1
00:00:07,330 --> 00:00:13,180
I run a company called Misfit, Inc. Misfit is a digital agency.

2
00:00:13,630 --> 00:00:18,490
We're a conference where publishing house or an art and culture fund were a tech incubator.

3
00:00:18,490 --> 00:00:23,470
And we're a foundation where we've launched humanitarian projects in Malawi and Ethiopia,

4
00:00:23,710 --> 00:00:28,390
in the Philippines and South Africa, and we do most of our work in northern Kenya.

5
00:00:29,020 --> 00:00:34,990
I employ 25 people across the globe with no central office.

6
00:00:35,590 --> 00:00:38,799
We've launched projects on every every inhabited continent.

7
00:00:38,800 --> 00:00:47,530
On the globe. We spend 20% of our time since the day we opened doing pro bono work, which is our cultural and humanitarian work around the world.

8
00:00:47,530 --> 00:00:51,200
The way we measure our success at Misfit is by different metrics.

9
00:00:51,220 --> 00:00:53,650
I used to be a banker, so I know those metrics very well,

10
00:00:54,190 --> 00:00:58,270
but I decided to pioneer something slightly different, which we call internally impact accounting.

11
00:00:58,660 --> 00:01:05,950
So the idea that, yeah, your financials define your success and health of one element of your business, but the impact that you have in the world,

12
00:01:05,950 --> 00:01:10,389
the social impact that you have in the world, the lives that you change, the people that you inspire,

13
00:01:10,390 --> 00:01:14,470
the things that happen as a result of the things that you do matter just as much.

14
00:01:15,880 --> 00:01:21,820
We're celebrating our six year anniversary at Misfit and what started out as me, Melissa and our business partner,

15
00:01:21,880 --> 00:01:27,850
Dino Trading Web Design for Bagels is is now the company that I've explained to you.

16
00:01:27,850 --> 00:01:31,299
And Melissa and I have travelled to 60 countries, not for business,

17
00:01:31,300 --> 00:01:37,030
but because we love to travel and we wanted to build a business around the things that we love to do.

18
00:01:37,030 --> 00:01:42,610
So. So the company that I run, I run literally from laptops in cafes across the world.

19
00:01:43,270 --> 00:01:47,020
And today I'm going to talk a little bit about marketing, as Magdalena mentioned.

20
00:01:47,020 --> 00:01:51,879
But first, I'm going to tell you a bit about myself, because ten years ago,

21
00:01:51,880 --> 00:01:59,680
the life that I lead and the business that I run literally would not be possible without the tools that we have available to ourself,

22
00:02:00,550 --> 00:02:05,740
to ourselves today. So I'm going to just tell you a little bit about myself in terms of an introduction when I was a kid, when I was in high school.

23
00:02:05,740 --> 00:02:09,760
Some of your kids are in high school right now. I was a basketball player and All-State basketball player.

24
00:02:10,030 --> 00:02:15,790
When I went up to my high school guidance counsellor, Miss Mitchell. I asked her, hey, you know, I'm thinking about going to university.

25
00:02:16,330 --> 00:02:21,370
What university do you think I should go to? And I gave her a kind of options that I was thinking about, and she kind of just stopped.

26
00:02:21,370 --> 00:02:24,730
You say, Hey, JJ, let me just tell you something.

27
00:02:25,450 --> 00:02:29,379
A guy like you probably shouldn't be thinking about university.

28
00:02:29,380 --> 00:02:34,600
Maybe you should become a mechanic and go to trade school. She offers me a brochure to go to trade school.

29
00:02:34,600 --> 00:02:36,940
Now nothing gets mechanics. I have friends who are happy mechanic,

30
00:02:36,940 --> 00:02:43,720
but that is certainly not what you want to hear when you're 17 years old planning what your future is going to be like.

31
00:02:43,730 --> 00:02:47,200
And of course, I took this in. I look at Ms. Mitchell, and Ms.

32
00:02:47,200 --> 00:02:56,110
Mitchell became the personification of everybody in my life that told me what a loser I was going to be and the fact that I would amount to nothing.

33
00:02:56,440 --> 00:03:01,360
From that moment on, I decided that I was going to be a success with a capital S and I was going to win.

34
00:03:01,630 --> 00:03:06,130
I marched myself over to Barnes and Noble when those things still existed.

35
00:03:06,760 --> 00:03:13,810
That's a bookstore for all of you who don't. And I page through a catalogue that had degrees majors that you could study in college.

36
00:03:14,020 --> 00:03:22,659
And I was looking for one thing, one metric in my research earning potential over time I was going to make as much money as

37
00:03:22,660 --> 00:03:26,290
humanly possible and I was going to bury the clowns that laughed at me when I was in high school.

