I am standing on a plywood floor in
front of an aluminum wall inside of a
storage unit in Santa Monica California
where I have just put everything that I
own save what fits in these two bags
right here into storage number 502
because I am about to begin
the journey of a lifetime I am about to
spend a gypsy s Keir traveling the world
staying with friends family Airbnb
hotels doing the work that I normally do
consulting teaching speaking but with an
extra mission added in which is figuring
out discovering how is it that we might
empower ourselves in this uncertain
economy as I’m sitting there
contemplating what this year is going to
look like I reach out I lock the master
lock I bound down the stairs of the
storage unit and I leap into my freedom
chariot my Jeep and I head up the
Pacific Coast Highway
it is a quintessential California day
the sun is shining the sky is blue the
wind is coming in the window this is
what the future of work is supposed to
feel like it’s freedom it’s adventure
it’s possibility it’s opportunity until
I hit a literal roadblock I pull the
Jeep over I get out to figure out what’s
going on and apparently there’s been a
landslide now my first thought is but I
have a jeep like that’s what this is for
let me test her out but there is no
amount of convincing that was going to
get make that happen
the second thing I thought was oh my god
what if this is a sign like what if I
should just turn back around put all my
stuff in storage go back to my apartment
life as it was before but then I
remembered something that I learned
early on in my career which is stuck
with me for such a long time which is
between a known that sucks or that isn’t
working very well and an unknown with
some potential you always got to go for
the potential so with that in mind I
kept back up into the Jeep turn around
head down the highway to the detour and
as I’m heading
down the road I’m reflecting back to
what got me into this in the first place
I’m sitting in a conference room in
midtown Manhattan a few years ago the
vice president of human resources for
Dow Jones in the Wall Street Journal and
I’m sitting across a candidate
interviewing them for a role that I have
open and this conversation is ending
like so many of them that I have had
which is more or less like Joe you’re
amazing you can do the job that I have
to offer you but what in the heck are
you doing talking to me about this job
when you’re so clearly passionate about
something else and this conversation had
happened so many times in my career all
over the world Brazil Russia China the
US all over Europe and from the c-suite
all the way down to the interns and I
began to look into the numbers behind it
and it turns out that in the u.s. 68% of
people and that number aggregates up
globally – 87 percent of people are
disengaged or highly disengaged at work
which I read as bored – miserable or
worse it is bonkers more than half of us
spend more than half of our waking hours
doing something that is making us
unhappy or bored or miserable or worse
this is nuts
now in the spirit of stuff that I don’t
want you to know about me I was one of
those people who wasn’t as engaged as I
could have been in my work so I decided
to quit the corporate world in late 2013
to create a career that was more
fulfilling for me and then to coach
others into doing the same and over the
last couple of years coaching teaching
speaking consulting for companies I’ve
begun to notice a confluence of events
which really provides the context for
this question how might we empower
success in the uncertainty of this
economy and that confluence of events is
the following first there’s the advent
of Technology so there’s a study out of
Oxford more than 47% of jobs in the
United States are going to be taken over
by compiler BOTS or computerized in the
next coming years now this isn’t all
doom and gloom because according to
Accenture eight trillion dollars in
economic value is going to be created
because of this but what it does mean is
that work and how we think about work is
going to shift the second piece of this
is the workforce we read the newspaper
we hear a lot all the baby boomers are
retiring and the Millennials are coming
in and we can’t figure out what to do
with them so that’s there and there are
two other factors here that are raising
questions like what is work what does
success mean what
a career what’s a job and these are
first the trend toward contract work so
in Europe since 2010 more than 50% of
the jobs that have been created are
contract or freelance work and this
isn’t just temporary stuff we’re talking
medical doctors we’re talking senior
executives so this is really disrupting
what’s going on and then there’s the
phenomenally exciting idea that in the
next five to seven years three billion
people who have never had access to the
Internet the educational opportunities
that it provides and the entrepreneurial
opportunities that provides are coming
