Speaking Academy Finals Night Livestream

Well, now, hasn't this been fun? You guys look amazing. I want to. You guys are here. We've got some friends that have come, and we're ready for everything. So in order for everything to happen, I want to give some background on what happened. About five days ago, a bunch of questionably sane people flew from various places around the world. One of them made a very tough journey from within Miami. And they managed to get their way here and then went through something that they had really no idea what to expect. And it has been a journey. And so, in a moment, I'm going to show you a little bit of that journey. And I want you to use that to remember. Because when we do what we've done, when we travel as we've traveled, when we do the kind of hours that we've done, when we put in the kind of practice that we've done, we create time distortion, Right? And so do you remember the last time I snapped my fingers? We're here. It was fast, wasn't it? But haven't we also been friends for years? Something really magical happens. And in all of that, I think sometimes moments get lost. And so one of the things that we like to do is make sure that we remind you of those moments. And there's a few reasons for this. And I want you to know this. You are transformed, every single one of you. You've seen it in others. Yes. And maybe you felt it in yourself. And so one way to remind yourself of the transformative journey you've on is to take a look at it again. And so, before we kick off with everything else, we're just going to start with some memories. Are you ready? Let's do I smile what it takes to fool it sty I'll do it till the sun goes down all through the night oh, yeah oh yeah I'll tell you what you want to hear get my sunglasses on while I shed a tear it's now the right time yeah Unstoppable today Unstoppable today I'm unstoppable today Break down only alone I will cry out now you'll never see what's hiding now Hiding out deep down yeah, yeah, I know I've heard that they let you feel Is the only way to make friendships grow But I'm too afraid now I put my arm around on every single day my so powerful I don't need batteries to play I'm so confident I'm unstoppable today Unstoppable today Unstoppable today Unstoppable today Unstoppable today Unstoppable today Unstoppable today I put my arm around show you how strong I am I put my armor on I'll show you that I am yeah I'm unstoppable I'm a buer with no breaks I'm invincible I w every single day Mind's all powerful I don't need batteries to play I'm so confident I'm unstoppable today Unstoppable today Unstoppable today Unstoppable today Today Unstoppable today Quite a journey, hey. Wow, wow, wow. So this has been so fantastic. One of the things that I want to say to our guests and the people that are watching online is that the people who arrived here five days ago arrived from, first of all, a variety of geographic locations from all over the world. But then more than that, they arrived from a variety of different positions. You know, what they wanted to achieve in the world, how comfortable they were with a microphone in their hand. We had everything from totally wanted the mic and maybe wasn't ready for it yet to totally wanted the mic and actually really has already been making a big impact in the world. To put the mic in my hand and maybe I'll cry and run We've had the whole spectrum here, and what we've done is seen significant transformation, which you're now going to see. The reason I need to tell you that is that for those of you that are watching online and those of you that are guests, you are about to see some people do some stuff and you won't know really where they started from. You won't really fully understand that. But I want you to know that we have been to battle over the last week. We have been working until. Well, late. No, early. And so I am really proud to kick off this year's speaking Academy Idol contest. Now, before I put the winners or the. Sorry, the finalists on the screen, I want to say that this is one of the hardest parts of it for me, selecting, choosing people to be in the finalists. This morning, we managed to get the vast majority of you onto the stage for the semifinals. We really worked at that. You guys were tough and brave and you sat there act as an audience for each other, and we made it happen. We could do that again tonight, but we'd be here until three. Okay, then let's do it. So. And also, as you know, I'm constantly trying to mimic real life for you. You know, real life, the spontaneity of being asked to suddenly Perform, being asked to change the length of your time, being asked to do the impossible. And your answer is supposed to be no problem. And so with that in mind, we're in a position where we've selected a group of finalists. And that means that when I reveal them to you, you're going to have the opportunity to assess your meaning assessments. You're going to have a chance to look at it. You went through it in practice this morning, but now you're going to go through it in a little bit more reality. And that is what happens if I'm on the list? What happens if I'm not? I'm going to share a very brief story with you about this, because we had a student go through the program, and he was outstanding. He was excellent, but he knew it in not a nice way. Was he in the finals? No, and he wasn't in the finals, because I knew that that was really ultimately the lesson that he needed to have in that moment. And, man, was he pissed. He was angry because he knew on a skilled basis it was his. But one of the things I had to explain to him is that skill will get you part of the way, but at the end of the day, if the producer doesn't like you, it's not going to happen. And about three or four months later, I bumped into an event and he came up to me and he goes, thank you. He said, it took me three months to recover, but I needed that lesson in that environment so that I could improve as a person when those things happen to me for real, because he was prone to tantrum about it. So I want you to know that when you look at this list, you can come up with whatever meaning you like, that you didn't do that well, or that you did really well because you're on the list. And what I want you to know is the factors that went into this list are beyond your comprehension, beyond anything you could possibly fathom. It's a combination of skill and improvement. How much you improved, how high your quality is against the overall pool, and also what lessons I believe were most important for you to learn. And so when you see the list, you get to make the meaning for yourself. And it's your opportunity to do a little emotional investigation. Are you with me? All right, now, once you see the list, I want you to, you know, sort of prepare yourself. Prepare yourself and get ready. If you do want to get up and move to the side or move to the back, you can do that. Please don't leave the room. In this case, because we don't want to have to go find you. Right. So this morning it was easier, but this time I want to keep the rhythm flowing. If you are on next, be ready to go on next. Your time. How much time do you have? You have four to six minutes. Now, that's an important distinction because if you don't do four, you're disqualified. If you go over six, you're disqualified. In the semifinals this morning, we didn't hold the rule so tightly. I mean, we did hold the rule, but we didn't, like, say you're disqualified over it. But this is the finals. This is real. This is life. You don't go over when you see that time warning, you see the 30 seconds, it's 30 seconds, and you might get max three seconds. Grace, when the time card comes up, maybe five, that's it. After that, boom, the mic will come off, the music will come up, and you won't be in the vote. Understood? All right. You will be doing me a huge favor. All of you, and you guys, too. And all of you that are watching online right now are going to be doing me a massive favor. Because I've been running this program for over 10 years. And about four years in, I found the stress of voting for the leaders to be just too much for me. I couldn't do it. How do you do that? How do I choose between you and I? Just so I don't vote anymore, I decided to outsource the decision. And so I've outsourced the decision to all of you and all of you and all of you. And so I want to finish with one thing before I show you the list. Public speaking, presentation skills, the ability to influence, the ability to create attraction, the ability to tell a story is the single greatest differentiator in market value that exists. You see, you could be the most phenomenal at any area of profession, and that could do great for you. But if you're able to talk about it 10x. And I discovered this because I was terrified. I was totally afraid. There was no way you could get me to hold a microphone and stand in front of a group of people. It was horrible for me. But when I began to realize two things. One, that it was the greatest multiplier of your value in the marketplace, and two, that it was fundamentally selfish to withhold your wisdom from people because of your petty fear, I decided to overcome it. And that's what started me on the journey that led to me being here, that led to you being on this journey, and that's why we're here. So the first thing I want to say before we see the list here is congratulations to all of you. Please give yourselves a massive hand with that, shall we? Or shall we talk a little more? All right, ladies and gentlemen, here we are. The 2005 speaking academy idol finalists are. Sam. You're disqualified. Each other. But when our fingers interlock can't deny, can't deny you're worth it. Cause after all this time I'm still into you. I should be over all the. All right, so I'm 30 years old and I listened to my mum. She said, become a pharmacist. So what did I do? I became a pharmacist, studied hard, did what she said, and I had a nice car, security. I should have been so happy, right? No, I was absolutely miserable. And what happens when you're really, really miserable and you don't listen to that gut instinct? Well, it starts to hurt a bit, right? You know that feeling when you don't listen to your gut, you start to get that gut ache? Well, I didn't listen to it for long enough. And suddenly I started to get this cramping feeling, like, ugh, what's going on? And then bleeding. I started bleeding out my backside. Like, what is this? What's going on? You know, you don't take care of yourself when you're feeling miserable. When you're low, your vibe's low. You don't really take care of yourself either, right? So this just kept getting worse and worse. And at one point, I start bleeding out my backside about 10, 20 times a day. You get this diarrhea, it's horrible. And I'm sat on the toilet with this complete cramping feeling, like, ah. At this point I was like, I better go and see a doctor, right? Get a diagnosis, get some kind of diagnosis. Because when you. When you got a problem like this, you don't want to tell anyone. It's pretty embarrassing. You're farting, you're bleeding. And actually, at one point, remember the doctor telling me because I didn't want to go out because you. You're nervous about soiling yourself. And he said, well, why don't you wear a nappy? So imagine wearing a nappy on a date, right? That was my life. That's how bad my life became. And this just began spiring down. And eventually I got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called ulcerative colitis. And it's pretty horrible. So there's this one scene, this one moment I remember very clearly, whereas My final checkup actually was the last time I ever saw this consultant who first diagnosed me with a tube up my ass. She said to me, neeraj, well, we have two choices left. One, be guinea pig for this drug hasn't been tested. You can be part of this experiment. If that doesn't work, you can have your colon removed and wear a colostomy bag. And I'm like, what the hell has my life come to now? This is insane. And in my most desperate moment, they say God stands the gift of desperation. An actual act of God actually happened, and I got shown another path. The path of the breath. Breathwork. And this is what actually saved me. I listened to my gut instinct because I could have chosen to have my colon removed. I could have taken a pill. But I chose another path. The one that people tell you is, woo woo, not scientific, don't do that. But I did that. Everything changed within a few months. Following this and changing my lifestyle, I completely transformed. I was back to full health, and I felt like a whole new person, found a whole new passion for life. And then one day, I get this email, and this email is from a cousin of mine. And I read it. I'm like, oh, my God, he's also got osteoclitus, and he's reaching out for help. And I'm like, I can actually help him. When I was a pharmacist, I don't think I could have helped this guy, but now I can actually save him. So I wrote this whole essay, sent it off, and I'm like, waiting. A day goes past, two days go past nothing. I'm like, what? Why is he not getting back to me? Then I found out that he had died of the side effects of the pill that I almost went on. And I was like, holy crap, how many other people are dying now of this medication unnecessarily? And that's when I found my new mission, my new purpose. And I knew that I can heal people. I can save people from the fate that my cousin had unfortunately gone down. And that's exactly what I did. I put science evidence. I made these practices fun, exciting, enjoyable. I turned breathwork into something that people really would look forward to doing. I even got Cambridge University to do the biggest breathwork study today on my methodology. But that's not what I'm here to tell you. What I'm here to tell you is that if you know anyone who's suffering right now, maybe you're suffering right now, then you can turn things around. And it could be as simple as taking a breath. Thank you very much. Together through the storm. It's so incredibly powerful to hear you speak. I love the way you used your body on the stage and visualized it for us. I just really appreciate that. Thank you so much. It's amazing how you took the moments you made us feel and also you were using a lot of great vocal range throughout the presentation. So well done. Thank you. Neeraj, I am so happy for you. I really am. What you did this morning was phenomenal. The upgrade in connection, authenticity, storytelling, the whole deal. And then what you have just uplifted it to is another level entirely. I'm honored to have you as one of our team here and I think that we was absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much. We're going to do an amazing after party tonight, right? I'm going to be DJing. Yes. Yes. Let's celebrate. Yes. So I have props. Amazing week here in Miami. I am so grateful to be a part of this speaking academy and I'm wondering if the audience here can not only help me welcome the online people but through a round of applause, really demonstrate the power of this week we've had together. Hear it. Come on. Honestly, it's been absolutely magical and I really want the online audience or anybody who's never experienced speakers academy to really think about signing up for this program. If you've ever experienced self doubt of any kind, really, or if you've ever wanted to bring your message to the audience but really didn't know how, text Eric immediately. His number is 651. No, I'm just kidding. I don't actually know his number yet. But this program is just powerful and we already know Eric's magic, right? Everybody online, everybody here in the audience, we know his magic. But let me tell you, his team of photographers, audiovisual people and his coaches are absolutely world class. Right? Am I right? Yeah. Yeah. And I'm so grateful. We've done a lot of activities here this last week and some of them have been a little