Why 7PM-1AM Is The Most Important Time of Your Life: Carlo Ople (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of tech blogger Carlo Ople’s talk titled “Why 7PM-1AM Is The Most Important Time of Your Life” at TEDxCollegeofSaintBenilde 2017 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Misjudged Generation

This generation has been misjudged by a lot of people, and it’s sad. This generation is a generation of dreamers. It’s a generation of people who aspire and believe for bigger things. And the data actually bears it out.

Six out of ten millennials here in the Philippines aspire for leadership positions compared to four out of ten in developed markets. So Filipinos want to become leaders more than people in the U.S., more than people in the EU. So that’s an amazing thing. So Filipinos are born to be leaders, Filipinos are nurtured to be leaders, Filipinos are nurtured to be great.

More than that, Filipinos, millennials specifically, also want to become entrepreneurs. In fact, it’s double the number of people compared to other markets. So us, we want to become entrepreneurs. We want to be in control of what we do.

We want to be in control of what it is that we want to do in business or in our careers in life. So it’s bigger compared to other developed markets. So this generation really is a generation of dreamers and people who want to be big, who want to become good. And it’s not something that’s actually bad, because if you consider the world that we’re born into today, optimism and the audacity to dream is something that we actually have.

Following Your Dreams

It’s the only thing we have left. If you take a look at salaries and opportunities that are there, those are the things that we have left, and those are the things that we need to be able to hold on to.

Now the funny thing is, people always tell you to follow your dreams. People always tell you that you have to travel, that you have to experience the world.

They make it sound so noble, they make it sound so easy, but they never tell you how. You see it on your Facebook feeds almost every day. You see it on Twitter almost every day, but they never tell you how. That is the point of this short talk this morning.

It’s my goal to be able to at least share to you, or at least to give you tips on how my journey played out. There’s no one sure formula for all of you. We all have unique lives, we’re all brought up a different way. The best thing I can do today, this morning, is to tell you my story and how it worked out.

And hopefully you guys pick up something from it, and you are able to make something out of yourselves as you grow older. Here’s one big point that I’d like to stress this morning. There is no excuse to not make a living doing what you love. In today’s age, where the internet is so big, and there are so many things you can do, where the walls of commerce, the walls of business have been broken down, there is absolutely no reason for you to not make money doing what you love.

In the U.S., there’s a big thing called side hustling. A lot of millennials are actually doing a lot of freelance work while they’re in college, or while they’re doing their 8-to-5s. It’s called side hustling. Dito, ang tawad natin doon, racket.

And I’m sure, being CSB, and knowing the courses that you guys have here, marami sa inyong lalaki na maraming racket. That’s a good thing, believe me. I was a consultant myself for the longest time. So there is no excuse for you not to make a living doing what you love.

Just take a look at Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. There are a lot of businesses offering products, services, and goods on those three platforms. The question is, how do you do it? How are you able to get from point A to point B?

The Reality of 8-to-5 Jobs

Now here’s the reality. A lot of you will have to take an 8-to-5. What’s an 8-to-5? It’s a day job. It’s the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. It sucks, unless it’s something that you’re actually passionate about. And not everybody is blessed to have an 8-to-5 that they’re passionate about.

Now for the majority of you who will have that 8-to-5, that doesn’t match your passion, the next three points are for you. First major point, you have to stop consuming and you have to start creating. What does this mean? A lot of people today, not just millennials, but even the older generation, wala na silang ginawa pag dating sa bahay kung di mag Facebook, kung di mag YouTube, kung di mag Snapchat, kung di manood ng Game of Thrones pa ulit-ulit.

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Can I just say, Lady Mormont was the bomb? To those who are watching, damn, sorry, she was so cool, but anyway, stop consuming, start creating. Screw work-life balance if it means you going home early just to watch reruns of Game of Thrones. Screw work-life balance if it means you just going home early just to watch countless hours of YouTube.

Publishers and Advertisers

Screw work-life balance if all it means is you going home to do Facebook, Twitter, and read senseless articles that don’t actually contribute to the meaning of life or to capacity that you have as a professional, as an entrepreneur. Stop consuming, start creating. Here’s one secret, I work in advertising that you probably guys don’t know, and I work also in publishing. Publishers and advertisers have broken you guys down into a science.

They know up to what minute it is that you watch a movie. They know how many seconds before you fade away. They know what are the main points in a narrative that makes you excited. They even know how to make the first five seconds of a YouTube unskippable ad irresistible for you so that you don’t skip.

