2012 Innovation Expo: International Speaker

   
  Please welcome Joaquin Deposada, International Speaker, Author, and Consultant.
  Joaquin Deposada: Thank you. Good morning. Well, my comments very simple.
  You're one idea away from a very big, big success. New process, new invention,
  and we're better than in NASA where you people here -- and where better
  than in NASA where you people change the world. One idea from one man,
  we have to conquer the moon, changed the whole world.
  And i certainly hope that we'll never, ever lose the leadership position
  that we have right now in space exploration.
  And i think that we'll continue to hold that position.
  There's something very important -- knowledge is power. He was right.
  Knowledge is power. Applied knowledge is power. You know, you do, you don't know.
  The important thing is you have knowledge, but it has to be applied.
  There's a lot of knowledge in the world that is never applied.
  And people don't care what you know. People only care what you do, what results.
  Reminds me of the story of three little frogs, three little frogs are floating down the river.
  Three of them are floating down the river. One decides to jump into the water.
  How many folks are left on top of the leaf? Two? No three.
  They decided to do different things altogether. How many times have you decided to lose weight?
  How many times have you decided to stop smoking?
  Or maybe how many times have you decided to clean your home on a weekend? How does it look on Monday?
  Deciding on doing it are two different things. I hope that today, the innovation in NASA,
  i hope that one idea, one idea that you can apply will change your career, will change your life,
  your loved ones, even will change NASA or might even change the whole world.
  Darwin said, the survivors of any species are not necessarily the strongest.
  And they're not necessarily the most intelligent. They're the ones who are the most responsive to change.
  And that is what it is all about now, change. Who can change quick here.
  That's what counts. And those that can will be very, very successful.
  My one applied idea, my one applied idea that i want to share with you happened
  when i was flying from San Juan to new york.
  And upon i was reading a book -- one page, one page devoted to the marshmallow experiment.
  And i read that page and said, wow. This is the most important factor for success.
  Self-discipline. That is the most important factor for success. I have to write a book about it.
  And some might know the experiment, it was done at Stanford university by an American psychologist.
  643 children put together in a room one by one with a marshmallow.
  And they told the kid, 4 years old, johnny or mary, I'm going to leave with the marshmallow.
  If i come back and that marshmallow is here, you get two. If you eat it, you get nothing else.
  You decide what happens. To tell it to a 4-year-old kid to wait 15 minutes for a
  marshmallow is like telling an adult we'll have coffee in three hours.
  What happened? Two out of three -- ate the marshmallows.
  Five seconds, a minute, five minutes, eight minutes, 14 minutes, i can't stand it.
  Ate the marshmallow. However, one out of three, one out of three understood the most important factor for success.
  Which is self-discipline. I will not eat the marshmallow because i want two.
  And they will do all kinds of stuff in order not to eat it.
  Go under the table, look at the ceiling, play around. That kid already knew.
  15 years later, follow-up study, what did they find? 100% of the children
  that did not eat the marshmallow were successful.
  S.A.T. exam great, 213 points higher than the kids that ate the marshmallow.
  So obviously this is the most important factor for success. So i wrote the book.
  What happened? Worldwide best seller, 20 languages. Number one in Korea, 62 weeks in a row.
  3.5 million books sold. Changed my career. My economy.
  My family would allow me to go all over the world. Right now i lecture on this
  concept all over the world. One idea, how many psychologists have read that book?
  Thousands. How many people read the -- how many people read the emotional book? Thousands, millions.
  But get one applied idea, this is a book. This is such an important concept, let's write a book.
  What I'm saying is that i went through it. One applied idea can change your life and your world.
  Some people say i don't have enough time to write a book, i talk about gene Dominique Baube, french.
  Best job in the world. Writes for "Elle" magazine.
  All the models were after him because they wanted to be in the magazine.
  Beautiful kids, BMW. Takes the kid out to test the car, stroke.
  He opened his eyes, he's in a hospital in France totally paralyzed.
  He could only move his left eyelid, open it and close. It open it and close it.
  That's all he could do, okay. And that man understood that he had an idea,
  that he had to tell the world what happened to him and how he coped with it,
  and he wrote "The Diving Board and The Butterfly" and one woman helped him.
  He used the most common letter used to the least common.
  She was like this -- okay. P, all right. O. He would go letter by letter until the whole book was written.
  That was his mission in life. The book was finished, handed -- not handed but showed to him.
  With his left eyelid he saw it, and he died the following day. That was his mission in life.
  One person with a mission. No arms, no legs.
  This guy -- when i finish my first book which is called how to survive among puranis, that book was in a
  manuscript, i would write it -- i went to do a speech at the University of Puerto Rico, left me car outside.