online we have no idea what this
landscape looks like and there’s a ton
of opportunity hiding here and then the
third thing is the economy so on average
since 1946 every five years there’s been
a crash now this is normal it’s cyclical
it’s but our last big one was 2008 so
depending on which economist you talked
to where were a couple of months to a
couple of years out but this is going to
happen so all of these three things
together raise questions about work that
I want to solve so that I can help all
of us create amazingness for ourselves
so it’s within this context that I start
out on this journey and there I’ve
learned a lot as I’ve been traveling
today’s day 149 I’m gonna share three of
the main things with you so that you can
walk out the door with a toolset to help
you empower your own success the first
one is mindset and that’s the
distinction between being captive to the
circumstances around me or the captain
of your destiny now day 47 I board a
plane in Los Angeles California
I fly 3,000 miles to Miami Florida I
walk out of the plane I walk up to the
rental car counter and you see this bag
here it’s heavy there’s a lot of stuff
in here I got a year on the road and I’m
looking for my wallet so I can get my
driver’s license out and I’m looking and
I’m getting closer to the bottom the
wall of the bag and there’s no wallet
I’m getting closer to the bottom of the
bag and there is no wallet and I get to
the bottom of the bag and there is no
wallet this is day 47 of a year of
travel
I have no driver’s license I have no
money I have no credit cards I am asking
myself what did I do to my life
why did I do this what am i doing and I
sit down and cry I mean I didn’t know
what to do I’m sitting there and then I
realized that no amount of wishing or
crying or hoping was gonna make the
wallet appear so I stood up and said
okay given this what do I want to create
so I get on the phone I call a friend
who lives in Miami find myself a place
to stay he says get yourself here I’ll
pick you up you can stay with me I’ll
lend you money until I go on to my next
destination South by Southwest
phenomenal right so I for the moment
that I did i sat there and i let the
circumstances control what was happening
but then I made the decision that I was
gonna see what I could create and that’s
gonna be a critical skill for us as the
economy continues and as the workforce
continues to shift around the second
piece is education and I could talk to
you for hours I’ve been interviewing
people all over the world about what’s
going on in education but there are
three things that I want to that I want
to share with you the first one is
really we really need to understand what
industries are in Ascension and what
industries are in decline so day 35 I’m
in Whistler Canada Tony Robbins is
putting on a conference on Finance for a
group of about a hundred and fifty of us
and we’re debating what’s happening in
the world of mechanization and
artificial intelligence and the subject
of self-driving trucks come up now these
already exist so it’s just a matter of
time before the more than 3 million
truckers in the United States are out of
a job so if I were in trucking right now
I would seriously be thinking about what
might be coming next and if I’m in an
industry that’s ancillary to the truck
driving industry I would also be
thinking about how my business model
might be shifting it’s not right or
wrong it’s not good or bad but if we can
get out in front of it then we can
create amazingness and then of course if
you’re thinking about being a truck
driver you know you may want to think
about spending a few years in school and
doing that as if we know that this is
what the trend is that’s coming so
understand what’s coming up understand
what’s going down the second piece is a
critical role of entrepreneurship so as
I mentioned this trend in contract work
more and more of us even if we don’t
want to create billion-dollar unicorns
we’re gonna have to understand how to
market what we sell what sales looks
like what finance looks like what
raising money looks like and we’re gonna
have to acquire a taste for risk that
many of us maybe don’t have right now
and entrepreneurship is a perfect way to
do that day 85 M in Chicago Illinois to
give a talk I stopped by 1871 the
vibrant entrepreneurial space there to
speak with the CEO of the Illinois
Hispanic Chamber of Commerce this is us
actually in front of our really cool art
installation and they are creating
programs for young kids to do incubators
so to grow small businesses they bring
in high school students two days a week
to teach them in the fundamentals of
business business and entrepreneurship
these are the kinds of programs and
training that are gonna help us be
successful and then there’s a third
piece of Education which is the
institutions themselves schools moving
away from traditional eight to three sit
in a desk and get talked at go home do
some homework into bubbling life design
