'.
The people will automatically find a way to build the boat.
In my opinion the same thing applies, to Game Changers.
Game Changers mange to
to have a clear vision, to see something great at the end
and that motivates them to reach out.
They are not driven by potential punishment but by potential attainment.
Now, this is important for this second aspect
most of the time when you have a great, clear vision
you are the minority.
2014, when I heard the first time about Blockchain and decentralization,
I wondered what would it mean for the medical profession.
How could you save data from patients inside the blockchain so that
nobody else has access to it, only I am in control of it.
When I shared those thoughts
there was barely anybody
who said: 'Julian, great idea!'
or 'Julian, wow that's pretty cool!'
It was quite the opposite, the people said:
'That is nonsense. It will never happen!'
This is really important. If you have a great vision
the majority of people will not agree with you.
This is when you have to be super solid
and again this is why point one comes first
you need to have the right people around you.
One single person is enough, the right person, who agrees with you.
Every time I have doubts today, I have a great woman who I can talk to and say:
'Honey,
I believe that this is the right way, what do you think?'
The great thing about her is that she always supports me on this path
and she always believes in me.
This is exactly what you need.
One single person is enough.
I moved
to Singapore in 2015
and
- together with Toby and Paul -
and we founded TenX there.
I spent one whole year
reading intensively about the subjects Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.
This is the third important thing a Game Changer brings with him.
A Game Changer
is always and at any time ready to learn new things.
Always and at any time.
Today I get this asked very often:
'Julian, you didn't study this, you didn't study Cryptography.
You didn't study computer science. How are you supposed to know all this?'
For me
universities are incredibly important
and I am not at all one of those people who says that
universities are pointless or that studying is pointless.
But I think that something is overrated.
Overrated is the knowledge that I attain at a university which is outdated in most cases.
But what I can get at universities is the first point.
I meet other people who are interested in the same subject.
If I can create this somewhere else, and I did that, then the only thing that matters to me is knowledge.
In those days, for a whole year,
I wrote and asked professors if they could give me their papers,
if they would give me some exams,
information about cryptography and how these things work.
Knowledge does exist, but at that time there was nothing on YouTube and no books about it.
A Game Changer is always ready
to expand his knowledge, step his game up and, learn new things.
When was the last time that
you learned something completely new to you?
Something revolutionary new, a new language, a new field of knowledge.
Unfortunately, statistics show clearly that
most of the people
don't learn many new things outside of their studies or profession.
This is essential because by definition it means
that there is new information when you're changing the game.
This is sort of the inspiration:
To be open at all times to learn new things.
I will show you later.
One of our core values in our company,
something that every one of our employees at TenX - and we have 60 -
has to have
is a growth mindset.
It means
that he or she has the desire
to learn something new in every quarter of the year.
It affects their performance.
If somebody doesn't learn something new, and this can be for private or professional reasons
It will affect their performance at work negatively.
How is it at your workplace?
How often is this being reflected on in your profession?
How often do you do these things with coworkers if you run the company?
A lot of people say to me:
'But Julian, when I tell my employees that they have to learn something new
imagine they will get better, and better,
- I invested in them -
and then they run off to another company.
Well, but what if
your employees don't learn and can't do anything
and stay with you?
One of the most important things is educate and improve oneself.
If helps if you ..
I always used to think
that
it's absolutely okay if you make a mistake, as long as you learn from it.
Today I would take that a bit further.
I think it's absolutely not okay to make a mistake,
if you could have learned from someone else to avoid that mistake.
That's why I believe that it's one one the most important things
to not only learn from your own, but also from other peoples experiences.
I love
reading other peoples biographies.
You can learn so much from it.
Back then, In 2016
we were fortunate enough to be in the incubator of PayPal with TenX.
And we learned incredibly much from mentors
and other people at PayPal.
How did they do well with regulators,
how did they do badly with regulators.
All these things we could learn from them.
Everyone of us can do this.
Let's be honest
the least things we want to change
haven't been changed already by other people in one way or another.
Even if you can't copy it one-to-one
there are still a many things that can be a little deduced.
You can think about how that person made it.
Back then, it was something that we could really benefit from.
The fourth point that makes a Game Changer is
that he is always ready to make sacrifices.
Sacrifices,
in order to suffer in short-term
and in order to gain much more later in long-term.
This reward procrastination,
is absolutely essential for a Game Changer, and it can be learned.
Of course, it is helpful to have other people because
a problem shared is a problem halved.
Or a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved.
We had to face it the hard way for one year long.
We had nothing.
We had no funding, we had no money.
No one backed this vision
to make Cryptocurrencies somehow spendable.
