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[Music]
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[Music]
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I am seven years
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old I am really into fossil
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hunting true
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story my mom is very encouraging of this
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new found hobby as it doesn't require
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her to haul a minivan full of kids to a
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practice at 7:00 a.m. on a
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Saturday on this particular day we went
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to the beach near my house to hunt for
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fossils we've been out there maybe like
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an hour when I pick up a small gray rock
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it's a mammoth
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foot I know it's a mammoth foot I can
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see the
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toenail there is absolutely no doubt in
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my mind that this small gray rock is the
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foot of a three milliony old 6 ton
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mammoth real
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talk the rock is about 4 in in
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diameter so that would be a teeny tiny m
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MTH with a teeny tiny
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foot but regardless I am utterly
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confident in my assessment and so I
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declare the discovery to my
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mom in response to this declaration my
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mom could have
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said yeah right Emma mammoths are huge
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their feet are way bigger than that and
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toils rarely if ever survive 3 million
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years of decomposition an
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erosion but what my mom actually said
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was yeah maybe I guess that could be a
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mammoth
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suit hey why don't we go to the museum
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and see what the experts
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think so we drive to the
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museum and we hand in the
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Rock and we tour the dinosaur exhibition
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and we learn about T-Rexes and
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stegosaurus and pterodactyls
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and then we head home for tea like every
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good Irish
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family the next morning Dr Andrew jeram
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head of paleontology at the Museum
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phones our house to tell us that the
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rock is not a mammoth
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foot but
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rather it's a 200 milliony Old osaurus
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skull
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a prehistoric dolphin from the early
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Jurassic Period and not only that but
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it's the best example of such a skull
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ever found in
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[Applause]
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Ireland each of us is born a yeah maybe
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person as children we have imagination
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and plenty Supply and we believe in the
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power of
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possibility we look at a small gray rock
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and we see a mamm
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food we have not yet been taught to
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default to the ordinary the mundane or
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the most
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plausible fast forward to
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2010 I am 27 years old I'm shopping with
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my best friend Julia and we find
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ourselves in the men's department
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I'm holding a graphic tea with a photo
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of a semi clad K moss on it which is
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apparently much too provocative to ever
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be offered in the women's section women
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are not ready for that kind of
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stuff my best friend Julia is holding a
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double breasted blazer with little
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patches on the elbows and as you might
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have guessed neither of these products
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fit our ladylike
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frames frustrated did it I turn to Jules
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and
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say wait why can't you get a great
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Blazer in the women's
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section why can't a women's graphic tea
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be
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graphic why are there gender rules for
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clothing
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Jules why don't we start a clothing
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company that allows women to wear
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whatever the hell they want
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[Applause]
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[Music]
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[Applause]
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no as my best friend Julia's response
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probably should have
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been yeah right Emma we know literally
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nothing about e-commerce or
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merchandising or fulfillment or CPAs or
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ltvs and Emma I love you but you are my
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least fashionable friend
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and you consistently wear your pants too
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high fortunately for me Julia's actual
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response
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was yeah maybe I guess that could
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work so we spent months working on this
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idea doing consumer research
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trying to think of a name for the
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business we're pretty sure that we don't
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need to hire any staff because we're
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going to do it all
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ourselves you can tell where this is
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going and we're pretty sure that we
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don't need a website because we're just
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going to have a
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store it didn't seem as funny at the
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time and we're pretty sure that we don't
