 Our next speaker is a gentleman that I'm looking forward to listening to because I used to be in his profession. He's a venture capitalist. I used to do that and now I'm a dating coach and confidence coach which my mom isn't a humongous fan of as you can imagine. She used to be able to say, oh yeah, my son's a venture capitalist. What does he do now? He's a dating coach. But hey, he can't do what mom wants you to do. You gotta follow your passion. So we've got Ben Benson coming on and as I said, he's a VC and a social entrepreneur, sorry, serial entrepreneur. He has written nine books all on business. He's interviewed over 200 people, including the Oracle of Omaha. Anyone know who that is? Warren Buffett. Guy has a couple bucks and he's got 20 years of experience in the finance VC world. So help me welcome Ben. A West Texas rancher, this is one of those real rich Texans, tens of thousands of acres of land, dozens of producing oil wells. He's got an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a mansion of a house. And what he wanted to do was hold a party for his daughter, his youngest daughter who he wanted to marry off as quickly as he could. So he invited all the best-looking single salesmen from all over West Texas to come to this party. Now this is one of those real rich Texans, tens of thousands of acres of land, dozens of producing oil wells. He's got an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a mansion of a house, tens of thousands ahead of cattle. And the party goes really well. And at about midnight, he invites everyone out to his Olympic-sized swimming pool that he has the foresight to stock with alligators and crocodiles. And he says, the first man that will jump in this pool and swim the length of it and get out the other side alive and in one piece, I'll give 10,000 acres of my best land to. And if he doesn't want the land, I'll give him a million dollars in cash. And if he doesn't want the cash, I'll give him the hand of my beautiful daughter in marriage. And she was a good-looking girl. Now no sooner as he said that, there was a loud splash by an almost immediate emergence of a guy getting out the other end of the pool alive and in one piece. Now the host is stunned. So he runs down to the other end of the pool and he says, that's amazing. You must have just set a world record that will never be broken. He says, what do you want? 10,000 acres of my best land? No, sir. A million dollars in cash? No, sir. Then he says and puts his arm around him. He says, well, son, I have to assume you want to take the hand of my beautiful daughter in marriage. And I don't need to tell you this, but everyone knows whoever gets the hand of my beautiful daughter in marriage will eventually get everything I own. Is that what you want? And the response is again, no, sir. So the host says, for crying out loud, what do you want? He says, I want to know the name of the guy that just pushed me in the swimming pool. Now here's the question. How many of you by show of hands would agree that that guy was motivated? Show of hands. All right, everyone in the room. So if you consider this, we do a lot of presentations for a lot of different types of groups. And quite often we'll have a situation where people will call me in to do a presentation and say, we've just brought Ben in today. And for the next 25 minutes, he's going to motivate you. And everyone kind of folds their arms and sits back in the seat. And you can see it written on their faces. They're thinking to themselves, oh, yeah, let's see how he does. 25 minutes later, you drag yourself out of the room. And everyone thinks to themselves, yes, I'm still demotivated. Well, I'm really excited to be here today. And I want to share with you some things that I think can make a difference. My name is Ben Benson. And I want to share with you a couple of principles, a few principles that I think if you apply and experiment with will bring an understanding and an increase in productivity, particularly in the business world. How many of you by show of hands are currently working for yourself? Or perhaps you'd like to work for yourself sometime in the future? About everyone in the room. So would it be fair in saying that we're all entrepreneurs here? We all want to do something different, perhaps make our mark in the world? So what we're going to do is look at a couple of principles and kind of give you a little bit about background of what I've done, how I got in this position, so that perhaps you can relate to what's necessary and really take your situation to the next level. About 10 years ago, I was in a situation where I thought, how am I going to really take what I feel in my head, what I can see in my mind and make it really my world? And what I'm about to share with you are some of the principles that helped me do that. Perhaps the best place to start is at the beginning. When I was five years old, my mother asked me a question that to this day, until my dying day, I'll never forget. She said, son, I'm leaving the home. Who do you want to live with? Me or your dad? Five years old. I ran out of the house, ran down the street and never saw my mom again. A few hours later, my dad came and found me and my dad brought me up until I was about 24 years old. Well, I knew my dad until about 24 years old and then for one thing or another, he left the family. But the reason I share that with you is this. The reason why my parents split up and the reason why we always had problems in our home was because of money or the lack of money. Everything was related to this problem of not being able to manage financially. Now, some of you may be able to resonate with that. Some of you may know people that perhaps have been in that situation. Some of you might be going through some major challenges right now. But what I want to share with you is a series of ideas and principles that I think if you understand on a macro level and then down to specifically what you're doing on a daily basis, you can make a difference for you and those people around you. Pretty bold claim to make, I know. But I'm confident, satisfied. We've shared this with lots and lots of different types of people and the feedback that we've had has been significant. So with that, let's just have a look at the current situation kind of globally. Let's understand what's happening on a global level. And then I'm going to bring it right down to you as an individual as to what is currently happening and what's going on in your own mind and some of the things that you can do to make things happen. First of all, in the new economy, only three employees will be required for a new company, for a large company or any company. A man, a dog and a computer. The man will be there to feed the dog and the dog will be there to stop the man from touching the computer. See, just last week, I went into my local bank to pay some money into my account. Only 18 months ago, I could go into my local branch and there would be eight to 10 people sitting behind glass sections ready to serve. Today, there's one person sitting behind a glass section and one person managing nine paying in machines. How many of you know what I'm talking about? Look down the checkout aisle of any supermarket and you will notice that slowly but surely convey about tellers are being replaced by self-service machines, right? Filling stations, slowly becoming fully automated. 24 hours they're open now, not because they have more staff, but because they have more unmanned computers. See, new technology has been dissolving large corporations for some time and the hard facts remain, if you're an employee, if you work for a large organization, then in the next few years, two to three years, you will be in a minority.