"Take the first step in faith.
You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
Martin Luther King.
In February 2009, I lost my job as a marketing director,
I was all dynamic, in London,
when suddenly one day, I lost my job.
It was a real slap in the face but I told myself,
"it's time to live your dream, I want to inspire millions of people,
nothing less,
I want to put videos online for free.
I don't know how I'm going to make a living from it
but this is what I want to do.
Now is the time to do it because I've been fired.
Let's do it!"
I already had two, three million views on Youtube,
so I thought the time was right.
I also thought it was time to write a book.
Why not?
I had just lost a job,
After all, I had been practicing self-improvement for years,
I had attended training courses,
if all that, the meditations, do work,
it may be time to try them and to put them into practice.
So I wrote a book about it and by the end of 2009,
I had a book in my hands, which had been made very quickly,
but not a cent on my bank account.
I ended up broke, in London, a very very expensive city,
and at the age of 32, I had to go back to my parents',
well, to mum's, my parents were divorced.
That's a real blow to your ego, for sure, but I didn't have any other choice,
it was that or finding another regular marketing job,
working for someone that didn't suit me or at least, I wouldn't get along with
and I thought, no, I want to live my dream, I don't know how,
but I would rather go back more or less to square one,
live what I must live with my parents and not do that job again.
So I stayed but I still didn't know how to make a living from my passion.
My book had known a bit of success but not enough to make a living.
On January, 11, 2011
I decided to go on tour across the United States, Mexico and Canada,
a 12-month tour of interviews, during which I would interview authors,
people that I thought were nice, authors mainly.
I wanted to learn from them so I brought my small camera,
my very small camera, a little bit ashamed of coming over with such a small camera,
they were so famous!
I showed up there and I started to interview them,
to ask the questions I had always wanted to ask and I broadcast it on Internet.
But you are probably wondering how I paid for it.
Because traveling for twelve months costs a lot, it can be very expensive.
I simply put a donation button, a Paypal button, on the website.
I had no idea that it would work when I started my tour.
It showed no sign.
So it was a big leap of faith,
and the day before the tour started, I was in New Mexico,
I was ready to do my first interview, and a donation happened.
It was the exact amount for the computer I needed,
that I just bought to upload these videos on Youtube.
I was blown away!
I was like: "What? Someone just made a donation so that I can live my dream,
I didn't even really ask, I didn't even say what I need,
and someone make me a donation!"
It was like everything became more colorful, more alive,
and it blew me away.
Of course these steps transformed my life,
it changed me, they were difficult steps,
challenges, leaps into the unknown, almost quantum leaps,
and it transformed my life.
10 years after uploading my first video on Youtube in March 2006,
I got my first "like" and my first view, it was very exciting,
well, ten years later, I have put 3,000 videos online,
got around 2,000 interviews in several languages,
in French and English since I am French-American,
I am doing it in both languages.
I have traveled in a lot of countries,
I am just back from Martinique, Guadeloupe and Thaïland,
45 millions of people have watched my videos,
so it has produced a snowball effect thanks to the social media and all that,
these videos inspire people to move forward.
Lately I interviewed Mantak Chia in Thaïland for example,
who has written lots of books about longevity,
on having a blooming sexuality.
Then I am going to interview Professor Henri Joyeux on nutrition,
or Frédéric Laloue on Reinventing Organizations,
so the new economic models for companies.
In short, I am having a ball!
I am going from one person to another, I upload everything on Youtube.
But to tell you the truth, I absolutely have no idea,
I still don't see the whole staircase.
In other words, I answer the call every time,
every time I feel this impulse, this intuition, this desire,
when something resounds inside me,
I say yes, but I don't know where I am headed.
What I can tell you is I am having a ball,
What I can tell you is I am enjoying myself,
that I am filled with gratitude and joy of life,
that I am feeling more and more myself, and since the day I lost my job,
and found myself broke, this is when my real life began.
It makes me laugh because when I look back,
I was so afraid of opening myself to others,
I would have been so afraid of talking in public, of making a video,
I needed to do everything on my own, I needed to protect myself,
I was afraid of being manipulated, of being betrayed,
I was afraid of being everything you can imagine,
I was protecting myself.
Especially since that time when I had no money,
because it was the hardest thing I had to live,
being an entrepreneur at the age of 23
and achieving success, even a financial one,
to find myself in this situation has been the most beautiful gift after all,
because it has opened myself again to life, to gratitude,
to care about myself, rather than being hard on myself,
it has helped me to look beyond differences,
beyond appearances, particularly to tell real 'yes' to life,
to learn to say 'no' when needed, to follow this intuition,
to listen to my intelligence, the intelligence of the heart,
that comes at the service of the intelligence which is up there,
and to learn to let go, to trust life
and admit that, maybe, this is not a threatening universe.
This is the principle of this world 2.0 that I offer versus the 1.0 one,
that I feel has reached its limits.
Today we are in a world asking us to be joyful, to be spontaneous,
to be grateful for small things,
to understand we don't need to suffer to move forward,
that we all have something unique inside us, that you have something unique,
you even have a responsability,
a responsability to life, to yourself,
and in order to live this responsability, we need to be brave,
we need to be ourselves.
We need to go draw within ourselves.
It is far from being an easy path but, at least, we become ourselves,
and we really can help change the world.
I think we got here, to the point where we have this ability,
and you know we have this ability to help,
to contribute, if only we want to make a positive impact on the world,
but it's up to us to decide, to say yes,
to not hesitate to also ask life to support us,
and to have visions that are bigger than us.
I remember watching a TED talk by Jacques Attali,
who said : "What's most important is to undertake your life"
I totally agree with that of course, because I think it's deeply connected,
life, our company and our professionnal life
and to blossom like that.
So I ask you tonight to look at what your role in this society is,
what role you want to play, and what your commitment is,
what excites you,
and what you would like to answer your grandchildren if, one day,
you had a conversation with them
and they asked about the influence you have had on this world.
Thank you.
Applause.