 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Director of Entrepreneurial Education at FEE and Event MC, TK Coleman. Ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, enemies, allies and spies, people and people from every walk of life and to every human being from every category of being, good morning and welcome today to a FEEcon 2019. And if you want to know how to spell that, I've been practicing. So if you go on social media, what you want to do is you'll want to go hashtag FEECON2019. Yeah. There's an episode of Gilmore Girls where Laura Lai is like taking a business class. Okay. If you want to be like that about it, this is something my wife told me. Okay. Like, do I look like the kind of guy that watches Gilmore Girls? So Laura Lai has taken a business class and she's telling her daughter Rory like, you got to get me in the mood for economics. And Rory's trying to, you know, say a bunch of words like finances, budgets and trying to say a bunch of things to get her in the mood. I don't think it works, but I do think it's a good idea to start your day by saying, hey, let's get in the mood for economics. How many of you out here are in the mood for some economics? I want you to look at the person next to you and say, today let's choose to level up. Today let's choose to not be mere spectators. Today let's create a participatory experience. Don't let that participatory trip you up. So before you even say that, we're going to practice. We're going to say on three, one, two, three, participatory. Yeah. You just got to say it slow. Yeah. Participatory. Okay. Let's choose to create a participatory experience. All right. All right. Because we are here to set our path and all right. So before we get started with this most exciting day, I want to give special acknowledgment to the sponsors that make this awesome event possible. And we'll begin with LGBTQ for Liberty. Let's give them a round of applause. Thank you so much for your support. UFM, let's give them a hand. Let's give it up for Freedom Fest. Let's give a round of applause for the Jack Miller Center. How many of you love Liberty? Well, let's give it up for Loving Liberty. Let's give a shout out to the Ion Ran Institute. Let's send one up for the Institute for Humane Studies. And last but not least. Let us celebrate the support of the Atlas Network. Last night we ended our evening with a question. How many of you remember? It was a question that Peter Till talked about in his book, Zero to One. It was a question about beliefs. Anyone remember? Well, you definitely can't think about it if you don't remember the question. Anybody? What do you believe that nobody else believes? And we talked about that question as a segue into a confrontation with your own individuality. Helps you get at the core of what makes you unrepeatable, what makes you indispensable. Well, today I want to pose a different question. And that is, what do you believe that no one else needs to believe? There is a moment in The Matrix 2. I apologize for all the Matrix movies after one. But there is a second Matrix, and there are some redeeming qualities. There's one moment in the film where the character Morpheus, who is sort of like the wise guru, the prophet whose quest is to find the one and to help people see through the Matrix so that they can find freedom. So Morpheus believes that another character, Neo, is the chosen one. He believes that Neo is the one that's going to help people find their own freedom. And there are things that happen along the way that seem to contradict Morpheus's belief. And so, although in the beginning he was very charismatic and very prophetic, and everyone was filled with hope when they heard his words, after going through many tough times and many battles, you've got half the people who kind of believe Morpheus still, and half the people who wonder if he's not just a crazy old man who has a delusional faith in an idea that really isn't going to work. And there's this pivotal moment where Morpheus is having an argument with a military leader who happens to be a very pragmatic man. He doesn't care about how we succeed. All he cares about is that we win the war. And there's a moment where he's just fed up with all of Morpheus's mystical, esoteric spiritual sounding prophetic statements, and he says, Morpheus, not everyone believes in oracles and fairies, I'm paraphrasing, I didn't memorize the script. But he's like, not everyone believes in oracles and fairies and prophets and all of these things. Not everyone believes what you believe. And Morpheus says, fortunately, my beliefs do not require them to. That my friends is the essence of power. We live in an age where it's so easy to be triggered by everything we hear and see. Someone can simply say, well, I don't believe you and we're triggered. Someone can say, well, I think you're wrong and we're triggered. Someone can say, well, I think you're a bigot. I don't think you like poor people. I don't think you're sufficiently virtuous and we're triggered because someone doesn't believe in me. Someone doesn't believe my ideas. Someone doesn't believe in my virtue. And when you have a concept of power that says my ability to change the world depends on other people agreeing with my ideas, how else can you be but triggered when people disagree with you? But Morpheus was trigger free. He stood in the presence of someone who blatantly mocked his beliefs and he said, that's okay because I have an agenda and an approach that has nothing to do with arguing with you to get you to join my side intellectually. What was that approach? Well, one of my favorite stories I've shared it with many students before at Feast seminars and workshops illustrates this idea very well. And it comes from a 1980s John Carpenter film called They Live. And the premise of this film is a race of aliens have invaded the earth and they have taken human form. And they are controlling, enslaving humanity. But no one knows because they appear to be humans just like you and I. Well, how do they do that? Well, the way they do it is they take control of the electromagnetic towers and they emit this frequency that alters people's perception. And when people look at the aliens, the way the electromagnetic energy alters their perception, it causes them to see them as humans. So no one really knows. But there's one guy, he's the lead character. One day he discovers this box of shades. And when he puts on the shades, he's somehow able to see through the frequency manipulation and he can apprehend reality for what it is. And so when he puts on the shades, he looks at a billboard. And on this billboard, there is a picture of a man smoking a cigarette, typical advertisement. But when he puts on the shades, he just sees the words, obey authority. And he takes it off, he sees the advertisement, puts it on, obey authority, takes it off, wonders if he's going crazy. Then he goes to a magazine