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need to raise any
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money but I literally can't stop
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thinking about the idea every night when
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I go to bed I tell
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myself yeah maybe maybe Emma maybe this
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could work because maybe there are
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millions of women just like you that
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don't feel they belong
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anywhere women who want the rock man's
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wear women who are feminine and
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masculine women who are strong and
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vulnerable women who aren't one thing
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because none of us really
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[Applause]
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[Music]
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[Applause]
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are when we launched wildfang 22,000
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women signed up in the first 30 days
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without us spending a single penny on
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Advertising yes we were wrong about not
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not needing to hire
00:07:31
staff and yes we were wrong about not
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needing a website in the 21st
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century and yes funnily enough we were
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also wrong about not needing to raise
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any
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money but we were right about something
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so much
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bigger we were right that millions of
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women just like us were looking for a
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home you see each of us has a choice
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every single day to be a yeah right
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person or a yeah maybe
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person we each have the power to see
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potential and possibility in the mundan
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the ordinary and the
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conventional we can choose to see an
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unassuming gray rock or a mammoth fot we
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can choose to see Men's Wear
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or a women's
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Revolution we have a choice to make
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because you can't change the world and
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operate firmly under the status quo you
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got to choose yeah right or yeah
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maybe so what holds us back if each of
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us is born a yeah maybe person what
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happens well life happens that's what
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happens and get get good at living in
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the real world usually means we get bad
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at living in our
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imagination we're busy we don't have
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time to be creative we've been taught to
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fear failure we've been taught that
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being right is so much more important
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than generating a new
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idea and at some point in our lives we
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are all taught a set of
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rules rules about our gender rules about
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our clothing
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rules about our career
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choice and man it's hard to see past
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those
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rules we become
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limited by what appears to be
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true rather than what's actually
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possible psychologists call this
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functional
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fixedness functional fixedness is when
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we become completely fixated on
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something's most common function and we
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we can't imagine that thing having any
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other
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purpose we get stuck our thinking
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becomes
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constrained functional
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fixedness is the enemy of
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innovation let me give you an
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example one January morning in a DC
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Subway this man plays the violin during
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rush
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hour in the 45 minutes that he plays
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only a few people people stop to
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listen first middle-aged
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man
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pauses before rushing on the work next
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up a woman throws in a dollar bill but
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she just keeps
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walking
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interestingly the passer by who pays the
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violinist the most attention is a
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three-year-old
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boy who stops and listens before his mom
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tugs his hand and sweep him off the
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daycare when the violinist finishes
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playing no one notices no one
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applauds the violinist is Joshua Bell
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he's one of the world's greatest
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musicians and just two days earlier he
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sold out Boston Symphony
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Hall and those tickets were more
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expensive every day functional fixedness
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makes it so hard to see past our
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conventional
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expectations every day we get
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stuck every day we struggle to say yeah
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maybe here's a really interesting
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fact children under 7 years old are
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immune to functional
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fixedness they are not inhibited by it
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at
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all remember that three-year-old boy on
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the
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subway remember that seven-year-old girl
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on the beach children aren't
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stuck they're not bogged on by
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convention they see infinite possibility
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all around