challenging. We'll just say a little challenge. You actually saw in the promo video us going through a lot of them. And I want to share with you one of the most powerful exercises that we did here this week. And it really, really touched me. It was the exercise about emotions. And so what Eric had us do was he handed out scripts and that's what I have here in my hand. He handed out scripts to each of us and then sent us off to breakout rooms to practice really getting into characters and really experiencing emotion. Because after all we're here to learn storytelling. And you can't really tell a good story without emotion. So brilliant exercise. So for 60 minutes, we're all in these breakout rooms. We're screaming at the monitors and yelling. A lot of us actually lost our voice, to be honest. We're screaming. We're trying to really feel our emotions and integrate them. And it was truly, really powerful. So then we came back into this room, actually this very room on this very stage, and each one of us, now there's 50 some of us here, each one of us came up on this stage to perform our scenes. And I want to give you just a little bit of a taste of what this kind of looked like. So what would happen is we each would take the script that we were given and I'm going to share these two with you. So we each given a script and we would come up on stage and I'm holding these as my prop to demonstrate authentically kind of how we rolled. So we would be standing here and then, of course, any reader of a script, right, needs a supporting actor. So Roland, brilliantly, one of Eric's team, came and was the co actor for supporting actor for every single one of us. He was phenomenal, actually. Phenomenal. But here's kind of an example of how this exercise went. So we would come up on stage and this first little scenario that I want to share with you is from the movie A Few Good Fellows. And this movie had a really powerful scene. You don't really need to know the context. All you need to know is that the main character was being grilled and the prosecutor was trying to pull out a confession from him. So I'm just going to start at the very end to give you a taste here. I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up your weapon and stand post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think. Roland, did you order that code? I did the job. Did you order that code Red? I did the goddamn job. Now I'm Italian, so that was pretty easy actually for me to do. And it was really fun. And I was able to really kind of get into my voice. But then the second scene was the scene that really struck me most powerfully. And I want to share with you a little bit about that scene. So this scene, I think Eric labeled it, I don't know, but it was labeled Bitch baby. Rightly so. And it's a scene from the TV series Scandal. If you've never seen Scandal, it Doesn't matter. The point is, the main character, Olivia Pope, was trying to get the other character, Psy, to step into his power, and here's how it went. I don't know. You still sound like a little bitch baby to me. I'm not a bitch baby. I think you're a bitch baby. Are you a bitch baby? Sigh. I'm nobody's bitch baby. Roland was amazing, absolutely amazing throughout the entire thing, and I really wanted to thank him, but I couldn't find him the next day. So the next morning, I saw him in the cafeteria, and in the volume of noise, I went up to him and I said, roland, you were the best little bitch baby last night. The room went silent. The moral of the story. Context matters, and all the rest. Roland, I'm not your little baby. Oh, that was so amazing to. To see you sharing that here. And it's actually funny how you just took that story right. Just before coming here and. And you were using all that was Eric was teaching you here throughout this five days and just putting in practice. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. I think one of the pleasures of doing this course is that you see life stories now, and you just proved to us that that's what you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that was very interesting. You're throwing a lot of animation in. You're using your vocal range a lot. You're acting out demonstration, but you're doing exactly what Jessica said. You're showing that your entire life is a process of developing inventory. And you're doing. You're like, you. You. How many of you have new stories that just come from the last five days? Right? And so she just showed us that a story can be that recent, and it can already begin to create some value. Really very nicely done. Thank you. Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. One of the things that we did this morning is that for the guests that are watching online, one of the things we did this morning was to not publish the list properly so that, you know, we could, like, prove to people that they were prepped to jump up at a moment's notice whenever they could. And obviously, we don't have the time to do that the way we did this morning. But it does occur to me that there's somebody that I would like to speak that we just didn't add onto the list. So I've been thinking about that, and I think I should just squeeze the person in. What do you guys think? Should I do it? You think so? Do you think it's a good idea? Do you think it's a good idea. I just want to know if you do think it's a good idea. I thought you do, you think it's a good idea. You do and you think it's a good idea. All right then I've got the power. It all happened in 2022, 21st of July. I was with my mom and Eric. We were on our flight back to Estonia. It was a 10 hour flight. And mom and dad were sitting together. And Eric, he was sitting separate. And so we had a 10 hour flight. And the flight was really good. I mean, we had an amazing food, I could watch all my favorite movies and it was just. It was just incredible. And I, by the way, I had the best sleep on that plane. And I was sleeping and I wake up and I wake up to this really weird sound that I've never heard before on a plane. But I'm so tired, so I don't really understand what's going on. So I look at my mom and she looks shocked and she doesn't understand what's going on. So I look around and people are super confused because we heard this very weird beeping sound that we never heard before. And so the next moment the pilot yells something really random. I didn't understand the language that he was speaking. Then all the workers were on the plane. They just ran through the plane like this. And I was just thinking, what is going on? And the next minute all the masks just fall off. And I had to put the mask on, but I couldn't because I was shaking so much. And so my mom put her mask on. She also tried to help to put my mask on. And I was holding my mask like this, shaking like crazy. And on the other hand, I was holding my mom's hand. And all my mom was telling me is to just breathe. She said, simona, breathe, breathe, breathe. Just breathe. I wanted answers. I wanted to know what's going on. And started to go down super fast. Started to go down like this. And at that moment I knew we were going to go down. And it was the worst fear I've ever had in my whole entire life. Fifteen minutes later I'm thinking, why are we still here? Why is the not down? And about two hours land. And at that moment I'm just thinking to myself, wow, we survived this. And the most valuable lesson I learned from is to really enjoy every single your life because you don't know when your life can just end like this. Thank you. I'm going to need some tissues over here, please. Thank you so much for Taking us on that emotional roller coaster. Yeah. It's so amazing to hear your version and perspective because I've heard Eric's and. And it's really well delivered. And you really make the perspective of value of our lives. Thank you. Thank you. I am so proud of you. And I really, really appreciate the effort you've put in this week. And it has paid off. You kept everybody on the edge of their seat. You showed us what it was like for you. You shared a very powerful message. I think it was wonderful. Thank you, Simona. Thank you so much. I. Has anyone here ever made a bucket list? Yeah. Thank you. Of course. This is Mindvalley, right? So I made my first bucket list when I was 18 years old. I was a little girl from Texas with big dreams, small town. And I put so many crazy things on that bucket list. I mean, like over 200 things that I thought, I'm going to have to live to be 100 years old for all of these things to come to fruition. And, you know, some of it was just like, get married, have kids, you know, blah, blah, blah. But some of it was like, start a business, make a million dollars. Back then, I wanted to be an actor, so I was like, I want to make a movie with Oliver Stone. I want to meet Tom Cruise, like, all those things, right? So I had this crazy list of things, and I put it in a drawer and I forgot about it. 18 years later, I'm married, I have kids, I'm cleaning the house. I find the list, and I'm like, oh, my gosh. I'm going through. And I realize I start marking things off more and more and more. And I get through the whole list. And I had literally done everything in 18 years. I was at 36. Do the math, right? And I'm like, I had one thing left on the list, and it was to write a book. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get to that someday, right? A few days later, bam. I'm in the hospital. There's an accident. I'm completely bleeding out. I'm sitting on the gurney. The doctor comes in, there's nurses, there's chaos, there's noise. It's freezing cold in there. It was so scary. Everyone's yelling at me and they're like, the doctor comes up and says, this is life threatening. You might not make it. My heart just stopped. I saw literally my whole life flash before my eyes. And I thought. My first thought was, did I manifest this? Because it bucket lists. But I didn't just put bucket list I had written. Things I want to do before I die. And here's the list, completely marked off, except for one thing just a few days earlier. How powerful are our words? Okay, so then I thought, oh, my gosh, I can't die. What about. What about my family? What about my business? What about my laundry? What about all these unfinished things in my life that I still have to do? Even the one on the list, the one left. So, spoiler alert, I made it. But two days later, my son Carson died in my arms. Let me tell you, nothing prepares you for that. And I remember at that moment saying, I am never gonna love anyone this much again because it hurts too much. It hurts too much. I didn't know how to deal with it. There's not a book that tells you how to cope. I shut down so hard. I didn't care if anything survived. I didn't care if anything in my life was going to be the same. I couldn't deal with it. So I had all this grief. And my marriage, after 16 years, crumbled because we both dealt with grief in different ways. And then the business that I spent 20 years building was gone almost overnight. My only source of income. And then I went through bankruptcy, foreclosure, tax audits, tax court. I had to represent myself in federal tax court because I had no money to hire anybody. And then when our family dog Daisy, died, I didn't even have the money to bury her. It was a hundred dollars. I didn't even have it. I would be at the grocery store, and I'd have to put food back. Anybody ever been that broke? Yeah, you see a few heads nodding. I went to my son's school, and all the kids had these projects on the wall, and it said, what would you do with a million dollars? Some of the kids are like Disneyland, because it's that expensive. I'd buy an Xbox, you know, all these things. And then I see my sons. I see all these parents crowding around, and they're reading it, and I'm like, what are they looking at? And my son had drawn a piece of paper, and he said, if I had a million dollars, I would give it to my mom so we don't have to move again. Because we had to move four times in 18 months. And there was a point where we were literally going to be homeless if I didn't have help from someone like my parents. And it was, like, horrible to ask your parents for money. I was a single mom with three kids. I had plenty of time. So, long story. Short. I finally did something that changed everything for me, and I went from negative 3.6 million to positive 4 million in 18 months because I finally wrote that book and I started sharing my story. Myles Monroe said, the greatest treasure on earth is not the gold mines of South Africa. It's not the oil wells of the Middle East. The greatest treasure is in the graveyard right down the road. So don't die with your dream in you. And remember that someday is not a deadline. Thank you. Yeah. I would never sing away. Wow. You made us laugh, you made us cry. You gave some amazing lessons. This is outstanding talk. Thank you. The way you moved your body and used the stage to, like, show us all the points. It was absolutely gorgeous. Thank you so much, Melanie. Thank you for all your help. That was really, really good. You've up leveled every single day you've been here, and this time you went really deep. You pulled from inside and you showed us contrast, you showed us emotion and powerful lesson. I want to say thank you so much for sharing that, and well done. Thank you so much. One of the principles that we talk about a lot over the last five days and that I've been sharing for as long as I've been speaking, speaking about speaking, is that very often speakers speak at events and they're sharing facts, and they're sharing antiseptic stories in the form of facts, but they're not sharing emotions. If you want your audience to feel, you need to feel. And so when you tell a story like that and you go into your heart and you feel, then what happens is the audience gets an opportunity to not just hear your story, but to be in that place with you. So I get a call from my friend Carla back in 2019, and she says, fran, I'm doing this seminar. Would you like to do the seminar with me? And I'm like, eight hours. I love to work with people, and I also love to talk. So it was like my dream job. And I'm like, I'm in. And so we start to work for the next two months organizing this event. We have our slides, we have every minute of the whole experience mapped out, and everything is in order. Everything is ready. I go into the room, and this is the first time that I'm going on stage. So I go into the room, and the first thing that I do is I go into the. I'm sorry, my English is done into this part where I'm standing, and I want to recognize the room. So I am just taking the energy in, breathing it all out, putting it in my body and I open my eyes and I feel so expansive and excited. It's my first time up here and as I'm taking up the energy, I start to feel the muscles in all of my body cramp and I feel my heart racing and I start to feel my stomach gurgle and my muscles start to shake. And I'm very happy to be there. But a part of me is afraid and I am no longer the 40 year old woman that is ready to speak, to speak to the world. I am back to the third grade, to the little girl that was doing everything in her power to become invisible. And at that moment I went to the corner to try to be as quiet as possible because I had been so bullied, because that little girl believed so much that her voice did not deserve to be shared. Moment of my life. I had made a contract with myself. Shut up and smile. Because when I was quiet, when I was hiding, I would be safe. Nobody would see me. And I carried this contract for the majority of my life. And when people see me today, they say, you're so confident, you are so, so out there. It's so easy for you. I was terrified. And in that moment, as I'm frozen, I am looking outside and I see the doors are going to be open in the next five minutes. I feel somebody on my back. I know that I'm getting mic'd up and I'm shaking, I cannot move. And my inner Netflix is showing me all of these movies of all of the examples in my life where I had to be quiet. My sister comes in, she starts doing all of her magic, all of her juju. She aligns my chakra. She gets me just in time. When the doors open and I'm back in my body, I take a deep breath. I see this one woman coming up to me and as she approaches me, I go back into being Fran. And she approaches me and she says, can I tell you something? And I'm like, yes, I want to help. So I go down and I'm like, tell me. And she says, I just want to tell you that I don't believe in all of these woo woo bullshit. And I was forced to be here by my boss. I feel the vomit starting to go up and I really, really, really want to freak out, but I have no time to freak out. So I just smile. And I am so nervous in that moment. But I said, you know what? I'm going to do my best. I see all of the people coming in, I start to give out the seminars Start to focus on the different phases, and I start connecting, and I go into fun, and I get out of my head and I get into my heart and I enjoy it, and it starts to feel delicious. So delicious that eight hours pass. And what I learned from that moment is that we are all in our head, and we all have something amazing to share. And if we let our head win, our heart won't. So allow your heart to be louder. Thank you. You absolutely are natural up there. And I know that it might not feel natural, but it looks natural. Thank you so, so much. Thank you. I love how you take us on a journey with your inner and outer dialogue and playing it that well out, and it was really easy to resonate with that. So thank you for that. Thank you so much. You are so much fun, and you radiate so beautifully, and you experiment and you learn. And I gotta tell you that. And this is true of everyone, but I want to highlight it for you in this moment, you walked in here with a lot of knowledge. You locked in here with a lot of your own ideas about stuff, and each step of the way, you integrated them with the coaching you received, the information you received, and you upgraded. Well done. