If this is "Second Chance,"
we need to consider two aspects.
The first is what prevents us from realizing our dreams.
You know what that is?
It's talent.
Yeah, I know, you're looking at me like I'm crazy;
but let me explain with an example.
I have a great friend who's a reporter for Rai.
Ever since he was born, he's always had the dream
to work and live in the United States of America.
I met him eight years ago,
when I started this adventure in the United States;
and every year, every time we talk,
I always propose him something
that can help him realize his dream.
And his answer is always the same:
"Eh, Stefano: I only know how to be a journalist"
And my answer, and my correction, is exactly the same:
"No, dear Dario: you don't just know how to be a journalist.
You have proven you can even be a journalist.
Yes, because in reality we often fail
seizing opportunities, and carrying out projects,
because we built around ourselves a cage
whose bars are the talents,
and what we've been good at insofar,
what made us someone in a given field.
Because we still carry the legacy of previous generations,
where the same work was done for a lifetime,
you entered in a company doing the humblest job
and then, over time, with seniority, you grew
and reach the fateful day of retirement, like Fantozzi,
when you retire and a big party was organized for you.
40 years, 30 years, 50 years in the same company
doing the same job in the same office.
Not anymore.
This label no longer exists:
"Hi, Stefano Versace, insurance broker";
"My pleasure, Dario Celli, journalist"; "My pleasure, Mario Rossi, carpenter".
This is nonsense today.
Because in the United States,
if you work for more than five years in the same company,
doing the same things,
you lose value.
You lose value
because you have automatically shown that you don't know how to be ductile,
how to adapt to a world that's changing more and more frantically.
We all know the world has changed, over the last 50 years,
more than in the previous 500;
and in the last five, more than it did in the last 50.
So you can't stay locked inside this cage
thinking it's the only thing we know how to do.
I come from the insurance world:
i remember when I was 16, I took my bike,
got out of high school,
and on Monday, Wednesday and Friday I went from Ancona to Falconara Marittima
to open my insurance agency.
I started out like this, making little policies,
selling car insurance, life insurance, accident insurance.
Then I grew up, learned new aspects of this job
until I became an expert insurance broker for public bodies.
So much so that the greatest broker in the world said to me,
"Please come work with us because you've become a nightmare:
we find you at every public tender."
And so it was: I started working with them.
Then I went to Venezuela,
where for five years I dedicated myself to an insurance company
becoming their most important manager
in the reinsurance world.
My world, for 16 years, has been insurance.
Nice to meet you, Stefano Versace, insurance broker.
Then I decided it was time to change,
I decided that those talents that I had shown in this world
could be repurposed in another one.
So, I opened in Urbino a little restaurant.
From there, my adventure in the world of food began.
A completely different world, of which I knew nothing;
but I was aware that I had talents
that would also have yielded results in another area.
Then I moved on from there: me and my family, we decided
to realize the dream of living in the United States of America,
and we came to open our first ice cream shop.
Today we are world leaders in ice cream
here in Florida, and US in general,
because we didn't build ourselves this cage.
So, my first wish to you is to break the bars of this cage.
that you built yourselves, inevitably,
which is made up of your talents, what you know how to do,
from what you think you're good at
and that's the only thing you know how to do.
No: you have talents, you can use them in any field.
The second part to take care of, when it comes to "Second Chance"
is the relationship you have with failure.
Bad for the Italians: very bad.
Think of the headlines:
"Entrepreneur commits suicide for the failure of his enterprise."
First of all,
entrepreneurs don't take their lives because their company fails;
but they do out of their terrible relationship with failure.
Because entrepreneurs also fail in the United States,
and you, in America, will never see a title like that.
You'll never see an entrepreneur
who commits suicide because his enterprise has failed.
Do you know why?
Because failure in the United States is normal, and socially accepted,
since school.
I love my children's school, a public school
where as soon as you enter there's a giant poster
with the words "Make mistakes".
Below it says, "Penicillin was discovered by mistake."
Our programs are designed
to let our kids tinker and get used to making mistakes,
because this is what's in store for them, in life.
If you think about it, even in Italy
there was, when I went to school, that famous two-color pencil:
red on the one hand, indicating the normal error;
and when the mistake was severe, it was marked with blue.
You penalize, you punish, you make mistakes.
A student in US isn't punished for being wrong:
I go to school because I have to learn,
of course I make mistakes.
You reward those who make it!
And this lack of punishment, since childhood,
allows you to start living the experience of life
without fear of failure.
There's a phrase I love so much in the United States
that says "Fail Fast".
Because the sooner you fail, the sooner you reach the goal.
Let's take my story: I've created here, in eight years,
the largest ice cream chain in the United States,
while having to close at least a dozen ice cream shops.
But without the closure of those 12 shops, I think,
I wouldn't have 20 fancy shops today.
in the best corners of Miami.
Shall we call those 12 shops a failure,
or a mandatory passage?
If you think about it, you've failed since you were born.
You failed when you started trying to walk;
you failed when you started talking;
you failed when you started studying mathematics;
you failed when you studied,
when you started cycling.
But today you can talk, you can walk, you can ride a bike,
you also know how to do simple math:
and that's because you went through those failures
without fear, without problems,
understanding, since childhood, that making mistakes is normal.
So, that "Fail fast" they say in the United States,
means "Don't be afraid.
It's starting to fail right now. Start right now.
Don't wait for the perfect moment".
[The] procrastination is due to the fact that we were afraid of making mistakes.
So we wait for the "right moment" to do things:
the right moment doesn't exist, the perfect moment doesn't exist,
perfection is something that kills entrepreneurship,
it kills people's lives.
You have to try, make mistakes, fix them,
for success can only be achieved by fixing mistakes after mistake.
So, my best wishes to you,
who are watching this talk of mine,
is to take the suitcase,
pack it with everything you've always dreamed of accomplishing,
your dreams, your goals, your desires.
Put them in and go out there.
Go out there, and start failing.
I hope you fail as soon as possible,
because success is that extraordinary reward
which is just around the corner where you made the last mistake.