centers day 19 I’m at Stanford which is
experimenting with some cool stuff in
this space they’ve actually brought in
folks from the design school into the
Career Services Center to help people
not just get a job at really design a
life that’s going to be fulfilling for
them and the third piece of this is
collaboration
so before business was very
transactional I give you X you give me
something of equal value in return for X
and we go our separate ways but with so
much chaos swirling around out here
we’re gonna have to come together to
find creative solutions so
institutionally competitors are gonna
have to start working together day 91
I’m invited by the Dean of the business
school of Yale University to come and
watch a Dean’s and directors meeting for
the last five years more than 20 of the
deans and directors from the world’s top
business schools are coming together to
discuss not only management education
but what’s the future of business and
how might we work together so folks who
you think might be collaborating and
fighting are actually coming together to
create solutions and then on the
individual level this is day 146 a
couple of days ago every morning I am on
a call AM F with a mastermind group one
of whom is here tonight so I’m so glad
you’re here in a mastermind group
because each of us individually is
growing our businesses but what we do
together is we bring best practices into
the room and we actually could work
together to create joint ventures and
build business for ourselves so
collaboration is going to be
increasingly more important so that’s
mindset it is educate
and it is collaboration now we’re going
to be we’re here this is day 141 we are
at the very frontier of the future of
work we are at the precipice of what’s
happening you’re all here with me and I
invite you to do a couple of things
first understand the distinction between
a known that sucks or that isn’t working
in an unknown with some potential let’s
go for the potential the second thing is
that we can allow ourselves to be
buffeted around by what’s happening
outside of us or we can step into the
caps and chair and ask the effective
question given all of this what do we
want to create and this is going to
require if you decide to come on this
adventure with me a certain degree of
resilience a certain spirit of adventure
and I will offer you this one piece of
advice for the love of God this is day
71 please do not forget your wallet
anywhere thank you
you
[Applause]
[Music]
front of an aluminum wall inside of a
storage unit in Santa Monica California
where I have just put everything that I
own save what fits in these two bags
right here into storage number 502
because I am about to begin
the journey of a lifetime I am about to
spend a gypsy s Keir traveling the world
staying with friends family Airbnb
hotels doing the work that I normally do
consulting teaching speaking but with an
extra mission added in which is figuring
out discovering how is it that we might
empower ourselves in this uncertain
economy as I’m sitting there
contemplating what this year is going to
look like I reach out I lock the master
lock I bound down the stairs of the
storage unit and I leap into my freedom
chariot my Jeep and I head up the
Pacific Coast Highway
it is a quintessential California day
the sun is shining the sky is blue the
wind is coming in the window this is
what the future of work is supposed to
feel like it’s freedom it’s adventure
it’s possibility it’s opportunity until
I hit a literal roadblock I pull the
Jeep over I get out to figure out what’s
going on and apparently there’s been a
landslide now my first thought is but I
have a jeep like that’s what this is for
let me test her out but there is no
amount of convincing that was going to
get make that happen
the second thing I thought was oh my god
what if this is a sign like what if I
should just turn back around put all my
stuff in storage go back to my apartment
life as it was before but then I
remembered something that I learned
early on in my career which is stuck
with me for such a long time which is
between a known that sucks or that isn’t
working very well and an unknown with
some potential you always got to go for
the potential so with that in mind I
kept back up into the Jeep turn around
head down the highway to the detour and
as I’m heading
down the road I’m reflecting back to
what got me into this in the first place
I’m sitting in a conference room in
midtown Manhattan a few years ago the
vice president of human resources for
Dow Jones in the Wall Street Journal and
I’m sitting across a candidate
interviewing them for a role that I have
open and this conversation is ending
like so many of them that I have had
which is more or less like Joe you’re
amazing you can do the job that I have
to offer you but what in the heck are
you doing talking to me about this job
when you’re so clearly passionate about
something else and this conversation had
happened so many times in my career all
