Never Allow Anyone Elses Opinion Block Your Future

hello

for the last couple of weeks i have been

sitting

with my new notebook in a room quietly

with a new pain

thinking how am i going to write this

ted talk

what am i going to put in this how am i

going to get my message across to

everybody

as the weeks went on and the notebook

continued

to be empty

i decided the only way i’m going to get

my message across to everybody

is to not think about what’s in the

notebook and actually see it from here

so my name is granny mccoy and welcome

to my first ever ted

talk i’m going to take us on a journey

um and the journey is the journey of me

back we’re going back till i was 11

years of age

um during school wasn’t for me

it wasn’t for me i knew from a young

girl people used to say to me oh you’re

the girl with the rosy colored glasses

or you’re a dreamer or another good one

you’re in her head

because i knew i was different and i

accepted that from a very young age i

knew i wanted something different out of

life

i instead of school books in my backpack

i actually had sweets bottles of

lucazide

crisps where i used to sell them in the

schoolyard

now as an 11 12 year old young girl this

was this was

what i started thriving on i i knew

right okay there’s a business woman in

at that age now that business went

really really well and i didn’t

until i nearly got expelled yes

obviously i’m not meant to be making a

profit in school and meant to be

learning

but that was my type of education i was

learning

about my path of where i wanted to be

and what i wanted to do and it was a

business woman and i knew this

but things changed um

at the age of 15 um my life was about to

change forever

i was about to take on the biggest job a

woman could ever ever ever take on

and that was becoming a mother so yes at

the age of 15 i became pregnant

i kept this a secret for 29 weeks

six and a half months six and a half

months i had my first scan

i am i knew that

this was going to change my life but

this is where the one rule of my life

came into play and that was the rule

that i was going to

that was going to create my path the

rest of my life and that was

not allowing others opinions to block my

future

now saying this um after

telling my mother and my parents

obviously it didn’t go down too well

but it was accepted and 10 weeks later

ryan was born

now at 15 years of age going through

gcses

um not being allowed to set me to access

education wasn’t my strongest point

reading a book it was not for me i also

knew that to be the successful

businesswoman that i wanted to be

the 11 year old me wanted to be

i had to have some sort of education so

four weeks after having ryan

um i decided you know what i’m gonna go

back to school

to the horror to one my teachers because

i hated it and two my parents

um because they didn’t think it was the

well they didn’t see whether i would

stick at it

now going back to school at 15 years of

age to

a lot of younger people now because i

was a year behind

and getting the oh god did you hear

about granny mccoy or

oh she’s a mother um or taking my son

into school which i was very very very

very proud of um

was a big step for me now the one

number one rule was obviously to always

not care what they thought and this was

going to help me get through the year

the very very very tough year of not one

or not only being a mother

but also repeating fifth year i got

through it

didn’t get many gcses but i still got

through it i continued on my journey

as a mother as a single mother knowing

that i wanted to be successful in life

i decided when i was 21 after working my

way up through the retail sector

with no education single mom becoming a

manager of a store i knew i wanted

something different i wanted really

i wanted to be creative i wanted to

create something different i started

getting into makeup

so from my makeup journey i decided that

i would go to london one time and i

asked my mother i i contacted her one

day and said

could you look after ryan for a couple

of weeks i’m really going to try this

dream

she’s like no granny that’s ridiculous

you can’t do that but then the number

one rule

popped back into my head that i was

going to take with me for life

don’t let other people’s opinions stop

you just block your journey or block

your future

so i went to london i continued my

journey as a makeup artist

to everyone’s surprise it started

growing very quickly

i started working for google i started

working for youtube i love to talk so

i continued my journey in in london

until one day

i decided i’d seen a hairdresser on a

certain show called the bbc apprentice

on this journey i told a few people that

i was going to take part in this

i laughed they laughed they thought it

would never be possible a young girl

from a young little village where we

don’t even have a shop how could

somebody like that

get on such a big show to get over 300

other thousand people that apply for

this how can i do that

but again i took that one one life rule

journey

with me and that was to not allow other

people’s

opinions block my future i got on the

show

i got on the show and i

got to the semi-final now believe it or

not

i know that i could have popped that

extra little bit