stand and he sees magazine articles. I mean, magazine covers about sports and magazine covers with supermodels and magazine covers with fashion. And he puts on the shades and it's trust authority, obey. And it's all these commands and he takes off the shades, am I crazy? Puts them on. And he realizes, my gosh, the world is not what I thought. And these shades have some ability to allow me to see it for what it really is. And then things get scarier. He starts to look at other people and he notices that when he has the shades on, some people don't show up in his reality as human beings. Some of these people are aliens. And so he does what any of us would do if we apprehend reality in an uncommon way. He does what any of us would do if you have a profound insight about how the world really is, about how deceived and duped we all are by the status quo. He tries to tell his friends. And he says, you have to see what I see. And he's got a really close friend and he tries to explain all of this to him. And of course, his friend dismisses him as crazy. Does that sound familiar? Does that sound, that ought to sound real familiar here, okay? Like, there's no one here that feels like they have insights into the nature of reality and that people would only listen to their ideas. We'd have much fewer problems, okay. So he's trying to get his friend to accept this and his friend thinks he's crazy. And he says, look, just put on these shades and you're gonna see what I see. Put on these shades and I won't have to argue anything. And his friend says, no man, I'm not gonna waste my time with that stupid story. I'm not putting on the shades. And he says, you're putting on these shades. His friend says, I'm not putting on these shades. And what follows is the most ridiculous fight scene in cinematic history. I mean, the movie might be worth watching as cheesy as it is. Just to see these two grown men, toil and tussle, rolling around for about ten minutes fighting each other. Because one guy is trying to put the shades on his friend. He's trying to force them on. Just so his friend can see what he sees and believes what he believes. And it's such an embarrassing, ridiculous experience. And you know how it ends? It ends with the friend who doesn't wanna put on the shades, clocking his buddy real good. And his buddy just being frustrated and beat up. And like, now not only does my friend not believe me, not only does he think I'm crazy, but I'm so tired. I'm so tired, and I don't even know if I feel like fighting anymore. It's a common place to be, to have an idea about how to change the world. To think you possess valuable insights that most people don't agree with. To try to spread that vision to the world. To have people think you're crazy. To fight for it. To argue with them and try to get them to see things your way. Only to have them resist you to the point where you feel like, well, maybe I just give up. But later in the movie, he found another way. He discovered the truth of the tower that emits the frequency. And he had a crazy idea. And that idea was, forget about arguing with people. If I can only get to that tower, and I can somehow interrupt that frequency, then people's perceptions will automatically change. They'll see things. And so he dedicates the rest of the movie to trying to get to that tower. He goes through a whole bunch of stuff. I'm sorry if I'm spoiling it, but it was done in 1980. So I'm not really sorry about that. If you haven't seen it, probably not going to see it now. So he finally makes it to this tower by the end. And in a dramatic moment where someone is getting ready to shoot him and he has his gun, he lays down his life for that one final shot, boom. He succeeds. He shoots the tower. The scene goes to a bar. You've got three men sitting next to each other watching a sports game, laughing, having a good time. And one of those men is an alien. Two of them are human beings. And the lights go out and the lights come on. And the two men who are human beings can see that there is an alien. And they look at each other. And you know at that moment, the fit's about to hit the shan. The whole bar erupts into a great fight. And you know that the revolution has begun. And it's only a matter of time before the human beings take back their freedom. Boom, end of the movie. How did he succeed? How did he start the revolution? By winning the argument with his friends? Nope. By being triggered every time someone said, well, I think your ideas are stupid. Where you're not a real player in the world. Where you don't have a lot of political power. Well, the majority of people are never going to believe what you believe. Did he change the world that way? Nope. He changed the world by saying, you know what? I'm done with you guys. I'm going to stop arguing with you. Stop treating my power as if it depends on everyone accepting my beliefs. And I'm going to do something that doesn't just focus on changing people's ideas, but that focuses on changing their incentives. Because when you try to change people's ideas, sometimes they respond, but sometimes they don't. And you all know that from personal experience, because you've experienced it multiple times. But when you change people's incentives, it always works. The most fundamental economic insight is that people respond to incentives. And this is the power that entrepreneurs have to change the world. In a world where we're always fighting and arguing in an effort to change the way people see the world, entrepreneurs are focused on changing the world that people see. Because when you change the world that people see, they respond accordingly. And this is the kind of position, this is the kind of approach that puts you in a place where you can look people in the eye who think you're crazy, who dismiss your ideas, who think you're wrong. And you can say, it's all good, baby. I know that I'm not the minority. But did not Leonard Reed say something about the fact that most changes in the world happened from a few small individuals with a few supporters? I'm not worried about your belief because my beliefs do not require you to share them. I'm not here to change the way you see the world. I'm here to change the world that you see. And when I change the world that you see, when I get through with that, you're never going to be the same again. That's the way the entrepreneur works today. We're going to hear from three very special speakers who are going to talk with you about this kind of approach, about this way of thinking, about how to change the world in a way that puts you in a position of having greater power than just being limited to arguing with your buddies about economics, arguing with your buddies about philosophy. And this is a way of looking at things that is not only more effective, but it's going to allow you to enjoy your experience of life a lot more. Are you excited about those kinds of talks? I am, yes.