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. How's everyone doing tonight? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Have you ever gone to an event that you thought you were gonna learn a skill and then you realized that it was therapy just with branding? Yeah. So I'm coming here. I think I'm gonna learn about public speaking, and I listen to all these beautiful stories, and it's just a part of myself that I rediscover. And so I just want to appreciate. I just want to say thank you. Because that is what it's all about. And it's going to tie into my story here in a minute. But the story that came up for me as we were diving into this, I want to take you back. Nine months ago, I was asked the hardest question that I ever had to answer. I was in Cyprus. It's a small island off of Israel. And I was in the car, and my wife calls me, and she says, alex, Liam's in cardiac arrest. Hurry up, Hurry up. I was driving. I parked a car in the middle of the parking lot. I get out, I run up, I run, run upstairs. I walk into the pediatric icu. I get in, and death just hits me in the face. I see my wife, she's bent down with her hand on the wall, and she's making a sound that I've never heard before over and over and over again. So I walk past her, and I'm in the middle of the room, and I see the bed that my son's laying on. The cardiologist is to the left. The ultrasound is right next to her. The hospital monitor is displaying a solid line, and I can just hear beep. There's a woman on his right side that's pumping him full of medication, and there's a man my size over top of him and conducting CPR with every thrust. I'm watching my son's lifeless legs just flop up and down. I'm standing there, I'm grabbing onto the bed, and my knuckles are so white, and I'm like, come on, Liam. You can do it, buddy. You can do it. Come on. Come on. Come on. And I had this contrasting range of emotions all at the same time. I was numb to everything that was going on around me, but I was so angry that I couldn't take what my son was going through. I couldn't help him. My body started to overcome with anger. I remember the heat. I dropped down, and I was just sitting here, and the screams just started to come. The cardiologist grabs my shoulder and pulls me over, and she says. She puts the Doppler to his chest. She says, his heart's not beating. Do you want us to stop? I've been in many painful situations before. You ever heard the. The term that it comes in threes? Have you ever heard that term? In 2021, I had early 2021, my daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and I didn't handle that well. I ran, I coped with alcohol, with scrolling, with work, and then I get hit with myself, getting brain tumors, losing my job. And so I was like, I need to stop running because the pain is just coming. But this time, it was different. With Liam, I decided to stay. I decided to create this connection with the pain that I was feeling. I listened to, I integrated it, I acted on it, and then it multiplied in the world. I was listening to a podcast the other day, and the podcast says that the way we get through trauma is through connection. The fundamental piece of why we live is to get human connection. And so what I'm saying is here that when you go through something, whatever it is, because there is no hierarchy in pain, your pain doesn't have to look like mine, and mine's not going to look like yours. But just know that at the end of the day, if you stay with it, it's your gift for the greatest transformation. Thank you, Alex. This was outstanding. I love how you took us into the city scene and you really build it so well. I was there with you. Thank you for this amazing experience. Thank you. The way you use your body, the microphone, your voice, it's absolutely gorgeous. Thank you so much. Thank you. One of the things about speaking is that sometimes you have to be prepared to share stories that people don't want to hear. And if you're going to share a story that people don't want to hear, you need to share it well enough that they want to hear it and so that they can get the lessons from it. And you did so well in every, in the last iterations of this story that I thought you'd reached the fullest potential of it. And you just showed us another level of potential. You took us right into the scene. You took us right into the desperation. You are, you're real inspiration and I'm glad you're here. And I hope you will take your message and messages far, far and wide. Thank you so much. Thank you. One of the things that happens when you're at live events is that things change. I will tell you now that if you plan to use slides, you just slightly increase the chances of the slide projector dying. And if you want really to use your slides, you just increase the chances of the projector dying by a little bit more. And if you need them to guide you through your presentation, you just about assured yourself the slide projector is going to die. What we've been learning here over the last five days is to be ready for anything, to utilize anything, to go with the flow, and to be the most easy going and professional that we can be, because we understand that the producer is our client. Our job is to make everything easy for them. We learned that. Right. And so, for example, you've got this list here and you know that's the order we're going to go in, right? Or maybe it isn't. Hold on. Instead of messing with our future, open up inside. Well, hold on. One day you will have to answer to the children of the sky. Children of the sky. I was bitten by a shark. This happened a few years back when Covid started dying down and we'd gone all our shots and so we wanted to go somewhere warm because Estonia at the time was cold and miserable. It was even worse than this hotel. And for those of you, for those of you who aren't here physically in this hotel, it's so cold that it's only really good for Gyangi to fall asleep. And that's because it feels like you're slowly dying and then you drift off and in Estonia, the cold will kill you. So we decided to go somewhere warm and we choose the Maldives. And when you go to a place like that, you can either do absolutely nothing or you can do lots of of activities. And having sat around at home for a long time, I was desperate for some action and I chose to have a look at what there was to do. So I started looking at the list and all the options there, there was snorkeling, there was scuba diving, and there was swimming with sharks. Swimming with sharks. I thought, because I'd always thought of sharks as these monsters, like these ones from a horror movie would hunt you down and tear you to shreds. But I was curious, so I thought I might as well give it a go. And so I signed up. And when I went there, it was just as bad as I expected. So we were in the middle of nowhere, and this is in the Maldives. We're already in the middle of nowhere. So this is like the middle of nowhere squared. And in front of me there's this giant abyss and about 30 of these 3 meter long, these 10 foot long creatures just swimming around. And then I put on the fins. I get in the water and the water is rough, so it's tiring, it's scary. And all around you, you start hearing people scream, oh my God, a shark touched me and just panicked, panting like. And then eventually a shark touches me and nothing happens. I didn't even care that we made contact because it had no reason to care about that. And so eventually, while I'm treading water, I start to get tired because fins make fins. They're good for getting around, but they're really tiring. So I climbed back onto the boat and then before I even get to pull my swimming trunks out of my butt crack, my mom turns to me and says, oh, that's a good photo opportunity. Why don't you go down a bit and make it look like you're coming out of the water? So I'm not happy about that because it feels like I'm getting a prostate exam. But I decide to comply anyway and just quickly go with what she wants and stick my foot back into the water. Now you know how they get the sharks there? They feed them. So my leg is there, there's a lot of food there, and there are lots of teeth there. And eventually a set of teeth clamps onto my leg and all I think is, oh, wow, shark is biting me, huh? It feels like forever. And not because it's scary or because it's painful, but because my trunks are parting the brown sea. And I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about my skin color. So I don't know where your mind went. But eventually the shark finally decides to let go, and I'm relieved. I step back onto the boat and suddenly this bright red ring of blood forms. But since it bit me on the back of the leg, there's not much space. So the only way it could form a ring is because it was a really small bite. The shark hardly did anything because sharks, they don't really want to eat humans. I was just in the way that way. It was even better than the dogs. So if any of you are dog owners, I'd watch them instead of the sharks. And no, it's actually the dolphins in the water you should watch out for. I didn't believe it until that happened, but, you know, dolphins were smart enough to actually want to hurt you and enjoy it. And don't even get me started on the male dolphins. You put them anywhere with anything living, non living, or even formerly living and they'll be like rabbits. So a fun fact, they don't use dolphins in water shows when you go to sea parks, Male dolphins, they don't use them. So they patch up the bite and it heals. And in the end, the most painful part was a few days later when it had completely faded away and it didn't even leave a scar. So now I have nothing to prove that this ever happened to me. Anyway, now I'm planning a trip to the Everglades tonight, so if anyone would like to join me, we can. So I have one question. When is the Netflix special coming out? Hayden, really, it's been a pleasure to be your team leader and going through this process. Like, I have to admit, on day one, there's no way I was expecting anything like what you were doing here. This is amazing. You just amplifying or in your words, quadrupling or putting your way in this humor. This is amazing. You're doing really well. Thank you. I think you were trying to say it was Hayden squared. Hayden, I'm so proud of you. I mean, what you did this morning, I was so proud of. And you just did something we talked a lot about about three days ago, and that is that when you tell a story, you will find little moments where you can add additional IPMs because you become more brave. Did you become more brave? Yeah. Was it because of the shark bite? I just, I really want you to know that you're extremely experimentation, your bravery, your delivery, the whole thing, the creativity, it was outstanding. Do more. Congratulations. I'll see you here next time with tap dancing on a pec leg. That was so good. And I'm down for who wants to go on this alligator tour with him? I don't know. As long as he goes in first. Now, listen, when you're out there on the road and you're speaking and that kind of stuff, you often have to look at the lineup that you're in, and one of the questions is, like, who do you want to follow? Right. Who do you want to follow? Like, there was one famous day many years ago where I had to follow Bill Clinton in London, England. I had to follow Bill Clinton on a Friday night, and then I had to follow Tony Robbins the next day on Saturday morning. That's a tall order. But one of the things that I've learned about that is that I really, really like to follow greatness because it steps something up in me. And so I think following Hayden would be a challenge. Don't. No problem. So my friend has been telling me, sayuri, take care of yourself. So I'm thinking, is that spa or manipeti or maybe eat more vegetables or chocolate. And then be honest. I ended up always moisturized and confused. So this was eight years ago. My husband of 20 years moved out to be with this young lady. She's tall and beautiful, and I just turned 55. Oh, I know. Anyways, I went to the garage one day, and then I opened the garage door, and then I noticed my garbage can. You know those American giant trash can that maybe if you plan it, hide two bodies in there. That is croquet. And then sitting there and then looking really sad, uninspired has dent spider web on the handles that I've been ignoring. And then wheels are literally falling apart. And actually I caught myself in the mirror in the garage. I've been wearing the same yoga pants for four days. And then my buns are permanently on top of my head, and I am literally falling apart. And then I looked back the trash can. And then I also realized that it has been sitting there day in and day out, waiting the trash to be picked up. And it is doing very important job. No one notices. No one cares, but we can live without it. And then it hit me. It is me. It is me. So I took hose and brush and I started scrubbing. I scrubbed my lid. I scrubbed the lid and sai and the wheel, and I put her on the sideway. I crawl inside completely inside. And I scrub the bottom of the trash can and then my neighbor walks by and saying, sayuri, what are you doing? And then I'm like, what do you think I'm doing? I stand up and I stood her up. I put her on the corner of my driveway and I admire the beauty and confidence and I took selfie with her. So I walked back to the house just like normal day and something shifted in me. Self care is not about luxurious treatment. It is about recognition. I see you, I appreciate you. You are doing hard, unglamorous work of life. You deserve care. Not someday. Every single day. So that's the day I started my healing journey and here I am eight years ago. I think I'm looking pretty hot. You still have the selfie? Yes, yes I do. It's so great to see how you've been sharing the stories and also that you've been coming to both semi finals and the finals without you being on the list and just coming here and delivering. And also yesterday on the qualification round, you were the first one to start. So that's a big jump for you. So thank you for delivering that well. Thank you. I feel totally tricked. I feel very inspired to go home and wash my trash cans. Thank you so much. That was super fun. You have such gorgeous energy and such delightful delivery and you've just made it better and better each step of the way. I could just watch for many, many, many more, many more stories. Keep up the good work. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hello all you beautiful, amazing humans. I'm Elizabeth. I want to start off by saying I'm so honored to be here and I want to wish my mom and my daughter who turned seven today a happy birthday. I love you. You inspire me and motivate me every day to keep going. How many of you know an amazing, beautiful, smart, bright young lady who has the whole world ahead of her? Yeah, that was my goddaughter, Brianna. I remember seeing her for the first time when she was three weeks old, full of life. This tiny, tiny little preemie. Just adorable, big, big eyes. And I just knew she was destined for greatness. Every event that she had, I was always there with her mom. We were like this inseparable. And I got to watch her grow and blossom and she was just so full of life. She would smile so much that it would make you sick. Be like, girl, why are you smiling right now? But it just always lit something up inside of me. When she turned 19, Covid was happening. She graduated. She was a straight A student, Did Amazing. Didn't get to go to prom, which was very devastating for her. As we know young girls like to be social. So as soon as things started to lift, she had moved in with us because there was a water park nearby and she was having some issues with her then stepdad. So we encouraged her to go and get a job as a lifeguard. And she did. And she made a lot of friends. She started to shop a lot. At this time, I had left corporate because I had experienced severe burnout and started my business and went on that path. I was really busy. I got really caught up and I wasn't really paying attention. And Brianna was always my number one cheerleader and encouraging me and motivating me. And one day she came to me in tears and she's like, nina, I have something I need to talk to you about. What's going on, Brianna? Take a seat. She says, you know, I'm in a lot of debt. I got myself in an immense amount of debt, and I don't know what to do. And I'm like, what's in a lot of debt? She says, $5,000. I sat there. That's. After that, she. She then started to work three jobs. And this one weekend I was gone because it was another goddaughter's birthday that I had, and it was in la. And so on our drive back, I have my eyes closed and I'm meditating. And out of nowhere, something hits me so hard that I open my eyes and I scream. I just start crying. And my husband says, what's wrong? And I'm like, I don't know. I have no idea. We get home. When we arrive, Brianna's not there. Her car's gone. So I asked my son, hey, have you seen Brianna? And he says, no, Mom. I think she went to her mom's. So I'm like, oh, okay. We're sitting there, and the next day, she's still not there. I text her. Nothing. Her mom ends up coming over. We're trying to find her and we can't. And we sit there, and Brenna's not the kind of kid to not come home. She just wasn't. She was always up underneath us. And so we end up calling 911 when the cops show up. And we're kind of waiting, and I know something's wrong. Prior to that, I had actually sent a text message to her saying, brianna, please let us know you're alive if you are. If that wasn't a tell in itself. In that moment, the police officer sits outside Goes to the car, comes back, is out there three hours, and when they finally come up, they have the phone on speaker and they say, we have the morgue on the phone. And we believe that we have daughter and we need you to come identify her body. That is every parent's nightmare. Brianna had been in a car accident. She had fallen asleep at the wheel and died instantly. And when we went to go identify her body, she looked like she was sleeping. And I'll never forget that because I just wanted her to wake up. I wanted to say goodbye. I wanted to say I was sorry. Sorry for ignoring her. Sorry for not paying attention to how much pain she was in. And I vowed then that I would never let that happen to another young girl if I could help it. So it has been my mission to find my voice. Thank you, Eric. So that I can help make this a global movement, help these young girls rise and make sure that we're all paying attention. Because this idea of being too much and not enough at the same time, and the pressure that is placed on young girls everywhere is so immense that it becomes unbearable. And if we don't pay attention to them, we will lose them. All it takes is one of us paying attention to the signs. So please rise with me and help these young girls rise and create a ripple effect that changes the trajectory of humanity. I love you. Thank you. Elizabeth. You took it to another level. I just love how you. You get to that level where it's like, are you about to lose everything there? You're gonna just cry and just can lose yourself there, but you manage to hold it on the line and get us throughout the talk until the end. This was amazing. Really powerful. Your message is so important and so powerful, and I can't wait to see you do this on bigger stages. Thank you. Roland talks about the, you know, the way you're skirting the line of emotions. We talked about the line of emotional control. And what you've shown here is mastery of being able to get to that place where you're able to associate to the feeling. You're able to let it grab you, but not run away with you. And that shows the depth of the authenticity of the experience you've had, which allows us to have that experience, and it will allow you to really motivate people to think differently and behave differently and make things better. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. It I got my money. Let's spin it up, go out and smash it. Have you ever been on a tour with a misguided tour guide? Well, I have, and I was in Switzerland with my sister Jenny. She's two years younger than me, and she's very adventurous, so we really enjoy traveling together. But she's not always so reliable when it comes to anticipating things like timelines, like length, distance. She's been known to find herself lost on more than one occasion. One time, she actually went off driving hours and hours in one direction while we were all looking for. She just went off the road and went to church. So another time, she found herself on top of a mountain with her fiance, and they got lost and had to stay up overnight in frigid, cold Idaho. And so not exactly the best track record here, but yet I'm always up for an adventure. So we go. And we're gonna go climb up this mountain in Switzerland. So we're going through and we're getting our gear, we get going, and then as we're starting to go up, takes a some pictures. And looking at this beautiful mountain we're about to climb with these waterfalls we're going to traverse, and I noticed that I'm not wearing gloves. And I look over at her, and she's not wearing gloves either. And I realized this is kind of an important detail that she had missed. And I'm starting to worry about, can I really trust her judgment along the way here. So anyway, we start climbing up, and we get a good ways up. And I'm just about to climb over the top of this cliff here, and it's getting steeper and steeper where there's really no footholds, and there's just this big rebar, like about a foot out sticking out of the mountain. And it's also very slippery because I'm just wearing just. Just regular tennis shoes because my suitcase had gotten lost on the way over. And I was even wearing her clothes. Actually, I didn't even have my own clothes. So I'm sitting here on the side of this mountain, and I'm terrified because I don't trust my gear. And I'm slippery. I'm looking down. I can't down climb because I'm. It's just. It's just too steep. And I can't go up. I just can't move myself up. And physically, I'm hearing myself say, maddie, you can do this. This is not hard at all for you. But I couldn't move forward. And the reason why is in this moment, I felt complete lack of control. And while I was getting so mad at this misguided sister of mine who took me up on the side of this mountain. I'm yelling at her, why did you take me here? What are you thinking? She's like, it's fine, Mandy. No, it's not fine. No. No, it's not fine. And what it took me back to is a time when I was four years old. The first time that I really felt completely out of control. I was alone. I was with someone who should have been protecting me. My grandfather, who I loved so much, who listened and cared so much and took us on this fun trip. But I was alone, and he was hurting me. And no one came to save me, not even God. And in this moment, I made the decision that I would be fiercely independent. I would take care of myself. And I did for years. And it hurt relationships. It made me stuck fiercely in my business. That ate me alive, that put me into chronic pain just days before the birth of my second daughter, and my whole business collapsed. I later saw times when my marriage just was hanging on by a tiny thread. Not because he was leaving me, but because I was about to leave him. Because I felt so unloved. It wasn't until I allowed myself to really feel, to let these stories out, to acknowledge the pain that I had gone through, and to have pure, deep gratitude for all the lessons that I was given. I was able to step into a greater amount of my power. I was able to start helping myself have the freedom that I had been creating for other business owners for so long. And that day, when I climbed to the top of that mountain, I experienced a deeper sense of power than I'd ever experienced in my life. It felt amazing. You're simply the best. All the rest, better than anyone. So, first of all, you look absolutely stunning up there, and I really appreciate the message you brought to us today. Thank you. Absolutely amazing presence, and you do shine inside out. Hey, Manny. So glad to have you here. And to see you experimenting with the different ways you've told that. You are being very brave. You're trying to do a lot with a very short period of time. You're spinning stories. You're actually using a speech map within a short window. And it's a tricky thing to hold on to. You held the threads, you closed your loops, and you delivered a message. And I think if I saw you doing that again, I think what I'd love to see you do is stay maybe more focused on one thread and drop one bomb. I'm glad you did this. It was excellent. I want you to experiment. I'm just curious to see when you do it the other Way as well. You look fantastic. Well done. Thank you so very much. So at least three times over the last five days, there have been some randomly placed envelopes, and there may be randomly placed envelopes again, but they might be under the guest chairs, too. They also might be under the crew chairs. So I think everyone, Tavi, should look under their chair to see if they can find a randomly placed envelope or perhaps microphone to see what's going to happen next. Good evening, everyone. How are we doing? I'd love to tell you about a story from my childhood. My, my dad, he was a very entrepreneurial man, and when I was 10 years old, he approached me with perhaps the wildest truth trade in history. He said, saf, why don't you trade your PlayStation for three chickens? Go on. You could take these chickens, you keep them in the garden, and they could be the start of a business that you'd have. I was like, the start of a business. He goes, yeah, look, just trust me, you can, you can sell the Xbox, you can take the money, you can buy the chickens, and. And you can use that to eventually buy it back. So I agreed, or rather I was coerced into agreeing to do so, and we drove out into the countryside, into Kent, and there we went to a farm, and I was able to pick my three chickens. And I was like, I will take that one, that one and that one. Tavi, I sent you a photo, actually, of the chickens I had. I don't know if you've been able to get it to display it, but one of them was called Henny, one is called Beauty, and one is called Speedy. And I know they weren't very creative names, but we bought them home and I would get the corn, I'd feed them every morning. They'd lay eggs, which I'd take into my mom's Tesco egg cartons, and I had to change a newspaper because that's what they needed every single day. And I would take these eggs to my school and I'd take them to my teachers, and I'd say, guys, you haven't tasted an egg this delicious in your life. It's the most golden, organic free range egg ever. And I was literally this big looking up to them as I was saying that, please buy my eggs. And they found it so cute and so adorable that they bought all of the eggs every single time. And I ended up building these recurring customers at 10 years old for my eggs. And so it was a miraculous story because. Yeah, so I actually emailed it. But, yeah, so after I'd Kept these chickens. I ended up getting fed up with it after about a year, a year and a half. It just wasn't my jam in the suburban part of London to wake up at six in the morning to go and look after my chickens. So I ended up exiting the business by selling it on gumtree to a family in the area. And then I had about $300 saved up to eventually buy that Xbox back. But then I had the seed capital than to go and do something else. And I had absolutely no idea what I would do with it until I leaned into my curiosity at the time. And at that time I was obsessed with technology. I was obsessed with iPhones. And Steve Jobs would be presenting the latest iPhone at the wwdc and I would stay up every single time on the computer to go and watch the whole thing start to finish. I was so excited. And this one time he unveiled the iPhone 3G with what was a 30 pin iPhone connector. And this is a brand new connector for this iPhone. And I then ended up going onto AliExpress and finding where could I wholesale buy these and then pre sell it on ebay for a markup and then be able to ship it as soon as it came in. And I was taking like a massive risk. So I took all $300 of my hard earned money, put it through my parents PayPal account to go and order it and bring bring it to the uk. And the orders came in like hotcakes. They went so fast. I ended up doing it a second time because I realized it was compatible with my dad's car, which was a vw. And the problem with generic cables in a VW is that they wouldn't transfer audio and video. But the cables I'd managed to find were a 30 pin cable, not a 16 pin cable. So they were. So I was able to market it as a VW cable. And so when I did that I was able to sell it for $20. And oh my God, I was raking it in at like 11 years old with all of these like cables coming in, these orders coming in. At the time I realized that VW is part of the VW auto group. So I ended up doing for Skoda, ended up doing like three or four other brands. I had multiple adverts for what was essentially the same white labeled cable. And then one day I noticed the orders weren't coming through and I couldn't put my finger on why. And it turns out that there was another seller on the market and I was like, what? Someone else has caught on to my idea. So I realized he's been undercutting me by quid. And I was like, right, I know what to do. I'm gonna go undercut him. And so that was it, problem was solved for the next week. Then he undercut me and then I undercut him. And I was like, it's respectable to make $10 on a cable. And we kept going until I was like, no, no, no, there's no way we're going to go right to