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]