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them which is really great for
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children but we're not
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children so how do each of us become a y
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Maybe person how do we see past our
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functional
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fixedness okay step
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one only because I know you like that a
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lot Channel your inner child and you
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better hope she's as good-looking as
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this
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one studies show that if adults are
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primed to pretend that they're seven
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years old they are vastly more
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creative in an experiment by zolina and
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Robinson college students were split
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into two
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groups the first group were told school
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is cancelled for the day what will you
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do the second group got almost the same
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instructions except they were told you
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are 7 years old school is cancelled for
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the day what will you
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do both groups were then given a test of
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creative thinking and guess
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what the second group who had pretended
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to be 7 years old kicked ass they were
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much more creative and this effect is
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actually stronger in individuals who are
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introverted and less spontaneous so
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that's great news for all my tech nerds
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in the
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audience secondly in order to be a y
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Maybe person you must surround yourself
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with other y maybe people that day on
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the beach my mom had two choices my best
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friend see him two
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choices so let me ask
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you are you surrounded by yeah right
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people or yeah maybe people when you
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have a crazy idea do the people around
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you say yeah right or yeah
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maybe yeah maybe allows ideas to
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flourish yeah right suffocates them
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immediately finally if you want to be a
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yeah maybe
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person make feel you're part of your
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emmo for those of us in startup this is
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a familiar sequence of events
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let me remind you that in both my
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stories I was wrong completely wrong not
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a little bit wrong completely wrong The
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Rock was not a mamus fit and the
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business I started did need staff it did
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need a website and funnily enough it did
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need
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cash but why do we equate being
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right with being
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successful why are we so afraid of
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failure when it almost inevit leads to
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something
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better my advice Fe plan all you like
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Embrace failure learn from it because
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being right probably means that you miss
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out on your next big
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idea before I leave you guys today I
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want to share with you one of the best
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best letters that a wildy customer has
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ever sent us
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[Applause]
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dear wildfang AKA cat and other awesome
00:15:47
[Music]
00:15:48
lady don't you love it how you start a
00:15:50
company and suddenly you're the other
00:15:51
awesome
00:15:54
lady I am Alexis and I'm one of your
00:15:58
fans
00:15:59
you guys have inspired me to not be
00:16:01
scared to be a
00:16:03
tomboy so for my 11th birthday my mom
00:16:07
bought me a tomboy shirt a tomboy hat
00:16:10
and a tomboy
00:16:12
sweatshirt I'm a very athletic person I
00:16:14
play five sports baseball football
00:16:17
basketball soccer and
00:16:23
Lacrosse and on my two flag football
00:16:26
teams I'm the only girl
00:16:31
I would really like to meet you guys if
00:16:33
that's
00:16:35
okay I don't have any friends that are
00:16:39
girls will you guys be my
00:16:43
friends all of my friends are boys will
00:16:46
you guys be my first friends that are
00:16:49
girls you guys are
00:16:53
awesome from Alexis
00:16:56
PS you guys are my heroes
00:16:59
please write
00:17:04
[Applause]
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back #g # wildfang # we are
00:17:25
wildfang now earlier this year
00:17:29
I went through a really hard patch with
00:17:31
the
00:17:33
business I'd been negotiating a retail
00:17:35
space in La for about three or four
00:17:37
months and it fell through and I'd been
00:17:40
fundraising for about five months and
00:17:43
I'd been rejected by over 70
00:17:47
investors I had about five weeks of cash
00:17:49
left in the
00:17:50
business and 24 people who depend on me
00:17:53
for their
00:17:56
income I was so stressed I
00:17:59
and I was really really
00:18:05
sad and I pulled out this letter and I
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reread
00:18:11
it and that was when it hit
00:18:14
me the young girl who wrote me this
00:18:18
letter was the same young girl who found
00:18:21
the dinosaur born on the beach that
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day neither of them were
00:18:25
stuck neither of them struggled to see
00:18:28
possibility
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neither of them were afraid to take a
00:18:33
risk and in these
00:18:35
words I find the courage to return to my
00:18:38
yeah maybe
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self embracing these two words will
00:18:46
radically change the way you live your
00:18:49
life I promise you that these two words
00:18:53
are the only thing that stands between
00:18:55
you and your next big idea
00:19:02
sometimes when you're a yam
00:19:05
person it means you end up finding a
00:19:07
dinosaur bone or starting your own
00:19:12
business and sometimes when you're a yam
00:19:15
Maybe
00:19:17
person it means you end up right
00:19:20
here at tedex Portland listening to the
00:19:23
CEO of your favorite company tell
00:19:25
everyone that you are her inspiration
00:19:26
when she needs it most
00:19:29
[Music]
00:19:32
w
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[Applause]
00:20:23
[Applause]
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some people will see a rock
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others a mama
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foot some people will see Men's
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Wear
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others a women's
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Revolution some people will see a
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CEO
00:20:45
others their new best
00:20:49
friend
00:20:51
so is there a dinosaur born in your
00:20:54
future
00:21:00
yeah maybe yeah
00:21:12
maybe you much
00:21:18
[Applause]
