Never underestimate the power of simply being good
[Music]
hi guys
so um one of the most interesting topics
i heard from a lot of speakers
is uh the 18 minutes that we get
for the presentation and there’s a lot
of mixed
feelings about 18 minutes is it a lot
is it not enough and
for me when i was trying to figure out
what to talk about
for you guys today i realized that for
most people not just the presentation
staff today that are presenting their
stories
but for all of you 18 minutes is
actually nothing
to compress your entire life into 18
minutes
is practically impossible
so in order for me to present something
to you today it took me a long time to
find
one thing that i could possibly compress
into 18 minutes
something that you can walk away from
this
with some interest something to think
about
something that i am proud of and
something that actually changed my life
and i think that’s the most fascinating
thing about
life is that our job is to
fascinate our friends our family
ourselves
most importantly and
what i like to talk about today is the
power of relationships
the power of relationships is the reason
why i am standing here today in front of
you
many of you guys probably have
absolutely no idea who i am which
is great because that is
a perfect example of the power of
relationships and that is the perfect
example of
power of connecting with one another
you might be sitting next to someone
that you don’t know today
that you did not take a second to
possibly just turn around
make eye contact that could possibly
change your lives forever
and we don’t think about that because we
are
too close-minded sometimes and we focus
like a racehorse why do they put
the leather straps on the side of the
racehorse eyes in order to focus
on going forward and not looking to the
left and to the right
which is technically we are taught that
those things are distractions in life
but those distractions in life
is the true meaning of life essentially
because without those distractions
when you’re at a grocery store
and your mission is to buy some
plantains for dominican republic you
know
or some grapes or whatever it is
and then you take a second and you
notice someone standing next to you
and you take that chance
in my case it was ikea actually in santo
domingo here
and uh you know a year later i’m still
here thanks to my
beautiful dominican girlfriend
and i was here on tour i’ve been coming
here for 10
years i’ve been coming mainly to punta
cana to the festivals over there
and there was another dj that did a lot
of shows with me
he’s actually in the audience today he’s
one of the speakers omar i don’t know
where he is somewhere
uh and he was an opening dj for me
for many years and what a lot of us do
unfortunately especially in the music
industry or in the entertainment
business is that we
undermined the little guys they say
i never undermined anybody and that is
something that has taken me from a small
country in moldova
across the world and now to the stage
here in santo domingo doing ted
god knows how i got here but i’m here
so to connect the dots i was the guy
that respected the little guy and
through that guy i met another guy
and another guy and then i met freddy
who’s responsible for
me standing here in front of all of you
so why is that important the reason why
that’s important is because
we wake up in the morning
some of us are happy some of us are not
some of us wish we had more
and we always tend to blame
a lot of different reasons why we’re not
successful
why we don’t have more friends why we
don’t have more money
why we don’t travel enough
and we spend so much time
wasting and thinking about these things
when in essence god created this world
for us to explore this world and it
doesn’t have to be
flying to china to change your life
sometimes all it takes is for you to say
yes
to a certain event or be kind
to someone at your job
who might be a cleaning lady it might be
uh
it doesn’t matter who it is we can never
underestimate the power
of simply being good
and focusing on not only your problems
but understanding the world as a whole
because the world
the world is a combination of units
all of us together when you take out a
bunch of us
you start having holes so nobody is more
or less important per se
everybody is important if you’re walking
today you are important
even if you’re a shitty person you’re
important to me because you’re my bad
neighbor and i got to deal with you
right or you’re important to me because
you’re a great neighbor and i gotta
thank you every day for not being like
this guy over here
you know what i mean so don’t forget
that you are
important regardless if you’re good or
bad
because you have a duty in this world
and your duty
is to create we’re talking about you
know the space we create
right so when you in your own
backyard
and your neighbor doesn’t like it you’ve
just created a very
unnecessary space you know right
so when you wake up in the morning think
about that think about that for a second
that you have a responsibility
to create relationships not only to
make your life better but make the
entire world better
because only together true change can
happen you know i’ve been coming here
for 10 years
and i have to tell you santo domingo in
particular i mean dominican republic as
a whole
has been making some drastic drastic
changes forward you know obviously
there’s
a lot of uh progress still to be made
but the on the international market
this is no longer considered to be a
third world country and i know
being here might not be so
noticeable but you guys are creating
space you
you guys are creating you guys are
improving
your world here on a very large scale
together
so when we scale that down
and take me per se a performer
my job is to entertain
my job is to make people dance to be
more specific
if people don’t dance i don’t get a you
know i don’t get my paycheck
whose fault is it when people don’t
dance you know
is it a shitty song that i played is it
the way
i you know presented myself
it doesn’t matter because the most
important thing is
the presentation i think is the most
important thing the most essential thing
so for me my job is to create
relationships with new people
every single day for the past 10 years
i’ve been creating relationships
i’ve been creating relationships with
performers other performers
i’ve been creating relationships with
with
with the fans i’ve been creating
relationships with
staff members that are responsible for