the bottom. So at that ripe young age, I reached out to him and I said, excuse me sir, would you be willing to agree to a price cartel on the price of these wires on ebay? I said, we'll just keep it at the same price. It's a win win. And he was like, yeah, go on then, why not? And so we ended up hiking the price back up to $25. Life is good. We're like OPEC but for iPhone cables at this point, unfortunately it didn't last very long because I had the most reviews on the platform and he realized everyone would buy for me anyway. So he ended up undercutting me. We raced to the bottom and I ended up having to find a new idea afterwards. But the point of the story was at that age I didn't realize that what I was doing was business. At the time, it felt so fun to me and I've had a very rich career since since then trying so many different things. And I feel so fortunate that today I'm 12 months into a brand new business and the only reason I came to doing this is by looking back at my childhood to see where the sparks were and what I really enjoyed. And I absolutely love buying and selling, absolutely loved talking to customers, absolutely loved looking for different opportunities. And so I was very confused for a long time until I was able to look back at my childhood and connect the dots. And so that's the message I want to leave with all of you today is to have a look back at your childhoods and think how can you connect the dots into what you're doing today? You are so easy to watch on stage, you're just meant to be on stage. And such a great story how you can sparked this entrepreneurial path in children by doing what you were sharing. So thank you for sharing this concept of this idea, your experience. I'm excited to see all the people that you're going to inspire to become young entrepreneurs. Thank you so much. That was really fun. First of all, you beam a lot of like radiation. You know, you're born or you send out like this warmth and this smile and that lets us know interesting stuff is happening. But then you dropped some really great bombs. Like, hey, this is the thing I did. And I tried this. And you showed that at your very heart you have this entrepreneurial nature. You then bend it to a felony. And I just. I think the whole thing was a blast. Thanks very much. Keep up the good work. Thank you. For those of you who don't know the reference, that was a plain face flying and landing. And I will explain why. So apparently at every event there's a potential flight risk. And at this event, I turned out to be one. And not for the reasons that most of you will think you know. About four and a half, five months ago, I was working tirelessly. Long hours exhausting my body. I knew I was pushing too hard, too far. But I kept powering through. But eventually I paid the price. I sustained an injury to my neck, arm and shoulders. And I had to go to physical therapy. Okay, easy enough. However, one day my physical therapist wasn't there. So I took an appointment with someone else. An inexperienced young lady who's lovely. How could I say no? As she began working on my neck, I started to feel something. There's extra tension. It's a lot of pressure. Then she put a lot more pressure in there. And I realized, this doesn't feel good. I should have stopped. I should have told her, no, that's okay. Don't go any deeper. Don't push anymore. I dropped back in to the old codependent people pleasing self that didn't know how to stop and say, no, no, no, please stop. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know how wrong. I went to bed thinking everything was okay. I woke up the next morning. I opened my eyes and I felt weird. There was a strange sensation. I couldn't make out the room as I stood up, I fell to the ground. I didn't know what was going on. So I tried to lift myself back up. And I kept getting pushed or pulled. I couldn't tell what was going on. And as I tried to lift myself up, I felt this spinning and spinning and spinning and being pulled down to the left. I cried out for my partner and I said, help. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. I said, I think this is that thing they say you get, I don't know, vertigo. That thing that the world spins around. We didn't know what it was. I could barely stand. Let Alone walk. I couldn't move for the next few days and weeks. My family had to walk me around, drive me around, appointment after appointment after appointment. Nobody could figure out what was going on until I met a specialist that started to work on my spine. And he said what had happened was I sustained an injury to my spine and the spinal fluid wasn't reaching my brain. So with therapy and treatment, I started to improve. I'm at about 75% now. But what hasn't improved is my memory. So while attending this event, I realized, oh, my gosh, I can't remember my own stories. I can't remember the last four and a half, five months. I've forgotten my anniversary. I've forgotten my son's birthday. I forget major events. I've frozen in the middle of a lecture. This is my brain. It's not working. So, yes, on Wednesday, I was like, I can't do this. I can't stand here and talk in front of you. What am I going to say? Is my brain going to feel fail me? I'm no stranger to fear and adversity. When I was 9, I was in Iran during the revolution, and I faced a machine gun faced at my forehead by this toothless revolutionary man. And I said to him, go ahead, shoot me. I'm not afraid. And I'm not afraid of the lessons I wanted to learn here. I was afraid that my mind won't work. It will fail me. But as I contemplated leaving, I ran into a fellow student from this program, and he reminded me why I was here on day one. I said, I'm here to show my son who's fighting through depression and anxiety how to battle through, how to push through. And I trusted. I trusted in that moment that the same strength that got me through so much in life will get me through this again today. So I'm here. And I didn't fly away until tomorrow night. Better than all the rest. This is the first time I've seen you speak. And oh, my gosh, am I grateful for you staying and sharing because, wow, that was beautiful. Thank you so much. Beautiful how you went into the feeling and then you were showing us different feelings throughout the rest of the presentations. And you were staying in there yourself. You were feeling so we could feel. Thank you. Well done, Nadia. Really, really well done. You've kept upgrading, kept upgrading. You really showed us something special here. It's actually quite easy in a short talk to go into one emotional state and just kind of stay in there. And what you did is showed us emotional range you showed us various things. You showed us standing up and being strong and purpose and leadership and everything else. And I just want to say thank you so much. Congratulations. Thank you. So I want to underscore this for those people who are watching online and for those of you guests, I want you to think that many of these people, when I came in here the first time, if I walk near them with the microphone, they would lean back, and if I told them that it was their turn now, they'd be like, no, I gotta go prepare for three or four days. And at this point, how many of you would just love to be next? How many of you would love to be next? As a matter of fact, who's the most hungry? Who would love to be next? Who's the most hungry? Who is it? Who wants it? What's that? You think? So? I don't know. I don't see it. I don't see it. I just don't see it yet. I don't see it yet. I don't see it yet. I got it. Okay. I've never really been good at math, and my math teachers, they agree with me. And so they put me in a private math class class. And I didn't really like it because I felt like I didn't belong. And I remember this one specific time in seventh grade when I was in math class, I was in a big class with all my classmates, and it was the first day back at school after summer break. I was really excited about it because I was like, this year is going to be my year. This year. I'm going to do it this year. I don't need a private teacher. And 30 minutes went by, and guess who walked into the class? My private teacher. She walked into the class, and I could feel the attention. I could feel how all my classmates are just staring at me. I could feel the embarrassment. And as she's walking towards me, she's sitting next to me, and she's asking me now, do you want to do the private lesson in the B class or in a private room? And at this point, I'm like, I can't take the embarrassment anymore. So I was like, let's go to the private room. So we did. And when I was younger, I was diagnosed with this thing called this. Something like this. It's basically like dyslexia. Above in numbers. Yes, dyscalculia. Exactly. And so you can just imagine how all the numbers in my head are just messed up. They're just a big mess. And one night I was sitting on my bed crying to my mom, saying, why me? Why can I feel like everyone else? Why? Just why me? I don't want to feel like this. I don't want to be like this. I want to belong. I want to be like everyone else. And she told me, simona, when they diagnosed that you have difficulty with numbers, they also told me that you're very intelligent and you're more intelligent than some other your age people are. And so that made me feel very powerful. And then I went to Mindville University where all the people were like me, all people could relate to me. And all the people, they just made me belong. They made me feel like I belonged. And so to all the dads, to all the moms, and to all the teachers, please, please do not look at all the bad sides that we have as children. Please help us to focus on the good things that we have. Because at the end of the day, you don't need to be good at many things to be successful. You really need this one thing to be really good at. And then you will succeed. Thank you. I am a champion and you're gonna hear me. First of all, smart to figure it out. First to go on stage and second, courage to do it going on there. Second time you've been there already. That's a huge courage and very good point as well. Thank you. Way to be a role model for everybody else in the room. Thank you so much. She so felt that she belonged with her friends at Mindvalley University. In fact, after hours, they felt they belonged in one of the rooms, so they broke in and had a private party. They belong so much. Simona, well done for the just spirit. Jumping up, taking action, showing you've got what it takes. Really inspirational. Thank you very much. Thank you. That brings us to the halfway point. We've had an incredible run so far. We've got some really amazing stuff coming up now, but in the meantime, there's been some tension building and it's called bladder tension. So we will take a 11 minute break. 11 minute and 11 seconds. This break will be please go and enjoy yourselves. And we'll be back here in 11 minutes and 10 seconds. To me and a heart. That's Sam. These presents don't really come for free. Your paycheck don't mean that much to me Just, just take my hand and hold me tight. You never find my love you buy me this and you buy me that you got to know this my. But now that I dance to a different look Will you realize when I know that I dance to a different song It's a shame but I got to know Sa Sam Everybody rock your body Everybody run your body right back streets back all right oh, my God we're back again Brothers and sisters Everybody say gonna bring the flame I show you how I got a question for you better answer now, yeah Am I a bigger now, yeah Am I the only one? Yeah Am I sexual, yeah Am I everything you need? You better rock your body now Everybody, yeah Rock your body, yeah yeah Everybody, yeah Am I original? Yeah Am I the only one? Yeah Am I sexual? Yeah Am I everything I need? You better rock your body now Everybody, yeah Rock your Nobody yeah Everybody right back streets SA I and if you hear this and then go and bend your back Go and bend your knees, baby Shake it to the max 32, please turn up the bass to the max Please just rewind Let me shake it to the max Flat top become grooving up soda he got Ju Apple, he won't hold and Boulder, he got hair down to his knee Got to be a joker he just do what it please he wear no shoe shine he got told jam football he got monkey finger he shoots Coca Cola he said, I know you, you know me One thing I can tell you is, is you got to be free Come together right now over me Keep back reduction he got more stronger, he got more oh, no side bow, he won't Spinal cracker, he got feet down below his knee hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease come together right now oh, Sam. Grab a seat. Have a seat. Have a seat. Have a seat. All right, we're going to get started again. For those of you who are yet to go, I have talked to you about this before, that sometimes times change. Sometimes the producer can tell you they need you to fill more time. Some times they can tell you they need to fill less time. And that doesn't matter because you're ready for everything, right? And so now the time will be, instead of four to six, it'll be three to five. So good luck with that. Let's begin. Helen Keller Shared alone. We can do so little together, we can do so much. A few years ago, rather unexpectedly, I became a bar owner. What? I'm an attorney. I have no background in hospital hospitality. I have no idea how to run a bar. I felt anxious about it and also a little giddy because this could be my exit strategy for my legal career of over 30 years that was no longer bringing me joy. And a management team in place. An amazing crew that had been running this bar on all cylinders. So it was an incredible opportunity for me. It's a quaint pub in the vibrant downtown area where I live, where we all shop, dine, gather. However, our neighbor was the art center, a nonprofit establishment of noble pursuits and creativity. Although there was nothing, an alley between us, there was a quiet wall of tension. My team and I felt this sense of snobbery from the director and her team, as if she looked at us as a mere place of liquid distraction and intoxication and of no value to the community. And we didn't do much to dissuade that opinion in any kind of interaction, nor did they. So we simply coexisted. We did our thing, they did theirs. And then Covid hit. As the world shut down, so many businesses, including hospitality, flatlined. I was terrified. Terrified. I had already shut down. My legal practice was winding down, my clients, but more importantly, 14 team members whose livelihood depended on this to support themselves and their families. And the Art center was struggling, too. Their doors were closed. And then over the summer, the city closed the streets, as so many communities around the world did, to allow seating for customers to come back. But we only had a little tiny section of the street. And although they didn't own the street, they did have additional space in front of the art Center. And one of my team members said, maybe we could do something with them. But I had to call the director. So I did. And I suggested that the tables we place in front of the art center, we will return a percentage of the profits to you, and you can provide carry out art projects for children and families. They can pick it up from the bar. The parents can enjoy beverages while the children entertain themselves with creativity. I could almost hear the tilt of her head as she said, yes, it's a brilliant idea. And it was, because it wasn't long before there was laughter, conversation, and creativity. The funny thing is, we all, both of us, wanted the same thing. To bring people together. When we set aside our judgments and our biases, and we embrace humility and curiosity, and we acknowledge that we're really, truly more alike than different. We can create connection through cocktails and crayons. Girl is on fire she's walking on fire. Kelly, you have such a beautiful presence