over the world Brazil Russia China the
US all over Europe and from the c-suite
all the way down to the interns and I
began to look into the numbers behind it
and it turns out that in the u.s. 68% of
people and that number aggregates up
globally – 87 percent of people are
disengaged or highly disengaged at work
which I read as bored – miserable or
worse it is bonkers more than half of us
spend more than half of our waking hours
doing something that is making us
unhappy or bored or miserable or worse
this is nuts
now in the spirit of stuff that I don’t
want you to know about me I was one of
those people who wasn’t as engaged as I
could have been in my work so I decided
to quit the corporate world in late 2013
to create a career that was more
fulfilling for me and then to coach
others into doing the same and over the
last couple of years coaching teaching
speaking consulting for companies I’ve
begun to notice a confluence of events
which really provides the context for
this question how might we empower
success in the uncertainty of this
economy and that confluence of events is
the following first there’s the advent
of Technology so there’s a study out of
Oxford more than 47% of jobs in the
United States are going to be taken over
by compiler BOTS or computerized in the
next coming years now this isn’t all
doom and gloom because according to
Accenture eight trillion dollars in
economic value is going to be created
because of this but what it does mean is
that work and how we think about work is
going to shift the second piece of this
is the workforce we read the newspaper
we hear a lot all the baby boomers are
retiring and the Millennials are coming
in and we can’t figure out what to do
with them so that’s there and there are
two other factors here that are raising
questions like what is work what does
success mean what
a career what’s a job and these are
first the trend toward contract work so
in Europe since 2010 more than 50% of
the jobs that have been created are
contract or freelance work and this
isn’t just temporary stuff we’re talking
medical doctors we’re talking senior
executives so this is really disrupting
what’s going on and then there’s the
phenomenally exciting idea that in the
next five to seven years three billion
people who have never had access to the
Internet the educational opportunities
that it provides and the entrepreneurial
opportunities that provides are coming
online we have no idea what this
landscape looks like and there’s a ton
of opportunity hiding here and then the
third thing is the economy so on average
since 1946 every five years there’s been
a crash now this is normal it’s cyclical
it’s but our last big one was 2008 so
depending on which economist you talked
to where were a couple of months to a
couple of years out but this is going to
happen so all of these three things
together raise questions about work that
I want to solve so that I can help all
of us create amazingness for ourselves
so it’s within this context that I start
out on this journey and there I’ve
learned a lot as I’ve been traveling
today’s day 149 I’m gonna share three of
the main things with you so that you can
walk out the door with a toolset to help
you empower your own success the first
one is mindset and that’s the
distinction between being captive to the
circumstances around me or the captain
of your destiny now day 47 I board a
plane in Los Angeles California
I fly 3,000 miles to Miami Florida I
walk out of the plane I walk up to the
rental car counter and you see this bag
here it’s heavy there’s a lot of stuff
in here I got a year on the road and I’m
looking for my wallet so I can get my
driver’s license out and I’m looking and
I’m getting closer to the bottom the
wall of the bag and there’s no wallet
I’m getting closer to the bottom of the
bag and there is no wallet and I get to
the bottom of the bag and there is no
wallet this is day 47 of a year of
travel
I have no driver’s license I have no
money I have no credit cards I am asking
myself what did I do to my life
why did I do this what am i doing and I
sit down and cry I mean I didn’t know
what to do I’m sitting there and then I
realized that no amount of wishing or
crying or hoping was gonna make the
wallet appear so I stood up and said
okay given this what do I want to create
so I get on the phone I call a friend
who lives in Miami find myself a place
to stay he says get yourself here I’ll
pick you up you can stay with me I’ll
lend you money until I go on to my next
destination South by Southwest
phenomenal right so I for the moment
that I did i sat there and i let the
circumstances control what was happening
but then I made the decision that I was
gonna see what I could create and that’s
gonna be a critical skill for us as the
economy continues and as the workforce
continues to shift around the second
piece is education and I could talk to
you for hours I’ve been interviewing
people all over the world about what’s