They have the data, na big brother na kayo. They know everything that you like, that you dislike, and they tailor all the content, everything that they do, so that it sucks you in. You feel like you’re enjoying, yes you’re enjoying, but the truth of the matter is, you are spending actually the most important time, and I’ll get to this in a bit, of your life stage doing nothing. You’re just consuming and consuming, you’re not creating.

The key to success is to be able to figure out how to create and not to consume. Consume less, create more. Again, screw work-life balance if it means going home early just to watch YouTube and download a TV series. So that’s the first point.

The 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. Principle

Now, it leads me to my second point. It’s called the 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. principle.

8 to 5 p.m., you build your careers. When I say that, that’s the time you go to work, you go to office, you do whatever it is that you’re doing that you’re probably not passionate about. Maraming taong ganyan yung mga nasa, nababasan nyo ba, parang aliti no, sana nabasan nyo. Maraming taong mga ganyan, our friends who work in the BPO center, call centers, and a lot of other types of work, and even in advertising.

Not a lot of people in advertising actually want to be in advertising. It just so happens that they’re there. And believe me, you will encounter, a lot of you will probably get into jobs that you don’t probably like. So what is the 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. principle? 8 to 5, you build your career. 7 to 1, you build your dreams.

The 7 to 1 slot of your life is the most important time for your life stage. You know why? Because energy, time, and health diminishes over time. What do I mean?

Habang bata pa kayo, may oras pa kayo. Habang bata pa kayo, pwede pa kayo magpuyat, at di nyo mararamdaman the next day. Do you know that energy that you guys have right now, that you can still not sleep for a day and go to school the next day? Hindi na namin kaya yun.

Make the Most of Your Time

Once you reach a certain age, you want to go home and sleep. So while you still can, while you still have the energy, while you still have the health and the time, do it. When you guys get married, it’s one of the most beautiful things that will happen to your life. But you have a wife.

My wife is here, by the way, so I’m so happy to have married her. But you will have different priorities. You will no longer be able to spend that time building whatever it is that you want to build because your family now comes first. So make the most out of your 7 to 1 a.m.

Lagi na lang sinasabi ng mga tao, busy sila, wala silang oras, na wala silang pwedeng gawin. But the fact of the matter is that time is the most important time of your life. I’ll tell you a quick story. It was mentioned earlier in the intro that I founded Unboxed, which is a technology site.

Now Unboxed is one of the top tech sites now in the country. It gets over 2 million, 1.5 to 2 million unique views every month. We have a lot of solid partnerships and advertisers. And the content that we generate is pretty good.

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The Story of Unboxed

How and when did it start? It started around five years ago while I was still having an 8 to 5. How was I able to put it up during 7 to 1? I would write three to four articles by myself every day.

I would do reviews by myself. I would shoot videos, look like an idiot, take a camera and do like that, you know, vlogging and stuff like that. I would go to events. I would meet with advertisers.

I would meet with partners all during the 7 to 1. And there are a lot more stories of people who were able to do that. Now what was the result of doing that for five years? Pretty amazing.

I was able to really travel the world, go to events that I only dreamed of, and through the Filipino style and fashion, I was able to go to Google I.O. at the Google campus in Mountain View, and I was able to take a selfie with the CEO of Google. That’s Sundar Pichai. I literally bum-rushed him and say, “Sir, selfie.”

He was like, “Okay.” I think he was afraid because I was a big guy. So imagine him walking and there’s a big guy, “Sir. Selfie.”

Very Filipino. I was also able to go to other places because of my Unbox gig, my Unbox tip. I find so much fulfillment doing Unbox, actually more than everything else. And it’s a side project.

It’s a side hustle. It’s a passion project. The road less traveled is really to pursue what you want to do. But the road less traveled is the hardest path to take.

Follow Your Passion

When people say follow your dreams, follow your passions, it actually means work harder, work smarter, give more of yourself, give more of your time, and don’t think for a second that the world owes you anything. That’s what it means to follow your passion. You are not supposed to follow or listen to your heart. You’re supposed to lead it.

It’s an active thing. It’s not something that just falls magically on your lap and then you become successful overnight. It takes a lot of hard work. The third point I’d like to stress is called resilience and grit.

And this is, I think, a very important topic that I’d like to stress on this morning. What does resilience and grit mean? A lot of the older generations call us, millennials, not us enough, call us millennials weak-willed, mahina, mabilis mag-give up, entitled. This is the answer, resilience and grit.

It’s being able to withstand trials, it’s being able to withstand challenges, and to keep powering on. Here’s the thing, you guys will fail miserably as I have failed, as our fathers and grandfathers have failed. Failure is the one constant in life. You will not be successful all the time.