and smile. It's. It's so lovely to watch you there on stage sharing your story. Thank you, Roland. Yeah, I mean, I come from the restaurant industry, so I resonate very deeply with what you're saying, and I appreciate you sharing this story. Thank you so much. Very, very nice. And variety and Variety of style and just showing exactly what we talked about, that once you learn to do this, you know, some people come in here and they think, I'm going to come and learn to tell this one thing really well. But what you begin to realize is that once you've opened up into that place, you can do anything really well. And you did it. Well done. Thank you so, so much. Thank you. Now, three years ago, I was working in the hospital in trauma, and it was towards the end of my shift when my boss turned to me and he said, I have one more thing for you to do tonight. Is that okay? I go, yeah, that's fine. There's a patient downstairs who has some cuts in their hand. Could you go down there and fix it? Sure. So I go downstairs, and I'm walking down the long hallway, and I go between the double doors. Now, the way our ER is set up that there are curtained rooms, they're pretty small. Inside each one, you'll have a stretcher, have a monitor up on the wall, and you can kind of shimmy down the side of the bed to get next to the patient. So I come up to my patient's room, and I pull the curtain to the side. This large man, he's laying in the bed. I go, hi, my name's Anna. Is it okay if I fix the cuts on your hand? And he goes, sure. Great. So I come up next to him. I got the needle ready. I let him know, okay, I'm going to inject it. And when I stick the needle in his hand, he pulls his arm back and he swings at me. I was like, oh, my gosh, what's he doing? I start backing out of the room as fast as I can. I'm going between the curtain. I can't go to the side of me. There's another room over here. And when I get out of the curtained room, he's still coming at me. He's not stopping. He jumps up out of the bed, and I realize just how large this man is. He's 6ft, 250 pounds, and he's still swinging. Luckily, with all the commotion, there were cops nearby who heard it. And they came running over, and they pull out their Tasers and they go get back in the bed. That did nothing to deter this man. He's still swinging. His gown had fallen off. He's naked in front of the cops, still swinging. So they both fired their shots and they both tased him. It took a few seconds for him even to hit the ground. And once he hit the ground. I'm behind the cops the entire time. I felt a little okay at that point, but very shaken. So they pick up the man, they put him on a stretcher, and they handcuff each limb to the stretcher. At that moment, I was like, I can't finish this job right now. I do not feel comfortable. Surely my boss would understand, right? So I leave the ER still shaking and I walk back upstairs and I go to the pod of computers where my boss is sitting. I sit down, he's across from me. He goes, did you get done? I go, no, no, no, no. I told him, told him what happened and he was disturbed. He grunted. And in that moment, I realized I was not important to this company or to my boss. He was willing to let me have gotten hurt and replace me. And I had a three month old and a three year old at home who cannot replace their mom. So I went home that night, I told my husband, and we made the decision that we were going to put our family first and we were going to be more present with our kids. And at that time, we started making the choice to go full time into family travel, which is now our passion. Thank you. I absolutely love how animated you are up there. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Thank you. It's so great to see you more and more comfortable on stage each time to come and step on it. So keep on doing that. You such an amazing presence. Thank you. Yes, absolutely. I think about what the faces, yours and others looked like on day one. You walked up and there was a definite communication of, you know, hesitation, discomfort, or just different things. This time you walked up and your face beamed comfort, confidence, and that something special was going to happen. And then you kept that promise. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. So the prison gate clanged shut behind me. I stood on the pavement. That's a sidewalk for you Americans. And I thought about the beautiful woman I was planning to spend the evening with. 30 minutes later, I'm in my car in London traffic. It's rush hour and I have to turn into a side road. And I can't do it because there's an oncoming stream of traffic which has no gaps in it. But it's fine. I'm chilled out, I'm listening to music, I'm in a great mood. I notice there's a lady standing with two children, but she's not standing on the sidewalk of the side road. She's not, the way I said it, in the American way, there she's standing back at A fence some distance back from the edge of the pavement, and then there's a gap. And I think, right, this is my chance. I put my foot in the accelerator, I swing into the road, and at that very second, she has two children in her hands. She runs across the road with the two children, and I have to slam on my brakes and stop. My heart is going like this because I nearly killed two kids there because I had no idea she would make that sudden dash. And I'm just sitting there recovering from that bang. A car coming in the opposite direction hits me in the front, and I'm staggering. I'm sort of completely dazed. I don't know what I'm doing. It's what happened there. I kind of gather myself and clearly, a car. I had stopped across the other carriageway when I stopped because of that woman. He didn't stop and he hit me. So I think, okay, I have to exchange details with him. So I reached down for my safety belt, I put that out undone. I opened my driver's door. Please note the driver's door is on my right side. It's England, you know, the right. Right means correct. You know, the correct side, as opposed to some countries where they put it on the wrong side. Anyway, as I'm opening the door, suddenly, wham, punch in my face. And there's a man punching me, punching me in the face. And it's the other driver, he's come round, and again, I'm staggering around the place, and he grabs me by the throat and he pulls me out of the car and he throws me to the ground, and he's about to start kicking me when fortunately there were bystanders around. And they come up and they pull him away, and somebody says, we've called the police. And I have time to stop and breathe and think. And I think, I don't want to punish him, I just want to find out why he did that. So two days later, I ring him and I say, why did you attack me when we had that accident with our cars? And he said, you'd done wrong. So I gave you a slap. You'd done wrong, so I gave you a slap. I'm a criminologist. I work in prisons with violent men. And I've heard that phrase so often with men who are telling me about a fight they got into because somebody done wrong. And when they say, gave him a slap, what they mean is, I actually fractured his jaw or I stove in several of his ribs or things like that. That's what they call giving Him a slap. And I thought, where did that come from? But I knew where it came from. When that man was a small child and he'd done wrong, guess what his father or his mother did? They gave him a slap. And he learned when someone done wrong, you give them a slap. And he was carrying this into his adult life. And we all tend to carry into life what our parents did with us or taught us, and it becomes who we are as parents, as future parents. So I've been involved in a study for the last three years looking at how we transform childhood through different parenting. And the project is actually called Transforming a Country in a Generation because we believe that that is what is possible. And that is what I think we should be persuading our politicians to do, because it will save huge amounts of public money that we spend on all the consequences. Frederick Douglass was a slave who, on getting freedom, campaigned and played a major role in ending slavery in the United States. And he said, it is easier to build strong children than to heal broken men. Where did you lose the boring lecturer, George? This is comedian who is sharing valuable information. Awesome. I'm stunned just seeing the growth from day one to now. Thank you so much. This is your Independence Day. That was so good, George. You came in with an agenda around information that you want to share that is important. It's important for society. And you were lecturing it because that's the background you come from. And what you did here was a masterful earning the right to lecture, earning the right to share the data you wanted. There a deeply personal story acted out really well. Physicality, comedy, humor, depth, pain, seriousness. And then, hey, let's talk about this. I would say that it had certain vibration, a little bit like how Ken Robinson made in entertainment, or, sorry, education, like a viable topic. You did the same thing. You had that same kind of energy. Wonderful. Thank you so much. This is so exciting. You guys are so eager and excited. I'm just wondering who's the most eager. That's the thing I'm really curious about. 5, 4, 3, 2. You know, I know a guy. He can help you with that. Okay, I want everybody to take a second and look at your watch or clock right now. Okay. So when I was very young, our family had a store. It was wonderful. We had this lunch counter, the deli, the ice cream. That was great. And we got to run it with our family, Cole and sons. I was one of the sons, So I was 15. There was a guy that came in. He was mysterious, very tall, six two, and he Waited till everybody left, and then he came to the counter. He brought his bottle of Coke and a dollar. And he drops it between the counter. And I'm like, what the heck? I go to pick it up. Bam. He broke the Coke bottle over my head. Now, some of you know me, I am a hardhead. But at that moment, I looked up at him and he was as surprised as I was because I was still conscious. So of course I looked at him and said, stop it. However, he got $70 and he runs out. What's a life worth? So I grab a friend, I lock up the doors, drive to the doctors. He sews it up. Nice job, doc. See you later. And as I'm on the way home, I'm thinking very carefully. Now, I'm a doctor for 25 years who deals with pain, but this is me at 15. So I thought very carefully. And I looked at him and I said, man, I'm really glad that happened to me instead of my family. And he's like, dude, how hard did you get hit? I said, you don't get it. My sisters are incredibly good looking. They're 16 and 17. My aunt is 19, she's deaf. My dad would have shot him with an illegal gun. Grandma, grandpa. A grandma and great grandma, they'd be dead. My brother was too vulnerable. I said I was the logical choice. So I want you to take a second and I want you to look at your watch again. And I want you to take note. Time is our most precious commodity. We never know how much we're going to have or when we're going to get hit with things out of the blue, kind of like with Eric. So I want you to take. We're going to meet a million people in our life. We have the opportunity to change lives. Everybody here is amazing in their stories. We need to share that with everybody we meet. You need to do the same. Thank you for the opportunity. Oh, my gosh, that was so much fun. It's contagious to see you up there and your energy is amazing. Thank you. I know a doctor for that doctor. We need a doctor running the stage. And anyways, your presence was amazing there. I'm so glad that you're able to go to this modality that you're doing the presentation now because you are done a lot of the different type of presentations and going through that. Really well done. Thank you. Yeah, very well done. And one of the things I want to remind you all is that when you are hungry for it, you will make the extra steps. Proximity is power. He was close to the front, he acted quickly, so did six other people, but he just was that little bit ahead. But the other thing, what you don't know and that he didn't know is you have all trained for four to six minutes. He was locked in at three minutes. Nobody ever told him the time was adjusted here. He handled it like a total professional. You had no idea it was going on. And he landed on time perfectly well. Well done. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you all so much. Love you guys. I love life. Is it obvious? You know, 2013, not so much. I was deep in my stuff, if you know what I mean. And life wasn't great. Our marriage was on the rocks and a really great friend of mine came to me knowing that things weren't going real great for us. And she said, hey, I got this self help program, I like to you to go and enroll like already. You lost me on that one. What is it? Landmark. Okay, well tell me more. And so as she did, I'm mildly interested and I, rather than disagreeing with her or arguing, I agreed. But to understand why I agreed, I have to go back in time a little bit. Several years before this, our daughter Jenna, our twin daughter Jenna was diagnosed with leukemia. And it rocked our world. It changed our lives forever. But in that very moment, it made us, it forced us to make some major, major changes to our lives. I was self employed, I was traveling, my wife carried our health insurance and she was a bank executive. Still is to this day, very successful one I might add. And in the moment we had a reversal in roles. I was forced to leave. My work and life, as I said, changed so dramatically for us that it was hard to pay the bills. And she had a 50% chance of surviving. And you can just see and hear all the stressors mounting. And so she survived her treatment and came out with a positive result, cancer free. And in that moment we celebrated. But it was short lived. We got home, we started settling back into our normal family life and the stressors continued and continued to mount. And I remember one particular day, we're sitting in our bedroom, Dottie and I slept in that morning. The sun's coming in, it's a beautiful fall day, we're having a cup of coffee and we weren't really talking much, we were just surviving every day it seemed like. But this particular day we started talking and it was lovely for a few minutes and somebody got triggered and it went from, oh, you did this. And it was bantering back and forth and back and forth. For two, three hours, and she's just crying. And I'm shivering with anger, shimmering. And I looked at her and I said, man, we can't keep doing this. She said, you're right. I'm calling a lawyer. We're getting a divorce. In that very moment in time. It was awful. I looked at her and she said, get out. So, tail between my legs, I walk out the door, head down the stairs. Couple hours pass by. I think, I've got to do something about this. We just can't do this. Like, we've been through hell and back. We've had all this chaos. I need to do something to salvage this relationship and this marriage and this family. Family. So I went upstairs and I looked at her, and she's giving me this beam, laser beam. And you ladies, you know when you're really mad at somebody, that laser beam just hitting you straight in the face. And she looked at me, she said, what are you doing here? And I said, honey, look, I love you way too much to divorce you. I will never sign one of those documents ever. And she had this really smirky look on her face with a little tiny turn on her cheek. And she said, you're such an asshole. And I said to her, you know what, honey, what we're going to do, we're going to work this out. We're going to spend the next couple of years working this. And we did. We went to church, we got in touch with our priests, we did counseling, but it wasn't enough. It truly wasn't enough. And here's why it wasn't enough, because we didn't do our own work. So