Rodrigo Barros, CEO of Handson.tv, talks about collaboration and confidence with entrepreneurs at Draper University. He covers how to build self-confidence, give value to partners, and approach investors. The talk weighs legacy against currency and offers practical advice for working with others.
Chapters
2 words for you as an entrepreneur. First of all, collaboration. Of course, you're here in the Draper University. You have the environment of collaboration. But when you go back to your country, when you go back to the city you live, when you go back to your own environment, people are selfish. That's the truth. The world is not Draper University, guys. It's not. I can tell you. But if you are willing to collaborate, if you are willing to be different than your environment, you will be different. So first key thing for me, collaboration. And you know what collaboration will bring to you? Connection. Not— I'm not talking about networking because you will, but connection, it's connection with people. It's connection with the world. It's connection with what you're doing. It's connection what you believe. Like this guy now. What's your name, my friend? Billy. What's that? Billy. Billy is not very well connected here today, right? He's there in his computer. He's doing something else that he could do like 2 hours from now, OK? What happens when you're not well connected? When you're not well, like, into what you're doing, you're losing your own time and you're losing people's time, right? So you should not ever do one thing or be in one place just because you've told to. You do things that you believe. So when you collaborate, you connect, and when you connect, the world is connected with you. And believe me, when you do things very well connected, things go well. I do not have 600 employees because I give a shit to them. I do have 600 employees and I empower 600 people and we generate more than $75 million per year. Because we are very well connected. Okay? This is the second word that I want to empower you. Collaboration and connection. Be connected with the moment. Be connected with the place you are. And for the first time in the history of the human being, each one of you have the possibility to be a media company. Each one of you have the possibility to show to the world how you can improve the world. What's the difference that you can make in people's life? Think about— because for most of you, you might don't think about it because it's, you know, it's very normal for you. Internet people, you've born with that, right? Yes. All of you. I haven't. So people started using internet, let's say, back in 1995. I'm talking about normal people, not the nerds, okay? Shh. Yeah. What's a normal people? So I start connecting on internet very, very late in my life. But now I realize that I can bring my value to people with my own content. So you know what I do? I share the content that I believe. I share the content that I think can make the difference in people's life. And this content is my value. And here comes another thing. What's your value? What are you good on doing? Start talking about that. Start sharing that with people. Because you know what? You will gain the people's confidence. And who knows? In the future, these people that you gave value might be your customer. Or these people might be your partner. Or these people might be your investor. Who knows? Give the best of you to people. And you know what? Give one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty times. Give, give, give, and then ask. Because it's really, really bad when people ask without giving. It's really, really bad. And now is the first time you can give a lot without asking. So give value. And value is not what you're giving and you think you're giving. It's how people are receiving it. So this is another important thing. Who is your— who are the people that are gaining your message and what they're going to do with that message? So what I expect here today is that with the message I'm bringing to you, you do something with it. Of course, I might not impact all of you, but I know, I'm pretty sure I'm impacting some of you. And some of you that I'm impacting today are the ones who are part of my legacy. Because for me, legacy is more important than currency. I'm a very confident guy, okay? Because since I was a child, I think I was empowered. from my family. Okay? I'm a very family guy. I'm always with the family. Okay? So I think I was always empowered from my dad to do things that I believe to do, things that I wanted to do. Because here's what sucked for me on traditional education. People tell you to do things that you hate. People tell you to do things that you're bad at. And when you do things that you're bad at, you are mediocre. OK? When you do things that you believe, when you do things that you love, you become great on that. And when you do something in a great way, you become self-confident. OK? So I really think one of my self-confidences is because I wasn't a very good student in traditional school. Mm-hm. Pretty much, I think— Yeah. It's weird to say that, right? But I think it's part of it. And then I know Tim Draper is a busy guy. I know Tim Draper has a lot of things to do and to think about it. And why should him believe or do something together with a Brazilian guy, 33-year-old guy? I don't know. I knew that I could bring value to him. I knew what my strengths were and that's why I didn't go to Tim Draper and talked about, let's say, wearable devices, okay? I didn't know anything about wearable devices, but you might know, okay? Oh, wow. He does? He does? He does? You see? You see? Cool. So you might know. OK? So then when you come to me after I speak here today and you say, Rodrigo, I know about wearable devices. Let me give you some thoughts. You're better than me on that. So you have value that I don't. So you give me this value, and on that time, I respect you for that. And this is the way to build my self-confidence. This is the way for you to build your self-confidence. If you come to me to talk about soccer, you might suck on soccer, okay? So— but let's say if you come to me and talk about something that you don't know about it, you know, it's not going to be a very good talk. But if you talk about wearable, you know, I will respect you for that and I will remember you for that. And that's a big thing. You have to have a tagline message to have your confidence. You know, have your— not for everybody I'm saying, but you know, you have to know the people you're talking with and then you approach them with your value and you know exactly what your value is. So let's say you want to approach, let's say, Mark Zuckerberg, okay? You want to approach him because he's not doing like great things and great apps for wearable. And you come to him with this idea. You know, Mark, I have this idea for wearable. I think it's going to be something that is going to rock the world. And he's going to— yeah, yeah, tell me more. Tell me more about this idea. Okay? But if you go to Mark Zuckerberg and say, you know, I don't know much about social media, but I think— he'll say, man, if you don't know much, I've been working for like 12 years on it or 10 years. Okay? So I think this is the self-confidence part. I think you build your self-confidence when you're confident about what you do. Thank you.
