“CENTRO ESCOLAR JUANA DE ASBAJE”

Listening Activity

Carrie Green – Founder, Female Entrepreneur Association, Editor of This Girl

Means Business Magazine

So, I want to get you all involved to my talk today. And we’re going to test out a
little (1)___________. But in order for me to do that, I need somebody to come
up here, and join me on this stage. So, please can I have a volunteer?

Don’t all at a once. You can come join me up here with Ted, we’re going to have a
little couple of tea (2) ____________. Anyone? Come on! You can come up just
straight up to the front, whoever wants, I’m not going to pick anyone. Someone has
to come up, and there’s volunteers down here and bring you up onto this stage. Oh,
here is (3)_____________.

It’s a bit of an obstacle course I think. But I promise it’s worth it.

Poor person. Oooh, thank you. What’s your name? Ian?

Thank you so much, Ian. I have (4) ____________ for you. You’ve just won 20
pounds. There you go, there you go. Thank you so much. So, you can go down by
now.

Big round of applause.

So, my question to you is this: Why didn’t you volunteer? What (5)
______________ you from coming up here? My guess is that it was probably
one of these reasons.

FEAR. Fear of coming up here in front of nearly 1000 people is pretty damn scary.
Or maybe it was fear of the unknown, (6) ____________ you had no idea what I
was going to get you to do. Or maybe you thought, “Oh, gosh, she’s going to ask me
to do something, I’m not going to be able to do
Or maybe, it was because of OBSTACLES. There were quite a lot of obstacles in
this room, maybe you’re so far at the back, and you just thought, “Oh, my goodness.
I am so far away, it’s dark, there are lots of tables in my way up, if I fall over, I
might look like a fool, and I just can’t do it, it’s too (7) ____________, someone
else has to volunteer for me.”

Or maybe, it’s just the lack of (8) _______________. Maybe you just couldn’t be
bothered to move and come up here. But, no matter what your reason was, your
decision started up here. In your mind. Because the moment I said, “Please, can I
have a volunteer?”, thoughts would have started putting into your mind, that little
voice inside your head would have started talking to you. And maybe for some of
you, it was saying, “Oh, God, what is this girl going to get us to do? I don’t want to
go up there. Please don’t make us do anything really stupid.”
And then, maybe for some other (9)____________, you were thinking, maybe
down in the front you were like, “Oh, gosh. I don’t want to do this. Look away,
avoid eye contact, avoid eye contact. Then she won’t pick me.”

And then, maybe for some of you the moment I said, “Please can I have a
volunteer?”, maybe fear and doubt and worries had flooded through you at the
prospect of actually (10)___________ here, of coming up here in front of so
many people.

And then, for those of you that did volunteer, you were thinking something entirely
different. You were thinking things maybe like, “Woo! She wants a volunteer. I
wonder what she is going to get us to do. How exciting! I’m going to do it!” Or
maybe (11) ___________of you thought, “Oh, my gosh. This is really awkward.
No one is volunteering. So I’m going to have to step up and do it.”

But those of you that didn’t volunteer, you missed out on the chance to win 20
pounds. But this experiment isn’t about the (12)___________. This experiment
demonstrates the power of your mind. The fact that what is going on up in your
head has such a huge impact on the actions that you take, on the (13)
____________ you make, and the things that you experience. And it’s not just in
silly situation like this where people miss out on amazing opportunities. People are
missing out on incredible opportunities all of the time, because of what’s going on
in the head. Because they are making bad decisions, based off a really bad (14)
____________ of mind. Those kind of self-limiting thoughts, like, “I can’t do
that.” “I’m not good enough.” “I don’t have the time or the money.”

Or maybe you think, “I can’t be bothered. I’ll just do it tomorrow”

But then, you never do it. And so these (15) __________ ideas, and these
incredible potentials, stay locked up inside, and you never do anything with them.
And that is exactly what was happening to me a few years ago.

It was the summer of 2005 and I just finished studying my first year of law at the
(16)_____________ of Birmingham. And I had completely run out of money.
And I was like. “What am I going to do!” And so I started to look around for jobs,
and I was looking around and found (17) _____________ nothing appealing. So
I was looking around for more opportunities, and eventually found this
opportunity.

It was to start my very own (18) ____________ unlocking business, which

basically meant that if you had a mobile phone, and it was locked to a certain
network, and say you wanted to go travelling to Australia, and use an Australian
SIM card, then you could come to the (20) ____________ and unlock your
phone. There was just a few massive problems with this.

First off, I didn’t really know much about mobile phones, beyond the fact that made
calls and sent texts, let alone mobile phone (21) ___________, and I had no idea
how to build an online business. But the only other opportunity was
[indiscernible], start my own business, so obviously went with the idea of starting
my own business, and found it way more (22) _____________:

So I got started and I realized really quickly that when you don’t have a clue what to
do, the only thing you can do is ask for help, and that is what I did.
So, I asked for help and within a few short weeks I put together probably the world
worst website. And I discovered (23) __________ Add words as the way to drive
traffic to the website. And with the credit card, and a spending limit 30 pounds a
day, my business was officially up and running.

Then over the next (24) ___________ of years, when I was studying my law
degree, I was learning how to build this business. I was reading books, I was
listening to audio programs and in my final year, I went to night school to learn
more about web (25) ____________. I graduated in 2007 with an amazing
degree and a business that was flying. And I decided that being an entrepreneur
was going to be way more fun than being a lawyer.