let's fast forward back to Landmark for a second. I go, day one, I'm like, oh, my God, this is the dumbest program ever. Day two, the forum leader started to talk about some pretty interesting things. And I realized, wow, we're into some really cool stuff here, but doesn't really apply to me because I'm perfect. I don't need any work. Until we got into the afternoon, started talking about vulnerability, and he demonstrated it. And then he had people come to the MIC, and there's 100 people in this room, they're grabbing a mic like this, and they're all just as afraid as each other as we are or were on Monday, right? And so I grab, for whatever reason, grab the mic. I get up there and I talk. He pulls the Eric Edmeads on me, and then he challenges me and the whole crowd to go home that night, especially the men. And I want you to go home to your spouses. And I want you to be vulnerable with them and share with them what it was in your life that you could own. Ooh. So I did. So I went home, I get on the kitchen table with my wife or sit down at the kitchen table, I should say, and I sit with her. And I said, you know what, honey, I love you. And I was absolutely devastated with her and in tears. And in that very moment, I let it all go. And when I was done letting it go, we had one of the most beautiful moments ever and we had a reconciliation. And in that. And that's power. Vulnerability is power. So if you want to have a life that you love, be vulnerable, be extraordinary, and fight for what you want. Thank you. Take a step, everybody. Everybody, come take my. Come take my. Did you get on the table with your wife after that talk? No comment. My children are watching right now. I don't know if you planned that, but this was hilarious. Well done. It was absolutely gorgeous to watch you use the stage and your cadence of voice. Thank you so much. So, so much. Super, super fun. I generally have a fun energy about you, but before we were seeing the fun in the hallway, we were seeing the fun in the practice and the conversations. Now we're really seeing the unleashed version of that fun here. Delivering really great, high quality information. Very, very well done. Congratulations. Thank you. Hello. First of all, I want to say hello to the audience that's streaming and watching us. And I want to thank all of my students, the students that were here, the people that I connected with here on this five day journey. And I feel very honored to be up here. So thank you. Thank you. So I am at the salon with my stylist and I bring my family with me and Anastasia is my stylist and she's always rocking a cool style. Buzz cut on one side, different color hair each time. And I feel very, very cool when I'm around her. And I leave the salon like this with my big flowing hair. So I'm in the salon chair. My family here is on the right side of me. They're smelling of shampoo, conditioner, hair dye. She puts the apron on me and she looks down on me and she says, are you ready? And I said, yes. She goes over here, cabinet and pulls out her razor and starts trimming my hair and continues to do that. And I see my daughter over to the right, her eyes really wide and scared behind my husband. So I'm in. I have chemo racing through my body. I'm a Month and a half into my chemo. And the interesting thing about chemo, you want it, but you don't want it. The cells, the good cells are dying. The bad cells are being killed. My hair follicles are dead. Waking up in the morning with hair on my pillow, standing in front of the sink with hair just falling into the sink and putting on makeup. And for all the ladies, when you put on mascara, the eyelashes are just falling off. I'm looking in the mirror. I said, you know what? I can't control this cancer right now in my body, but I can fucking control how my hair is going to fall out and I'm going to shave my hair. So, Anastasia, I finished shaving my hair and I look in the mirror and I saying, connie, I don't recognize you. Who are you? Well, I was the person that was going and going and going, working and working and working with two twin girls at home, never stopping because I felt like I was always, never enough. Always pursuing something. Nothing was ever enough. Now, I'm sure all of you guys have felt that way at times. Well, having cancer, if you've ever had a teacher, Cancer was my favorite teacher. We always have favorite teachers. Well, cancer is my favorite teacher. And it showed me that life is precious. And it showed me that I can step in my power, that I don't have to shrink. I can be in my feminine power and wear pink in a meeting full of men. So one of the beautiful things that I hold dear now is the ability to just stay in my center, hold my ground and challenges. And cancer was my beautiful gift. And if you have challenges in your life, embrace it, because there is absolutely a learning from it. Thank you. It's such an incredibly special, strong message you have, and you tell the story in such a beautiful way. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. It's amazing how comfortable you become on stage. And you're using the whole range of the stage and making pauses, making stops, and then delivering. It's very well done. Thank you. Yeah, it really is. The comfort really comes through. The comfort, the authenticity of it. Your stage use. When you're walking to a place, place on the stage, you're doing it with purpose. When you're acting things out, like, honestly, when you started clipping your hair, I, like, expected it to fall out. Like, it was so real the way you did the whole thing and then you did that drop. That's why this is going on. I think it was very, very nice. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Thank you. I went to College in the 90s. And while it wasn't a private school, I very much had a uniform. And from the top down, it started with the hair. And it was a mullet. It was a mullet, but mullet light. So it was not so much party in the back and not as much business in the front. And I used to sit way in the back, like, right at the top, in the very back row, because I didn't want to be seen. I didn't want to be heard or there. And I remember I was working my way down out of the nosebleed section one day, and out of 120 people, I see that the professor is looking at me, and I can tell he's looking at me. So I speed up to get out the door faster. But he catches me at the door and he says, I'd like to have a word with you. I know you applied to the Omega Society because I'm the president now. The Omega Society is a club, and you basically have to join this club if you want to get into medical school. You're not getting in. I felt his words. My body got hot. And it was that kind of heat where you have a visceral response to what you're hearing, like you don't want to believe it. You want it just not to be true. I wanted to grab his words out of the air and shove them right back into his stupid little mouth. You're just going to stand there and ruin my future like that? How can you do that to me? But he wasn't a villain, and he wasn't cruel. He was such a good educator, such a good person. And before I left that day, he gave me an invitation to an open house at the veterinary college. And that changed my life forever. And I saw the reality of when one door closes, another door opens. And over 20 years later and over 50,000 patients later, I understood that. And if that other door hadn't opened, I wouldn't have the gift of knowing Dewey. And I met Dewey in the summer of 2010. And I was working at the hospital, and I walked into the exam room, and the first thing that I noticed was this mountain of a man that was pure muscle. And he looked super angry. My first thought was, do you know me? Did I do something to you? And I introduced myself, and the second thing that I noticed was he was holding a laundry basket. And in that laundry basket was a pillow and the cutest little dachshund that was paralyzed in the back legs. And as he spoke, his face got super red and he said, they told me to euthanize him. Can you help me? He's all I've got. And I said, I don't know, but I can try. And I took Dewey to surgery, and six months later, I got a video of Dewey walking across his driveway. And those lessons taught me, life doesn't happen to you. Life happens for you Life never tells you no Life only tells you yes. Wait for something. So, so much better. Thank you. You come on stage with Enter Sandman, and then. Then you go have all this different range. You go. The vocal range. You. You were visual. You had kinesthetic we could feel, but also you had emotional range. You had different emotions throughout this presentation. This was absolutely fantastic. It's incredibly gorgeous to see you up there. And I'm just. Yeah, Everything he said, that was really, really good. You've improved it each step of the way, and in really excellent form. You took the very specific feedback that you got this morning. You integrated it in seamlessly and made it your own. Well done. Keep up the good work. How much fun has this been? It's been so much fun. And I've just. I don't even know. I don't even know exactly what to make of it, but it's like, there's this one last name, but the time. This is like this, you know, this one last name. And I. We have to. This is this one last person that has to wait a little bit longer. It was 2019. My boyfriend and I, we decided spontaneously, let's marry. We were looking for a date and it was heavy because of the May month is in Switzerland, the wedding month. But we got a slot after several phone calls. So we informed the family and said, yeah, we marry. And his daughter was so, so happy that she said, ah, Simon, that's so great. And you need to wear a very nice clothes. And I was totally shocked because of. I remembered back my first wedding in 1991. They told me what I had to wear. They told me everything, what I need to do. And I didn't want to have such a wedding anymore, so. But I didn't want. I didn't want to disappoint her. So. Okay, I said, let's do. Instead of that, we go in jeans. I order four dresses. Two came online, two came immediately, but they were more like for a carnival than for a wedding. The third one came just a few days before the wedding. And I tried it, if it's working, but it was too long and it had a huge train. I said, okay, let's think about Now I can handle that. When I walk, I lift it up and I put the train over my arm. So, okay. Then it was in ivory. So I had only black shoes at home. That's not working. And when I have to lift it up, you see the black shoes. It's not possible. So I went to a shop and finally I found ivory shoes. I mean, I never before saw ivory shoes in a shop. Normally they are white or black, but ivory okay needs to be a sign. Then I had to look for someone on top. And finally I found also an ivory top. But the lady in the shop said, if the bride is okay when you have an ivory dress, then you can also have an ivory top. And I said, the bride is so flexible. She is so happy. So we had really such a nice wedding. And it was really our wedding this time. We had so much fun. And also after the wedding, when we looked at the photos, we saw that when I had this dress and I had the train over my arm, I looked like a greed state. And when we came out of the ceremony, my husband had a blue bag with him. And this bag came on several photos nearly just before the opera room because of then I showed my bag and my bag had on the outside a sausage. Very nice with my clothes. The funny thing was really that we were not looking at the end who is on which kind of photo. So we were only searching for the bag with the sausage. But for me, it was really a learning. That was my wedding. It was so much fun. It was probably the funniest wedding at all. And we should really decide how we would like to have it and not how others tell us it should be better. It looks like you're having so much fun up there. And that really is contagious into us. It's so much fun to listen to you. Thank you. Such a lovely, lovely presence. And I love this small jokes that you, you putting in there. That's just popping in there. Really well done. Thank you. So, so very nice. You improved it up a level again and again. As I said to you this morning, you have a way of beaming. You know, it's like. And this is something I've seen with so many of the people today, but you are really, really showing it. And that is when you walk on the stage looking like that, with that energy, we know something special is going to happen. And so do you. And it did. Thank you so much. And all the girlies say I'm pretty fly for white. All right, so that's me. So this is a wild story about a crazy wedding day back in the day. So I come from a. I know I don't look like it, but I actually come from an extremely conservative religious background. I'm actually a preacher's kid and a missionary's kid. And so this girl I was getting married to, her family couldn't be, like, any more the opposite. Like, her mom had been married and divorced, like, four times, dad had been married and divorced, like, five times. So they didn't exactly have like a, you know, like a value system for, like, long term relationships kind of thing, you know? So. So the day of our wedding, we get to the church, and it's just a total shit show clusterfuck because the. The wedding planner lady that we've been working with for the last, you know, however many months actually, like, bailed out on us on our wedding day. So it was just a total disaster. Just complete, like, you know, just a cluster. So anyway, time came for us to, like, start getting ready for getting dressed for people to start showing up. And so we go down to this, like, little preacher's office to get ready. Me and my groomsman, my best man, we're putting our tuxedos on and our, you know, tuck shirt and everything. And there's a knock on the door, and I open it up and there's, like, my fiance standing there, and she's, like, crying hysterically. I mean, like, you know, tears are rolling down her cheeks. I'm like, oh, my God, what's wrong? She's like, oh, my God, Josh. I can't get my, like, you know, engagement ring off my finger. And this wedding planner lady that's filling in today, she's actually trying to cut it off with a pair of, like, wire cutters or bolt cutters or some shit. I'm like, what the. And just about that time, you hear this, like, screaming in the back of the church. And I look up and there's this wedding planner lady that's, like, stepping in last minute, and she's, like, running full tilt down the aisle, like, screaming, you can't see her. It's your wedding day. I'm like, oh, my God, like, leave this girl the hell alone. Just, like, leave the damn ring on her finger. And, like, let's just move on with it, you know? And so I finally get her, like, settled down. She goes back to her, like, room to get, you know, get dressed and everything. And me and my best man and my groomsmen were like, you know what? This is, like, crazy. Let's just go across the street to this little sports bar and have like a drink to like take the edge off, you know. And so my best man was like, you know what? Fuck it. It's Stuart's wedding day. Let's do a shot of Jaeger, you know. So the bartender pours us like a glass of jaeger, but it's like a rocks class, basically like a double shot, you know. And so we take our shot and my best man spills like the entire rocks glass full of Jaeger all over the front of his like white tuxedo shirt. I'm like, oh my fucking God. You know, so like this, there's no time to be like going to the, you know, tuxedo shop to get like a new shirt or whatever. That's basically like game time, you know, we just got to roll with it. And so we go back across the street and it's basically like, you know, service is getting ready to start, everybody sits down, everybody's pretty much ready to go. And then like one last family member comes walking in the church. And it was Uncle Zane who actually showed up to the wedding is