  When i came in, i come up to the car, broken glass. My briefcase stolen with my manuscript. No copy.
  I stopped writing until i met him. Wow. He wrote a book without arms, without legs.
  How could i have stopped writing because of losing 200 pages? I started again, and i finished that book.
  It's now also a best seller thanks to him. A cashier in Puerto Rico. One idea. She likes to write.
  She was a cashier making $7 an hour. Wrote a poem book,
  and she sells her book when customers go to pay in the cash register.
  And she makes three times what every kid makes in that supermarket. One idea.
  This guy had the idea. 10-years-old. He wrote the book, and he was -- he was
  signing books with me in Los Angeles at another table. This guy, 10-years-old, oh, my God.
  He's 10-years-old. One idea away from being very successful. One applied idea. This guy, something else.
  His mother had him, little baby, father left. Never saw him again.
  There's a Cuban refugee that left Cuba, came to the states, an engineer.
  Got married and when he was 18 or 21 or whatever, he said that -- dad, you're my real father, you raised me.
  I want to have your last name. He became Bezos. That guy, already an engineer, successful, but,
  you know, when he started his company, he needed at least $300,000 more.
  And Miguel Bezos gave him the money, risking everything he had.
  Now we don't know that the $300,000 are worth now millions and millions of dollars.
  One idea that this guy that was leaving in -- living in New York with everything,
  had a good job in the finance world, one idea. He had to practice it,
  and the idea was sell every book ever printed in any language in and out of print in one minute.
  He changed the world. He changed the world. One idea. The Google guys, changed the world.
  Never, ever did we have -- never in history have we had engine our hands.
  Everything that mankind knows right here in our laptop in our iPad. Never happened in history.
  Their big idea -- organize the world's information and make it universally useful.
  That was the idea, and it changed our lives. Bill gates,
  one computer in every home and in every desk, changed our lives. One applied idea.
  Starting with nothing. Steve Jobs, now, Steve Wozniak, those two guys together.
  They started on the wrong foot. They started by stealing from a large company.
  They invented a device to steal from AT&T, make phone calls for free.
  Something straightened them out in life, and now they have good products and became the biggest,
  largest capitalized company in the world. A woman -- nobody knows her -- in Houston everybody knows her.
  She's Andrea Pia Gates, killed her kids. Her husband was an unemployed writer, watching TV.
  He said, can you imagine a woman so desperate she would hurt her own children,
  and what she answered stunned him. I have been there.
  That answer, oh, my God. He heard that and said, well, how many women are going through this?
  And he wrote a script that now most of you know on how he became a multimillionaire.
  Mike Burnett, one idea, a millionaire. Everyone go to ted.com.
  You should know that, it's great ideas that you learn about if you go to that site.
  The khan academy, this guy changed the world. Changed education.
  Now there are no more bad pictures ever. If your kid has a bad teacher, you go to khanacademy.com,
  and your kid will be taught the best possible way.
  Life lessons occur, this guy -- lost his legs, you know what, started a supermarket.
  Half man, half store price. Okay? He's become rich.
  He said to reach for anything that you haven't had, you will have to do what you have never done.
  Out of a plane crash, friends, plane crashes, he saves her. They're all burned.
  Now they started helping kids that got burned.
  30,000 have been helped, and 300,000 people have been affected because
  they had an accident and are now helping humanity.
  Ralph Lauren, yeah, one idea, change my name. He was named -- named Ralph Lipschitz.
  Nobody would buy clothes from him. Homeless man in new york, stead of asking for a quarter,
  he did that -- he made 12 times what Everyone said because he had a sign, put visa,
  American Express, funny, and he asked for $144, i asked how many gave you that, no one.
  But three Americans gave me $100 instead of 35 cents. One idea changed his life. That's it.
  And I'm finishing with this -- one idea like this woman. She collected garbage in a dumpster.
  You know what, one day she found a baby. She said you know what, I'm going to save babies.
  She saved 32. Babies that mothers throw in the garbage dump. She has raised six of the 32.
  So on my last idea, what has worked well for me also, my business card. This is my business card.
  It's a million-dollar card. People fight for it all over the world.
  It's given me hundreds of thousands of dollars just because of this card.
  So one idea can change your life and your business.
  I finish with this saying -- you may say your life is the one thing that
  you decide your hear is your own, no apologies or excuses, no one to blame.
  The gift of life is yours. It's an amazing journey. You alone are responsible for the quality of it.
  Remember this -- one idea, one idea, apply today change your whole life.
  Thank you so much. [ applause ]