Be a Swiss pocket knife │ Rafaela Cappai │ TEDxBlumenauSalon

Rafa Cappai shares her ideas on multipotentiality and shows that it is possible for people to do what they love and find work that encompasses all their passions. She uses her own creative education program to prove that not everyone is meant to be a specialist and that it is fine to be a Swiss pocket knife instead of scissors.

An actress, dancer, entrepreneur and other things, Rafa is the creative mind in charge of Espaçonave.

In her view, creative passion can create new models to produce, consume and share. She uses her own story to encourage people to build the future that they wish for, so that we can all build up the power of the creative economy together.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at: http://ted.com/tedx

Even if your voice trembles,
speak from your truth.

Even if your hand shakes,
speak from your truth.

Even if your heart beats faster,
speak from your truth.

Even if you feel scared,
speak from your truth.

Well, this story happened in 2005.

A neat oportunity
of a managament course for artists

was offered in my hometown,
Belo Horizonte.

First day of classes
and presentations went around.

"Who are you? What do you do?
What are you up to?"

You all know the drill.

All is going well and then it is my turn.

Since I'm adventuresome, I made a point
of not hiding anything that I did.

I guess I didn't want to leave behind
any part of myself.

So, I said, "Hi, there.
Nice to meet you all.

I'm Rafaela Cappai, I'm an actress,
a dancer, a journalist.

I'm also a cultural events producer...

Writer, dance teacher..."

Then added, "I'm an entrepreneur".
That just to gain substance.

In fact, I did not feel
like an entrepreneur yet,

but I applied the idea of "while trying,
make it look like you are already there"

to prove to myself
that I was an entrepreneur.

A classmate shrieked from across the room,

"Girl! This is madness! You must choose!

No one is able to do so many things well!

Nobody will believe you!"

A pause.

An embarrassing moment of silence.

I didn't have clarity
or confidence to argue.

So I smiled, flustered.

I made some joke.

But there, I got an itch in my brain.

"Why not?," I wondered.

"Why can’t I be a lot of things

and share who I really am?"

Well, I am coming clean.

And I reckon that many of you
will come clean with me.

I'm in fact one of those feisty,
curious persons

who don't tire of learning new things,

who have a hard time
with focus and routine,

who love to experiment
with new ways of doing things,

who have ideas all the time.

A nosy and volatile chameleon

with an investigative spirit
for all the things in this world.

My résumé, when I still had one,
resembled Frankenstein:

diverse experiences in diverse projects

with diverse people.

I take a while writing
my profession in a form

because I have a weird feeling

that no single word is enough to define
what I do or who I am.

What about the world?

Well, the world often responded
that I am inconstant.

Maybe even unstable.

A confused mind that refuses
to go with the flow:

being born, growing up,
choosing and dying.

People like me are born, grow up,
experiment, choose,

un-choose, choose again,
experiment, experiment

and die someday.

But stop, pay attention.

If you look deeply, it makes sense.

If I feel as a Swiss knife,

why must I behave as dull scissors

that can only cut paper?

Trying to be scissors hurts people like me

who have multiple interests and skills

and a huge capacity to adapt.

We, multipotential people,
are not afraid to go out there

to learn and relearn.

In our defense, in case you feel the same,

it hurts, it hurts a lot.

To give up one of these possibilities

is like cutting off an arm;
dumping part of yourself in the trash.

But in the world of business,
entrepreneurial education

and formal education,

book after book, we're urged to focus.

They say, "Choose!
The world wants specialists!”

The motto is: become scissors.

Then you are unable to follow the idea
of living off your talents

because you are unable
to choose one talent!

But what if you did not have to choose?

What if creative,
meaningful entrepreneurship

opened into a magic gateway,
allowing you to do two,

maybe three, four or five things
at the same time and mixed up?

What if there was a way to stitch together
everything that you are

to produce a beautiful quilt
and deliver value to the world?

What if your multipotentiality is in fact,

as they say in the business world,
your main competitive advantage?

Being a multipotential
entrepreneur is lots of work

because even in the world
of multipotentiality

some focus is required
to build an enterprise.

Without focus, nothing is built.

But focus does not mean
ignoring an internal calling

and not doing something that you know,
deep inside, that you must do.

Maybe focus is to find motivation,

organize everything
that makes you who you are,

deliver value to the world
and make a living off of that,

instead of choosing a profession,

“marrying” it and staying with it
“until death do us part.”

I've helped creative people and "doers"

for a long time.

When I get this chance,
I pose a question to the audience:

how many of you identify
with one profession only?

“I'm only a doctor. I don't feel
like doing anything else.

I'm a doctor, doctor, doctor.”

Blogger, video-maker, photographer.

How many of you here want
to choose one profession,

marry it and be monogamous
until death do you part?

For real. It is a real question.

How many of you feel more
like scissors than Swiss knife?

Raise your hand. No one will say
you cannot be scissors.

No one? There you go.

Most of the time, this is the answer.

We are more like Swiss
pocket knives than scissors.

But the world keeps yelling,
“Be scissors! Be scissors!”

My assumption, not at all
proved scientifically,

is that we are multipotential by nature.

Multipotentiality is human nature,

just like creativity or curiosity.

The good news is
that the world has changed

and the era of picking a profession

from an HR catalog
or from a university catalog listing,

fixed, hermetic professions,

is over.

Fortunately, it’s over.

Picking only one profession

and staying with it
until the end is also over.

What also ended is
the suit-and-tie entrepreneur,

carrying around a spreadsheet
and a 200-page business plan.

What also ended is this way of thinking

that we must choose a profession
and it will be substantial

because it is our only chance.

