Gaily Anne Guarnes

This is really a two hour presentation I gave a high school student that I cut down for 3 minutes. It all started one day on a plane on my way to TED seven years ago. And the sit next me was a high school student, a teenager, she came from a very poor family. She wanted to make something for her life and she ask me a very simple little question, she said, “what leads to success?”. I felt really badly because I could not give her a really good answer. So I got off the plane and I come to TED. I think geez, I’m in the middle of the room with successful people. So why wont I ask from them what succeed is and passed it on kids. Here we are seven years, 500 interviews later and I’m going to tell you what really leads to success and make Tedster take. The first thing is Passion. Freeman Thomas, driven by passion teaches for love and they don’t do for money. Carol Coletta says, “I will pay someone to do what I do. The interesting is if you do it for love the money comes anyway”. Work, Rupert Murdoch says, “nothing comes easily but I have a lot of fun”. Did he say fun? Rupert, yah. Tedster do fun working and they do have fun. I know they’re not workaholics. They work for allies. Good, Alex Garden says, “to put your nose down in something and get damn good at it”. There’s no magic practice, practice, practice. And its Focus, Norman Jewison, “I think it all has to do with focusing yourself on one thing”. And Push, David Gallo says, “Push yourself. Physically, mentally, you got to push, push, push”. You got to push to shyness and self-doubt. Goldie Hawn says, “I always had self-doubts. I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t smart enough. I didn’t think I made it”. Now, it’s not always easy to push yourself that’s why they invented mothers. Frank Gehry said to me, “My mother push me”. Serve, Sherwin Nuland said, “it was a privilege to serve as a doctor”. Now a lot of kids are telling me that they want to be a millionaire. The first thing that I say to them was ok we cant serve yourself you got to serve others something their value. That’s the way people get rich. Ideas, Tedster Bill Gates says, “I had an idea- founding the first micro-computer software company”. I say that was a pretty good idea. And there’s no magic to creativity and come up with an idea. Its just doing a very simple things. And I give lots of evidence. Persist, Joe Kraus says, “Persistence is a number one reason for our success”. You got to persist to failure. You got to persist to crap. Which your crap means, Criticism- Rejection- Assholes- Pressure. So the big answer to this question at the end is simple, pay for a thousand bucks and come to TED or failing that and do 8 things and trust me this are the 8 things that leads to success.