38
00:03:27,460 --> 00:03:31,210
I decided to study accounting and finance because that's what you do when you want to make money.

39
00:03:31,630 --> 00:03:34,720
I went into school. I graduated number one in my class, summa [INAUDIBLE] laude.

40
00:03:34,900 --> 00:03:38,930
I did go to university and I ended up taking a job.

41
00:03:38,950 --> 00:03:45,510
I basically had the pick of the litter. I could go to any firm that I wanted, but I didn't care where I'd be working, who I'd be working for.

42
00:03:45,520 --> 00:03:49,389
The only thing that I it about is how many zeros were at the end of my signing

43
00:03:49,390 --> 00:03:53,470
bonus and how what my starting salary is going to look like from then on.

44
00:03:53,510 --> 00:03:59,590
I spent the rest of my early twenties jumping from one firm to another, doing what we call in the corporate world vertical leaps,

45
00:03:59,920 --> 00:04:04,059
just leveraging one position to the next to extract more revenue, more salary.

46
00:04:04,060 --> 00:04:09,700
For myself on every positional jump, which landed me to a place where I was in my mid-twenties,

47
00:04:10,210 --> 00:04:16,270
had a corner office and overlooking the Manhattan skyline, making a six figure salary, even a bigger bonus.

48
00:04:16,420 --> 00:04:22,990
And there was this tiny, tiny little problem, just one tiny problem that I hated my life.

49
00:04:25,060 --> 00:04:34,120
I despised what I did, and I hated myself more and more for trading the hours of my one and only life away for more money at every turn.

50
00:04:34,960 --> 00:04:38,680
So the day came December 31st, 2011.

51
00:04:38,680 --> 00:04:43,030
I'll never forget this day in my life. It was four days before Melissa and I got married.

52
00:04:43,270 --> 00:04:48,069
My boss calls me into his office. It was a monday. I go into my boss's office.

53
00:04:48,070 --> 00:04:51,100
He close the door. He looks at me, he says, AJ, you're getting a promotion.

54
00:04:52,220 --> 00:04:58,610
This promotion basically lands me number two three in my firm in in finance world what this means is you are minted.

55
00:04:59,090 --> 00:05:02,150
You're good. Keep your head down. You're going to live a nice life.

56
00:05:02,360 --> 00:05:07,880
You're going to make a lot of money. I walked out of his office. I walked back into my own, closed the door behind me.

57
00:05:08,180 --> 00:05:14,360
And I just sat there staring out over Manhattan. And I just started to weep, to cry uncontrollably,

58
00:05:14,360 --> 00:05:22,610
because I realised that I was trapped and that I would never be able to walk away from that type of money ever again.

59
00:05:23,270 --> 00:05:31,700
And that any thought that I had of living a life of adventure, of meaning, of purpose, of doing work that actually matters, was gone.

60
00:05:32,690 --> 00:05:38,030
So for 37, 30 minutes, I sat there and I wept basically uncontrollably.

61
00:05:38,750 --> 00:05:44,030
And then it struck me. You always have a choice.

62
00:05:44,870 --> 00:05:48,769
I could walk out right now. I could leave everything I've ever known.

63
00:05:48,770 --> 00:05:53,899
Everything I've ever study. I could leave the baggage, the weight of proving everybody in my life wrong.

64
00:05:53,900 --> 00:05:57,830
I could leave it behind me. I could leave it right there. And I could walk out today.

65
00:05:59,580 --> 00:06:05,640
So four days before I got married and one day before this promotion was about to kick in, I walked into my boss's office.

66
00:06:06,030 --> 00:06:10,300
He got the tail end of a Shakespearean, Shakespearean soliloquy about the system and.

67
00:06:10,650 --> 00:06:16,650
And something that would have made Malcolm Gladwell very proud. I went over to the elevator, took 28 stories down.

68
00:06:16,650 --> 00:06:20,280
I hit the street, and for the first time in my adult life, I was free.

69
00:06:21,860 --> 00:06:26,809
And I realised the reason why and, and I want you to realise that the reason why I left that day,

70
00:06:26,810 --> 00:06:31,550
the reason I evacuated a life plan going horribly wrong was two reasons.

71
00:06:31,580 --> 00:06:36,559
A I had a vision of myself as a 70 year old man looking back at me that morning.

72
00:06:36,560 --> 00:06:41,060
The glory of a life that could have been. And B, I wanted to see.

73
00:06:41,080 --> 00:06:48,650
I wanted to prove, to see if it was possible to live a life on my terms and to build a business around that.