It is not. It is not the only chance.

We have so many other possibilities

inside of us already,
being just who we are.

The world has changed and it needs
multipotential people like us.

Let’s think together.

The world is constantly evolving,
bubbling up constantly.

It needs people with skills to scan it,

to take a look from above,
like a drone view of things.

The world needs people
who can stitch things together,

who can find the gaps
that specialists cannot see

because they only look at one place.

We are the people who can fill the gaps.

And on the topic of specialists,
thank you so much.

We are very grateful to specialists

because they built a huge amount

of vertical, in-depth knowledge

that was so important
to get us to where we are.

But to those who feel more like
pocket knife than scissors,

I say, the time has come.

Also, we are not only multipotential.

We have multiple passions.

We can fall head over heels
for diverse subjects

and allow ourselves to be
impregnated by those subjects

during our whole lives.

This is my own path,

what I've been learning
and teaching for a long time,

that it is possible to forgo
an entrepreneurial

mechanical, industrialized,
specialized education

to give way to a different
kind of learning,

in which we may put our
talents into practice,

being more symbiotic, synergic, organic

and respecting ourselves as human beings.

That guy who is trying to learn to be
an entrepreneur in a different way

is in fact a learning entrepreneur.

This guy knows or will find out,

firstly, that self-knowledge
is the compass that guides this path

and defines what this guy is and wants.

Secondly, identity is an unending
source of resources.

It is already inside us.

And we may return to it for new resources.

Creativity is a tool for experimentation.

It creates value for us
and to the world as well.

Brains and heart are partners in a journey

to find the symbiosis
between reason and emotion,

personal values and strategy.

A customer is a person,
someone we share our best with

and invests in the best
that we have to offer.

Profit results from the value
that we deliver to the world,

so that we can be
entrepreneurs with meaning,

while we improve things around us.

Hands-on is an essential learning tool

to do things while you learn
and to get clarity on the next step.

A network is a safe space to learn,

to substitute competition for cooperation.

Sustainability is a goal
for you to do what you want

for as long as you want
while respecting the planet.

Finally, methodology is a path,
not a formula.

Because the learning entrepreneur
must trail his own path,

must figure out his own roadmap.

But how does one start?

How does one pull that thread?

From within,

by searching your own
human and creative capital,

by opening yourself up and observing
your own tools in this Swiss pocket knife,

everything that makes you who you are

and that is able to generate value
to you and to the world.

Your stock of skills, abilities,
talents, challenges, stories,

everything you have accumulated so far.

In my case, for example, I have been
a dancer since I was very little.

I became an actress in adolescence,
a journalist in college.

Then I started teaching.

Then I became an entrepreneur,
then a mentor, then a writer.

Now I can say that I have a job

because I invented a job

to use all my potentialities.

If I were to look for a job,

I would probably not find one

that could absorb
everything that I've got.

Because I built my business
based on who I am,

what I have and what I believe in.

The things I'm telling you,

all of that materialized through
my own business, "Espaçonave."

It's a school on creative entrepreneurship

that helps creative entrepreneurs
to transform what they have

into something that allows them
to live doing what they love.

Espaçonave started when I got a project,

sponsored by private money
but financed by public money,

to do a master’s degree
in London on the subject.

I went to classes every day.

I sat in the front
and absorbed that experience.

I gathered information,
interviewed people, I wrote stuff

and shared it with people who were
pursuing the same things.

I went to London to learn
how to be an entrepreneur

and I ended up teaching as well

because, after all,
we teach what we must learn.

The core of Espaçonave is Decola! LAB

An online program that lasts ten weeks

which leads and helps creative
entrepreneurs to build their businesses

and have a pleasant job of their own.

Like Amanda Mol, an illustrator
from Varginha, Minas Gerais.

She loves women, plants and flowers

and decided to stay in her hometown,
so she uses the internet.

It is all there in her business.

There is also Silvia Guimarães,
a designer and artisan.

While dealing with a family matter,

she found out that writing
in a notebook, just the act itself,

brought her peace, self-knowledge

and confidence to deal
with such a difficult time.

It is all deep down there in her business.

Elisa Dantas, from Brasília,
who's passionate about sewing.

Being a seamstress runs in her blood.

It goes back generations.

She screams that it is possible to change
our surroundings through creative action.

I can change the world by sewing a button.

But a button with history, for instance.

What do all these women have in common?

Businesses and careers
with very strong motives.

They absorb and give way
to all their potentiality

and ability to fall in love.

Why would you be a creative entrepreneur?

Because when we take over this space

we can create and be entrepreneurs.

We can see the whole
and connect the parts.

We create new synapses in our brains.

We can balance reason and emotion.

And we can also find

what the business world refers
to as “differential advantage.”

Because if we are loyal to ourselves,

to what we have, to who we are,

there won't be another business
in the world like ours,

as long as we are loyal
to our human and creative capital.

Sometimes, when we feel again like using

that multipotentiality in us,

it may seem like one of the blades
in the pocket knife is rusty.

And we don’t know what to do
because it is a lot of work,

constant work.

It is a learning process.

You cannot help
but change while you learn.

And change takes time,
it is a lot of work.

But I often get the feeling

that the process of being like
a Swiss pocket knife is almost a burden.

Because we are possibly
unable to avoid it.

We may dress up as scissors for years,

but at one point, the tips of the blades
start to tear up the skin

and try to get out.

This process is both
a blessing and a burden.

Even if it hurts, even if it is a handful,

even if it is uncomfortable,
and if it is not easy,

even if you feel afraid,
even if the world says no,

be a Swiss pocket knife.

Thank you.

(Cheers) (Applause)