me sleeping comfortable
at night before or after the show the
drivers
the promoters you know like the amazing
people that put
this thing together uh for all of you
guys
those all of those things together
is the reason why my ass gets to stand
on stage
and perform for thousands of people
around the world
because those people chose for me to be
there
not me we don’t choose
the only thing we can do
is we could be better we could be good
we can expand we can expand our energy
for those people to decide for you to be
here
that’s how the world works the world
doesn’t work that you know i hear a lot
of people unfortunately talking about
you know oh i’m so great you know i’m
the best
you know that’s great you might be the
best
but without the energy that is
necessary the relationships the power of
relationships that i’m talking about
none of that matters none of that
matters
how many musicians or how many athletes
that are
phenomenal do you see in the news ruin
their careers because of their egos
they’re some of the talented the most
talented people in the world god gave
them god gave them the gift
you know and what do they do they
on that gift
and that’s why when you see kids from
nothing
you know coming out of nothing coming
from nothing
sometimes you know
and making it to the top understanding
the journey
i understand my journey i’ve been
understanding my journey for 10 years
which is the reason why people still
call me
i have a lot of friends that are a lot
more talented than i am
but they don’t understand the journey
because they don’t know how to create
that space around them that attracts
others to them
that energy
is so powerful
and so amazing at the same time
that a lot of us don’t take advantage of
it unfortunately
we wake up in the morning and we first
thing we do
is we think about the shitty job that we
have
or the problems with this or the
problems with that
where in essence what we have to realize
is that
i got out of this bed today and i have
my
you know my feet i have my brain
i have my food on the table if i want to
expand as a human being i don’t like to
call it
become more successful become more rich
because
becoming rich is it’s not
it’s not essential and it and it does
nothing
actually you know the there’s a lot of
rich people that hate their life you
know so that doesn’t matter
but every time you wake up in the
morning and you’re like i can’t get out
of bed and i can create these
phenomenal relationships you can even
fix existing relationships
and that’s the power that god gave us
that you know we always
we always talk about it and all the
societies we always say that
we always love the comeback kid never
forget about that
the world loves the comeback kid you
could be the shittiest neighbor ever
you know you come around a few times
with some
brugal and sankocho you know what i mean
he might think of you differently
you know and you have that power
you have that power to change to create
new space
that energy when you wake up in the
morning all of you
all of us do
and when you wake up tomorrow
think about that it starts it’s a new
start every day it’s a new start every
day
i have so many phenomenal stories
on how i’ve achieved certain things
there was a there was a show
it was called sensation white and
amsterdam 60
000 people arena it was like the
impossible
it was the impossible for you to perform
at a show like that
for me it was like impossible so i woke
up every day and i watched those videos
i watched those videos day in and day
out
and then six years later i did the
biggest sensation white amsterdam
to this day 65 000 people
and i was standing there and how did i
get there
did i imagine you know people are like
oh yeah let me imagine
i’m gonna fly to the moon and oh look
i’m on the moon you know
no it doesn’t work like that you have to
imagine
that step one if you imagine
that’s step one step what is step two
step two is
go buy some brugal for your neighbor you
know
and say thank you for your mom and dad
for
you know even bringing your shady ass to
life sometimes you know what i mean
taking care of your
dirty socks and whatnot you know what i
mean and then you start building you
start building
every day co-workers friends
girlfriends boyfriends kids you know i
see so many families having problems
because of their relationships you know
relationship problems
relationships are very very very
destructive things
if they are not in a good state how can
you possibly focus on success
if you have relationship problems in
your own backyard
in your own families those need to be
the baby steps
before you get to say mom i’m off to the
moon you know what i mean
once you get to through those the family
then you get out now you’re outside
what’s happening outside okay your
co-workers
whoever you’re working with business
partners friends
friends number two you know
those relationships you know how many
times i’ve met
people for the first time and i’m like
aren’t you having problems with your
career and yeah you know i’m like a
starving musician
i’m like did you know that your best
friend runs this like
theater one of the biggest theaters in
town
oh yeah yeah i know yeah i’m like
okay what’s the problem here oh yeah
yeah you know he’s busy
well yeah he’s probably busy for you
because you’re a shitty friend
right you know we got the answers
we don’t like to we’re like us humans we
like to
we know the answers all of us know the
answers it’s like
i see people going to therapy with their
you know with their
boyfriends and girlfriends it’s like oh
it’s been so hard we don’t know what the
issue is
really we don’t know what the issue is
come on man
go back to day one when you met
and take those baby steps all the way
forward and kind of see where you
screwed up along the way you’re like oh
wait okay more flowers okay
all right all right so this period of
six months has been
flourless in this house you know what i
mean
so we start with the flowers people are
like no it’s this
no start with the flowers yo start with
the flowers
everybody wants to go to the moon
everybody wants to be rich everybody
wants to be happy
but nobody wants to buy flowers you know
nobody wants to buy flowers nobody wants
to help an elderly woman cross the
street
but we want to be the talkers you know
the
the most powerful men in the world
build those relationships i got three
seconds left
i was fighting it at first that’s all i
got for you guys
thank you so much build those
[Applause]
relationships
you