And you probably heard it a thousand times, what matters is really how you get up. But I’ll add one more thing. The secret to getting back up all the time, the secret to resilience, the secret to grit, is humility. It’s knowing and accepting the fact that you aren’t that good yet.

Humility and Resilience

It’s knowing and accepting the fact that you’re not a child of God, that everything is fine, you know, you’re still a child of God, by the way, but you know what I mean, right? We’re not blessed with all the talents in the world, and there are things that you need to learn, that we need to learn. The secret to resilience is humility. Be humble.

Accept the fact that you need to learn a lot of things. And that’s the only time you guys will really truly soar. And I’d like to tell you one more story. This is a popular hashtag in the streets called agency life, or hashtag buhayahensya.

For those of you who want to dare to get into the world of advertising, let me give you a warning. It is really, really crazy, and it’ll eat up your time like there’s no tomorrow. So kaya siya, buhayahensya, or agency life. I wasn’t an agency person.

I started my career in media. I was in level-up games, to those of you who are familiar with Dragnarok, the game that sucked up all your allowances and made your parents angry. So that was actually one of my jobs. Then I moved on to Friendster, to those who are still familiar with Friendster, testimonials and stuff like that.

Oh, diba, patesti naman. And then eventually to TV5, and finally to agency life. My first agency that I joined, I was already the boss, because there were only a few people doing digital. So there were only a few senior people in digital, so they asked me to take the lead.

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Learning from Mistakes

Now, my problem was I had zero agency experience. Digital was familiar, it was second nature, but experience running an agency, not so much. I made a lot of mistakes. We lost a few clients.

Not a few, we lost a lot of clients. We lost money, we lost people. But if there was one thing that really kept me going, it was knowing the fact and accepting the fact that I wasn’t there yet, that I wasn’t the best, but I wanted to be. So I spent seven to one, again, of my time learning, becoming better, reading, getting mentors, talking to the CEO, talking to the Chief Creative Officer, talking to the ECDs to know the business inside and out.

What was the result? On our first year, we were the Philippine Digital Agency of the Year. On our second year, we were the Silver Digital Agency of the Year by Campaign Brief Asia for Asia, for the Philippines. And then on our third year, we sold the agency to Dentsu, which is one of the biggest global agencies, one-brand agencies in the world.

So it really pays to be humble. When they said in the Bible that “the humble will be exalted,” that’s not a joke, because it’s really rooted on something. It’s rooted on a desire to be better. It’s rooted on a desire that you can always become a better version of yourself.

And that’s what I think really is the secret to resilience. Now, allow me to end this talk with a few lines that I really wanted to share with you guys this morning. And this is something that I wanted really to get through to you, lalo na kayo na who are still in school and who are still millennials. People call you or call us weak-willed.

People call us entitled. People call us weak. People call us soft. We’re not.

World Changers

We’re dreamers. We’re people who have big goals. The big challenge is, again, getting from point A to point B. You are, we are, world changers.

You are leaders. You are meant for greatness. You guys will captain industries. You guys eventually, some of you, you never know, the guy beside you might be the next president.

Parang kinabahan kayo, no? You never know. This generation is meant for greatness. And I don’t want you to think otherwise.

You are great. You are leaders. And don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Now, to end, I just want to share with you one last story.

Making a Difference

There was a time, a few, actually around 10 years ago. I told you I was an addict playing games, Ragnarok. So I was in an internet cafe, and then there were robbers who came in. And to make a long story short, I got shot.

Three times on the side. So I was rushed to the hospital. You’d think that the gunshot would be bad. I was rushed to hospital.

Then they go over public hospital, and they operated on me without anesthesia. That was the bad part. So imagine them cutting you open and then putting a tube on your lungs to drain the blood. And then eventually I moved to a private hospital, and then the doctor said, “Who was the doctor who worked on your left lung?”

“Doc, why?” “Because the fluids are on your right.” So they had to redo the operation, but this time with anesthesia. So I know the difference. And I can tell you, it works. So what’s my point? We all have one lives to live. And that was the biggest realization I had back then.

You only have one life. One life. YOLO, friends, is not to get wasted in some country and hook up with whoever. YOLO is not going to Cambodia, whatever, going on Tinder, hooking up with a foreigner, and that’s it. That’s not YOLO. That’s dangerous. Right? What’s the difference?

YOLO is making a difference. YOLO is making an impact. YOLO is realizing how great you are and becoming what God intended you to be, leaders. In that, at the end, there’s one thing I want to end you with. It’s with these two words. Own it. Own it. Thank you very much for your time this morning.