going on in education but there are
three things that I want to that I want
to share with you the first one is
really we really need to understand what
industries are in Ascension and what
industries are in decline so day 35 I’m
in Whistler Canada Tony Robbins is
putting on a conference on Finance for a
group of about a hundred and fifty of us
and we’re debating what’s happening in
the world of mechanization and
artificial intelligence and the subject
of self-driving trucks come up now these
already exist so it’s just a matter of
time before the more than 3 million
truckers in the United States are out of
a job so if I were in trucking right now
I would seriously be thinking about what
might be coming next and if I’m in an
industry that’s ancillary to the truck
driving industry I would also be
thinking about how my business model
might be shifting it’s not right or
wrong it’s not good or bad but if we can
get out in front of it then we can
create amazingness and then of course if
you’re thinking about being a truck
driver you know you may want to think
about spending a few years in school and
doing that as if we know that this is
what the trend is that’s coming so
understand what’s coming up understand
what’s going down the second piece is a
critical role of entrepreneurship so as
I mentioned this trend in contract work
more and more of us even if we don’t
want to create billion-dollar unicorns
we’re gonna have to understand how to
market what we sell what sales looks
like what finance looks like what
raising money looks like and we’re gonna
have to acquire a taste for risk that
many of us maybe don’t have right now
and entrepreneurship is a perfect way to
do that day 85 M in Chicago Illinois to
give a talk I stopped by 1871 the
vibrant entrepreneurial space there to
speak with the CEO of the Illinois
Hispanic Chamber of Commerce this is us
actually in front of our really cool art
installation and they are creating
programs for young kids to do incubators
so to grow small businesses they bring
in high school students two days a week
to teach them in the fundamentals of
business business and entrepreneurship
these are the kinds of programs and
training that are gonna help us be
successful and then there’s a third
piece of Education which is the
institutions themselves schools moving
away from traditional eight to three sit
in a desk and get talked at go home do
some homework into bubbling life design
centers day 19 I’m at Stanford which is
experimenting with some cool stuff in
this space they’ve actually brought in
folks from the design school into the
Career Services Center to help people
not just get a job at really design a
life that’s going to be fulfilling for
them and the third piece of this is
collaboration
so before business was very
transactional I give you X you give me
something of equal value in return for X
and we go our separate ways but with so
much chaos swirling around out here
we’re gonna have to come together to
find creative solutions so
institutionally competitors are gonna
have to start working together day 91
I’m invited by the Dean of the business
school of Yale University to come and
watch a Dean’s and directors meeting for
the last five years more than 20 of the
deans and directors from the world’s top
business schools are coming together to
discuss not only management education
but what’s the future of business and
how might we work together so folks who
you think might be collaborating and
fighting are actually coming together to
create solutions and then on the
individual level this is day 146 a
couple of days ago every morning I am on
a call AM F with a mastermind group one
of whom is here tonight so I’m so glad
you’re here in a mastermind group
because each of us individually is
growing our businesses but what we do
together is we bring best practices into
the room and we actually could work
together to create joint ventures and
build business for ourselves so
collaboration is going to be
increasingly more important so that’s
mindset it is educate
and it is collaboration now we’re going
to be we’re here this is day 141 we are
at the very frontier of the future of
work we are at the precipice of what’s
happening you’re all here with me and I
invite you to do a couple of things
first understand the distinction between
a known that sucks or that isn’t working
in an unknown with some potential let’s
go for the potential the second thing is
that we can allow ourselves to be
buffeted around by what’s happening
outside of us or we can step into the
caps and chair and ask the effective
question given all of this what do we
want to create and this is going to
require if you decide to come on this
adventure with me a certain degree of
resilience a certain spirit of adventure
and I will offer you this one piece of
advice for the love of God this is day
71 please do not forget your wallet
anywhere thank you
you
[Applause]
[Music]
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