Aunt Sherry. I'm not kidding. So Aunt Sherry is like this very awkward looking, like 6 foot 3, super tall and lanky, has like crazy frizzy hair, has a crazy eye because she actually got stabbed in the eye with a pencil when she was younger. Was wearing grandma's green paisley dress and grandma wasn't very tall and the dress came to like basically like right here, just barely fit. And then she was living like 60, 40 meaning like 60% of the time she was living in his uncle Zane. 40% of time living his Aunt Sherry. So she was pretty early on in the process of making the transition. So she was having like electrolysis down her face to get rid of like the, you know, the facial hair and whatnot. So it was like really blotchy look. I mean they were some spots where it was like super smooth looking and other spots where it was like, you know, whoa, that's like some really dark five o' clock shadows she's got there. So. And then the worst part was she was actually had like a bunch of makeup on, like trying to cover it all up and it just, it didn't work, you know. And then my parents being like the conservative, like religious people that they are, they're like looking back and looking at me and looking at Aunt Sherry and like, this is just not their, their thing, you know. And so we get through the service, we go across town to this like old Victorian house that we rented for Our wedding reception and we were having like a good time. Everybody's drinking. We have like, you know, beer, liquor, wine, whatever you want. And my parents, being the, you know, religious people that they are, they're not okay with drinking because like, if you drink, you're going to hell, basically. So they're like not comfortable with what's going on and everything. And so they go sit down in these like little fold up chairs and my best man stands up to give a toast and he gives his little spiel or whatever and about that time he, you know, spits like his mouth full of champagne all over my parents and, you know, it was a total disaster. So, yeah, so we go back over to my mother in law's house. My boyfriend shows up with, you know, the stepmom from Hawaii. They're like all over each other. My mother in law jumps up and like goes running across the room and starts screaming, get the out of here. You know, it was a disaster. So anyway, yeah, where can I buy the tickets to your show up and coming? It's just, you're just standing there and sometimes I even not clearly understand what they're saying, but it's still funny. Okay. This was absolutely fantastic and I truly hope that you take this out into the world. I plan on it someday. I had fun. You have found a way to deliver stories with humor but with this straight voice and then sort of half laughing at your own jokes but then not knowing when they're fine. The whole thing, the whole delivery is amazing. I'm watching the zoom broadcast and Uncle Zane says he wants his miniskirt back. And HBO says they want to know if you want to have a special. Give him a big hand, everybody. And that does bring us to conclusion. And so before I talk about that, I just want to say I know a number of you didn't get to be finalists and I want to remind you that it's a good opportunity to assess the meaning that that creates. It is not about you or it's all about you. And that's up for you to figure out. But I really want you to know that every single one of you, every single one of you have done an outstanding job, have been committed, worked hard, supported each other and accomplished phenomenal things. I'd like you to give yourselves a big hand in a second. What I want to do is I'm going to get all of the speakers to come up because what you're going to do is you're going to say your name and you can say one thing. Listen to Me one thing. One thing. You can say one thing to spur the memory of what you spoke about so that the people online and everybody can remember freshly. And while we do that, there will be a QR code placed up on the screen so that you guys can photograph that and quote, they'll be giving a link online. When we do this, especially with all the people online, sometimes it crashes briefly. So just hit reload. Hit reload and get your votes in. Yes. While we get ready for that actually, speakers. You guys can quietly start to make your way up here. I also want to give you guys the team points tallies. I just wanted the team point tallies. You guys ready? It was complicated because, you know there's team points coming in and team points going out and team points all over the place. So we went and hired an accounting firm for this and they had. Previously we got. We watched the resume and they'd done some accounting for some oil company and Enron. And it turns out that there was that. The four teams were in a deadlock tie. Each team had 4,270, 73,000 points. So well done to all four teams for winning. All right, now here's what we're gonna do. Actually, Karen, do you want to shoot that real fast? Yes. Yeah, Just since they're all up there. No, stay. Okay, okay. Very quickly. It was spontaneous. All right, all right, so here's the deal. I am going to start here. I'm going to hand you the microphone. You're going to say your name and one thing to spur the memory of the people online, the people that are watching. You're going to pass the microphone on. Once you're done, you can start to make your way off. Done? Yes. Clear. What can you say One thing. If it is longer than a sentence, there will be problems. All right, are you ready? Here we go. My name is Anna and I talked about Taser man. My name is Kelly. Community connection through cocktails and crayons. My name is Francesca and communicate from the heart always. My name is Stacy and everything you need to live the life that you want is already inside you. My name is Connie and bzz. My name is Josh. Crazy wedding day. My name is Neeraj and it was about suffering to mission and purpose through the breath. My name is Mandy and my talk was about a control freak on the side of a Swiss mountaintop. My name is Nadia and I talked about adversity through vertigo and memory loss. I'm Hayden and I got a hickey from a shark. I'm Sayuri. I talked about trash can and me. My name is Simona and I talked about. I talked about weird plain experience and crazy math. Conclusion. Elizabeth Munoz and I talked about empowering young girls and helping them to rise in radiance. Melanie Warner and I spoke about the bucket list and losing my son Carson. Simon Mowry. Spontaneous wedding with the sausage bag. My name is George and I drive on the correct side of the road. My name is Doctor. My name is Dr. Bill Cole. And I talked about time is our most precious commodity. Comma. And I will be in Estonia, by the way. Just kidding. Hi, I'm Luciana. My sweet little bitch baby. Alex Lang. Connecting to your pain and turning it into your perpetrator. Brian Price. Living a life you love. Be extraordinary. Be vulnerable and fight for what you want. Big hand for everybody. The voting is now open. The voting is now open. And of course you should all be voting. You online should all be voting. You guys should be voting. The crew should be voting. Everybody should be voting except me. So please get your votes in. We're going to take an 11 minute and 11 second break right now while we tally up the vote. So you can go and walk around or you can stay in the room. 11 minute break, starting right now. And then at the end of that, we will come back and announce the winners and wrap everything up. Hang on online. Everybody get your votes in and wait 11 minutes for the results. I got a feeling that tonight's gonna be a good night that tonight's gonna be a good night that tonight's gonna be a good, good night I feel that that tonight's gonna be a good night that tonight's gonna be a good night that tonight's gonna be a good, good night I feel that tonight's gonna be a good night that tonight's gonna be a good night that tonight's gonna be a good, good night that tonight's gonna be a good night that tonight's gonna be a good night that tonight's gonna be good, good, good now tonight let's live it up I got my money let's spit it up Go out and smash it like oh my God jump out that's over let's kick it on I know that we'll have a ball if we get down and go out and just lose it all I feel stress down I won't let it go let's go way out face I'm losing our control Fill up my car Mazel to look at her dancing Just take it oh, let's paint the town we'll shut it down. Let's burn the roof and then we'll do it again. Let's do it, let's do it, let's do it. Let's do it, do it and do it and do it. Let's live it up and do it and do it and do it, do it, do it. Let's do it, let's do it, let's do it. Cause I got a feeling that tonight's gonna be a good night. That tonight's gonna be a good night. That tonight's gonna be a good, good night. Kind of feeling that tonight's going to be a good night. That tonight's going to be a good night. That tonight's going to be a good, good night. Tonight's at night. Hey, let's live it up. Let's live it up. I got my money. Hey, let's spin it up. Let's spin it up. Go out and smash. Smash like oh, my God. Jump out that sofa Come on, let's get caught. Fill up my car, drink mazel. Look at her dancing Just take it. Oh, let's paint the town, Paint the town. We'll shut it down, shut it down. Let's burn the roof and then we'll do it again. Let's do it, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it and do it and do it. Let's live it up and do it, do it and do it. Do it, do it, do it, do it. Let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, do it, do it, do it. Here we come, here we go. We got a rock. Easy come, easy go. Now we on top, feel the shot. Body rock rocking, don't stop. Round and round, up and down, around the clock. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Saturday, the sun do it. You know what we say Say party every day. Party every day. And I'm feeling That tonight's gonna be a good night. That tonight's gonna be a good night. That tonight's gonna be a good, good night. That tonight's gonna be a good night. That tonight's gonna be a good night. That tonight's gonna be a good. Coming Coming down the day Yesterday days before sun is cold and rain is hot I know Been that way for all my time it can't stop I wonder have you ever seen I will know have you ever me down on the same Sam sa Ram Sam. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Everybody in the car so come on, let's ride to the nickel store up the Kona the Boys say they want some ginny juice But I really don't wanna reappears like I had last week I must stay deeper Talk is cheap I like Angela, Pamela, Sandra and Rita and as I continue you know they getting sweeter so what can I do? I really value my Lord to me flirting is just like a sport Anything fly it's all good Let me jumpically sing in the trumpet A little bit of Monica in my life A little bit of Erica by my side A little bit of Rita's all I need A little bit of Tina is what I see A little bit of Sandra in the sun A little bit of Mary all night long A little bit of Jessica here I am A little bit of you makes me your man My mode number five jump up and down and move it all around Shake your hand to the sound Put your hands on the ground Take one step left and one step right One to the front and one to the side Clap your hands once and clap your hands twice and if it looks like this then you're doing it A little bit of Monica in my life A little bit of Erica by my side A little bit of Rita's all I need A little bit of Tina's what I see A little bit of Sandra in the sun A little bit of Mary all night long song A little bit of Jessica here I am A little bit of you makes me your man the trumpet my mo number five A little bit of Monica in my life A little bit of Erica by my side A little bit of Rita's all I need A little bit of Tina's what I see A little bit of Sandra in the sun A little bit of Mel Mary all night long A little bit of Jessica here I am A little bit of you makes me your man oh he won't hold that roller he got hair down to his knee got to be a joker he just do what I please he wear no shoes on he got told jam football he got mark your finger he shoots coca cola he said I know you, you know me One thing I can tell you is you got to be free Come together right now now oh me down below his knee hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease Come together right now Only Sam he rolled a co star he got early morning he got mud and water he won MO3 not to be good looking cause he's so hard to see Come together right now all right, all right, all right Grab a seat, grab a seat get comfortable Come together All right have a seat so as I mentioned you Before. I've been running this program for a little over 10 years. This is probably about the 20th one. And I discovered after the third or fourth one that I, you know, I didn't like. It was me and the judges that would sit and choose the winners, and we just didn't like it. You know, we spent. We wanted everybody to win. And so that's the first thing I want to suggest. Is it true that everybody won? Is it really true? Excellent. And so that said, we've now outsourced the voting. And it's so cool because we used to. We used to have it all on pieces of paper and then we'd all sit on the floor. Floor. That's. I'm not kidding. You guys would all be out there and we'd be like, doing it like a Florida election, you know, and then. And now. Now we. We have this, like, system where we can watch the numbers rising as the votes are coming in. It's like instant and live. It's super exciting. So with that, I am ready to announce and so I am very, very excited. I've got the umbrella envelope here. It's like origami, this envelope. Okay. So this year, 2025, Miami speaking Academy Idol, our top third speaker. Our top third speaker. I'm going to just make sure I get this right. You saw that at the Academy Awards when they read the wrong one. I mean, it does say Al Pacino. I don't know. Our top. Our number three top speaker comes from team. Which team do you think? From team two. From team two. Welcome to the stage number three. Elizabeth. Try and play the roll and you're the whole crew will act up. Get up, stand up come on throw your hands up if you got the feeling jump. Our number two top speaker also comes from team two, Melanie. And now top speaker speaking academy Miami, 2025, all the way from team four, Alex. You know, it's kind of hard just to get along today. Our subject isn't cool but he thinks it anyway he may not have a clue and he may not have style but everything he lacks well, he makes up in denial so don't deep faith play us right you know it right it doesn't get it anyway got to fight I feel keep it real for you no way for you no way up and down all right, all right, all right. Now, now, now, now, now. We're going to do the trickiest thing that we've done the entire five days we've been here. This is going to be the hardest, most logistically challenging thing we've accomplished the entire time, and that is group photographs. Group photographs. So if I could have all of Team One join me on the stage. You guys come back up with your teams. All of Team One, join me up on the stage. Team One. Team One. Team one. All right, all right, all right. Just one quick thing. Just one quick thing. I forgot that we've got all these people from all over the world. We had way. We had hundreds of votes. Literally hundreds of votes came in, and many of them, of course, came from all the people that are watching from us online. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to Paradigm X and we really appreciate your attention, the wonderful comments that you gave all of the speakers, and, of course, your votes. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. It has been an absolute pleasure. And I want to remind you, this event was sponsored by Mindvalley and Vishen Lakhiani. So make. Make sure that you check out their programs. Thank you so much for being here. And now back to the room.