Bitcoin was in a downwards trend in 2015 / 2016.
Everyone said that it was complete nonsense.
Well, and it all lead to us
having
a
12m² room for the three of us.
Toby was the only one with a proper bed.
Paul and me, everyday we had to move mattresses.
Partly we had no office so we worked on the floor.
It wasn't our own living room.
It was just an Airbnb apartment.
It was as cheap as possible because we didn't have very much.
In the end, people only hear about the great things
People only talk about
the products we released.
The people talk about my book.
'Cryptocurrencies simply explained'
People talk about our app and our card.
You only talk about the achievements.
And they are really, really great
but I believe, what is very important
is to understand that, in order to get there
you don't walk a straight line, it is quite the opposite.
You make three steps forward,
two steps backwards,
sometimes you go four steps back and you think you made only one step back.
Game Changers are ready to make sacrifices.
They hustle.
They never stop.
This is so important.
You don't let yourself put down.
Now, the important question.
Maybe that's a question which a lot of you already asked.
When do I know if I am on the right path and when do I know if I have to make a pivot?
When do I know that I have to keep pushing on?
How did you know that this year
- when everything didn't go optimally -
how did you know that you should keep going?
When do you know to turn around, when do you know to stop?
The answer for it isn't simple, but I believe the answer is that
it's not about the end result
oftentimes it is about
how do you get on, how much do you learn?
What happens in the meantime to you?
If you keep stepping forward and don't get further, not at all,
neither to the point where you want to be , nor learning in the process,
then I would probably make a pivot.
If you step in place and you think you're getting nowhere,
yet you still get further,
then I would keep going anyhow.
One good example,
when I was 15 I went to America
because I wanted to be a professional basketball player at all costs.
I kept thinking that I will be really tall one day
and then I can become a professional basketball player.
So I went there when I was 15
and after one year I thought
well, my height will stay at 178cm (5'10"),
I won't get taller.
That's not optimal for a basketball player.
I should have gone back to Europe because why keep staying in America any longer,
if I
can't become a pro in Basketball?
I stayed because
because I learned other things.
I got to know a new culture. I learned a new language.
My English is fluent.
I learned many, many new great things.
That is why I did not make a pivot back then.
Because I worked on other things instead.
I hope this may help one or the other who is listening right now.
If he or she is thinking about making a pivot or giving up,
to keep going instead.
For me it is,
when I don't learn anything new.
This brings me
to the fifth point which makes a Game Changer.
That is the ability
to inspire others
to work with you on your vision.
On the one hand it means to learn
how to raise money
how to generate customers if you don't want to have investments from outside.
It's absolutely fine if somebody says that he doesn't want to receive any external investments.
Totally fine.
But you have to make employees and customers believe in your vision.
Last June, we had one of the greatest ICOs, 80 million USD
We as a team - not me - we as a team
we managed to convince team members, investors and other people
and we inspired them to believe in our vision.
We achieved that over the past three years.
It also means to get other team members on board.
It means to go from three people to four people, to six people, to eight people
and now to up to 60 people.
How to achieve that is something
I can give you along the way, whether it's for your
personal life, professional life or for your relationship
That is
so called core values.
If I am sitting alone in a row boat and rowing against somebody else
then it's just about who is rowing better.
Once you are two people in the boat it is very important how you get along with each other.
It's about how you understand each other and how the chemistry between both of you is.
I like to say, it is like a glue that holds together the people.
If you are 60 people in one boat
and 60 people row at once
it is not necessarily crucial how good the 61st person is able to row.
Of course, it is important that this person is able to row well
but there is one thing that is much more important.
This person must not row in the wrong direction.
This is, what the core values are about.
In your relationship, what are the core values?
What are the things about your partner that you don't tolerate at all.
What are things that should be?
What are things in your personal life that you
that don't tolerate at all, and what are things that need to be?
We defined these things in our company and you can see our last core value is
growth.
One of these five
20%
is that people at our company are always ready to grow and move forward
In my opinion
these five
learnable and implementable steps
are for absolutely anyone,
in any time at any place
- maybe not overnight - that is also true
but it is always possible
to
change your area or your field of work.
To alter and change it completely.
The wonderful thing about it is that there a so many people out there
who are doing these things anyways.
I believe when you find these people
- I was fortunate enough to find two other people, three other, five others, and ten and 50 others -
people who combine exactly such things
then it's possible for every one of us
to change the game.
At the end of the day it is only relevant for you
if you
decline the dreams that call you
or
if you press the green button and
hopefully realize the life of your dreams.
To that end, I want to say a big thank you!
I wish you all a beautiful rest of the day
and yeah, a lot of fun.
Thank you very much!
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét