Make It Happen TODAY

[Music]

[Applause]

hi everyone we are so glad to be out

here uh you know i am a huge fan of ted

talks and the ideas and inspiration that

gets shared in spaces like this

but to be honest um never in a million

years would i have imagined myself to

give a ted talk actually correction

never in a million years would i have

imagined that i would be giving a ted

talk with my husband who was once just a

guy in my college that i used to have a

major crush on here’s a fun fact we both

met in college where we are studying to

be pharmacists then we left it all

behind to pursue our dream job being

paid to travel

that’s right basically me and my husband

get to go on honeymoon after a honeymoon

and be paid for it and the best part is

it’s been 11 months since we started

this venture and we’ve already been to

14 indian states two countries and have

worked with some of the biggest brands

in india

but before we tell you how we

accomplished all of this in such a short

period of time let us tell you who we

are so hello everyone my name is branchi

and i am harsh and together we are two

tickets to freedom where travel bloggers

digital content creators and

entrepreneurs

we started sharing our travel journey on

instagram around 11 months back and it

has gone from just being a hobby to

being our full-time jobs and also

business now you must be wondering how

do you really monetize this thing how do

you earn from social media rajiv could

help us out here sure so let me tell you

what we do for work our work basically

includes everything from photography

videography editing to brand negotiation

deal cracking um creative writing

creation of videos production and

everything that you don’t see which goes

on behind the scenes and how do we

monetize this well we work with brands

and companies who would like to sponsor

us and our travels and basically get

access to our audience through our page

two tickets to freedom

when we started this venture out we had

a lot of doubts in our mind um how do

you even start being a travel blogger is

it possible to earn from this how much

time does it take to earn from this and

so many other questions so how should

you want to take some absolutely let’s

start with this one how did two

pharmacists who have no idea how digital

media really works start getting paid to

travel let’s start with how we became

pharmacists let’s start with my story so

i was pretty confused about what i

wanted to do in life i was jumping

fields thinking i do engineering and

this and that eventually and trust me

very randomly i stumbled upon a brochure

and ended up doing pharmacy from animals

in mumbai

i do very randomly ended up in the

pharmacy field when i was a child i

loved being in front of the camera

dressing up and having my mom click my

pictures but when i grew up i thought i

had to do something serious so i started

preparing to become a doctor

but then one of my friends she asked me

why i wasn’t considering pharmacy since

it’s basically the same entrance exam

and you don’t even have to study that

hard so i thought okay that sounds

interesting uh maybe i will become a

pharmacist and that’s how i ended up in

the same college that hush was studying

at

but i am four years his junior so i was

in my first year and harsh was in his

last year

i saw him around campus a lot and i

immediately developed a crush but i

didn’t know how to go up to him and tell

him that i liked him

but then one day something just hit me i

thought if i don’t do this now i will

always wonder who this one guy was and

how he could have changed my life

because i knew he was going to change my

life

so i picked up my phone i called him up

and i told him hi it’s brachi i think

you’re really cute and we should go out

that call change the course of our lives

well first thing i also had a big crush

on her but i never had the couch to

reach out

now when she made that call i was so

impressed she really made it happen she

liked a guy in college basically me and

she went forward and made that call and

ever since then things have been very

different than we are here today because

of that call right now pretty early in

college i realized that pharmacy is not

something i want to do for the rest of

my life another thing i also realized is

that i want to start my own business now

before i start jumping into business i

need to learn a lot of things so i

joined a startup i spent two years with

them while i was working with them i

realized two things one is that i had a

passion for traveling and the second is

that i had a passion for building brands

i took the second one first and gained

the confidence and build my own digital

marketing and design agency to

pursue that passion and plan to join me

soon after

so i graduated in the middle of the

pandemic in 2020 i was all set to have a

flow level gig at a market research firm

that does uh that has clients for

healthcare and pharmaceuticals

i probably would have you know joined

that

job and i wouldn’t be standing here if

they hadn’t revoked my offer letter so

unfortunately due to the pandemic i

received an email one day that said

we’re sorry but we can’t offer you this

job

i was heartbroken but at the same time

it felt like a huge weight had been

lifted off my shoulders

up until that point in my life i was

just doing what i thought i had to do i

got into a good college i studied hard

to get good grades

i got a good job a conventional good job

and i thought you know that is what life

is

but because of them revoking my job

offer it really made me it gave me the

time to think about what it is that i i

want to do not what the world expects me

to do

so after a lot of talking with her and

figuring out by myself what i want to do

i figured out two things one i really

want to do something about this travel

bug that i have inside of me and two i’m

good at social media all of my friends

knew it my parents knew it i knew it

they would encourage me to go after it

and that’s how i ended up

learning more about it and at harsha’s

company working for him and our clients

now when we started working for our own

agency it was to explore our definition

of freedom now freedom to all of you

might mean something else it could be

freedom of time freedom of money freedom

to make your own decisions for us

freedom meant the power to live life on

our own terms and that’s what we went

for now when we meet our friends that

time and they were talking about the

corporate life they were telling us

about planning trips months in advance

uh taking permission for a very small

duration in the year and that just

didn’t click with us how can you give

your life’s decision to someone else’s

hand another thing we also couldn’t get

with is the fact that we push things we

like to another day in the future now i

know all of you out here have something

you already know you enjoy doing or have

been wanting to do for quite a while now

but you must be thinking i do it once i

earn enough money or once i reach my

retirement age why why should we do that

and that’s something we always connected

with and felt that it’s not right should

just go for it we should have that

freedom to do it right now and we just

went with that isn’t that that’s right

so that brings us to january 1st of 2021

this year

we started this year in the middle of

the dubai desert writing atvs uh we just

got engaged a month prior and we decided

we wanted to take a trip together

actually can you believe it the two of

us who love traveling as much as we do

and we had been together for five years

up until that point

we hadn’t taken a single trip together

so dubai was long pending when we

explored the streets of dubai when we

had the different foods when we just you

know were there in that moment we

realized that we need to do something

about the shared passion of us

so when we came back from dubai you know

it’s a pandemic was going on and we were

quarantined in a hotel room for seven

days

and we didn’t have anything else to do

but think about this idea that we had

and think about ways to make it happen

so we decided that we would start a

travel blog now to be honest with you

both of us didn’t know how to do it but

we went for it and we learned from

people who had done it in the past so

different content creators that we liked

and admired we would see their work we

would get inspired from them and we

found ways to make it happen and

basically we came out of quality and

having decided on our name having

purchased the domain name and having

made the instagram page called two

tickets to freedom now once we did all

this we knew okay fine all the time

we’ll grow and it’ll become a thing but

we didn’t anticipate that we grew that

fast as if we did because in just 40

days we went from zero followers to 10

000 followers and within 11 months just

last week we reached 150 000 followers

now that’s a huge fee

now with this increase in our travel

blog and the people watching us we had

to balance this out at the same time

figure out how to balance our client

work at the agency because that’s

something we are passionate about as

well now while we were traveling we

found out multiple ways to do this there

was no way to figure out exactly how

because no one’s written it down if

you’re travellers how do you balance

your agency life so we had to multitask

in some scenarios we are waking up at

four o’clock five o’clock in the morning

and taking our task list completely from

top to bottom so that we could travel

without any hazards some days we would

take our laptops to the beach to the

mountains you’re taking clan calls while

you were traveling in the tempo traveler

and we used to always hunt for wi-fi so

that you could make websites for some

clients and that’s how it has been for

us both rashi and me have always

believed that life is keep going to keep

throwing hurdles at you but you

shouldn’t be taken back by that if you

have a goal you want to achieve you need

to tackle those hurdles and go for it we

decided that we want to build a life

where we have the freedom to take our

own decisions and we didn’t want to wait

for some magical day to make that happen

we jumped into a deep end of the ocean

without any safety nets that’s

absolutely right

so what are the steps you need to take

to become a travel blogger is there a

list of things you can do or how does it

work

i wish there was a road map there isn’t

just saying right so we understood that

we want to become travel bloggers that

was a bigger goal but there was no fixed

way to get there what we knew is that we

have a passion and we need to work hard

towards it we started by learning we

learned a lot before we even started off

we went to youtube followed our favorite

creators and took on a lot of content

from ray’s blogs we understood what is

really needed what is the essence of

travel blogging and then what we

understood is that we need to take one

single step in that direction every day

to make things happen so on day one a

very simple step we chose our name to

take us to freedom on day two we took

our instagram handle on day three we

purchased our domain name no rocket

science just a simple step but did take

you closer to your dream and on day 180

we finally got paid for travel content

that’s right guys it took us less than

six months to start getting paid with

this venture

when we started this off and we learned

from the creators that we were learning

from they hadn’t achieved anything like

this because it took them a few years at

least to monetize this passion and

that’s what we thought when we started

out we totally underestimated ourselves

didn’t we we underestimated ourselves so

much now just imagine if we wouldn’t

take those steps i can’t even we

wouldn’t have all the wonderful

experiences that we have had in this

past year i mean we’ve traveled more in

this year alone than we have in all our

time together

just last week we were in kerala sipping

coconuts on the back waters of kubrickov

two weeks ago we were in the middle

middle of the thar desert just camping

out the two of us and two months ago we

worked with the biggest company in the

world amazon to film a mini travel show

that took us to all four corners of

india

and the best part is that all of these

trips were sponsored and we didn’t have

to spend a single time

now because this tips are sponsored we

could focus on creating quality content

for our audience and that’s what we’ve

been getting support for and

this last year i think has been nothing

short of a dream life we have been

living our dream life and you’re really

happy about it and to think it has all

happened because we chose a career where

we keep freedom at the forefront

similarly for you i want to ask you what

is this one idea you have had but never

got around to it maybe you knew it in

your childhood and you know somebody

told you you can’t achieve it maybe you

just thought of it sitting right here or

maybe you thought of it in quarantine

like us whatever it is we want to let

you in on a little secret

both our lives individually and together

as partners would not be as awesome as

it is today if we just kept daydreaming

and didn’t take a single step in the

right direction

today you could write the first page of

your first book you could start an

instagram account for your business and

that would be the start of something new

you could write a travel blog like us

maybe you could write a food blog if

that’s what you’re passionate about or

you couldn’t do blogging at all maybe

you want to learn how to read and write

german

if you look back in a few years today

could have been the day or maybe the day

that you started a new chapter of your

life

you already know what you’re passionate

about and you already know what you want

to get there in life true now we’re not

asking to radically change your life all

we’re telling is that you should take a

single step in the direction to achieve

your dreams and that’s what will get you

there

so we want to wrap this up by a story by

nirmal

who is a award-winning high altitude

mountain climber you know he had this

dream of climbing the 14 highest peaks

in the world

which are about 8 000 meters including

mount everest and the previous record

holder completed it in seven years the

previous record holder took seven years

to climb all 14 peaks and nirmal puja

had the idea of doing it for seven

months

people told him it wasn’t possible how

can you do it

but he made it happen

so we want to leave you with a little

quote by him which said

sometimes the ideas that you come up

with may seem impossible to the rest of

the world but that doesn’t mean it’s

impossible to you

so the idea that you have

the thing that you really want to

accomplish don’t wait for anything

just make it happen today

[Applause]