[Female narrator #1] Everywhere you turn, people try to tell you who to be and what to do, but what about deciding for yourself?

RoadTrip Nation is a movement that empowers people to define their own roads in life.

Every summer we bring together three people from different backgrounds.

Together they explore the country interviewing inspiring individuals from all walks of life.

They hit the road in search of wisdom and guidance to find what it actually takes to build a life around doing what you love.

This is what they found, this is Roadtrip Nation.

[Martha] God this is a cool city, pretty much the best two days of my life.

[Ben] It's gone from the transition of how many weeks are you into your trip, to how many days do you have left.

[Martha] We are closing in on a week left in the trip [Sofaya] It's not forever and that's weird to me because I've gotten into this habit.

[Ben] So in Chicago we went to the Museum of Science and Industry.

We got to meet Olivia Costellini.

She is, well we'll start with what she isn't, because I think this lady is everything.

[Sofaya] She has a PHD in physics, [Ben] she is a triathlete, [Sofaya] a concert violinist, [Ben] a model, [Sofaya] oh and she's like a double degree blackbelt.

That's five amazing things.

[Ben] Her job is to design awesome museum exhibits.

[Sofaya] Her biggest work is called science storm.

So it's all just kind of storm, water, earth related.

They have a giant like Tesla coil, there's a giant wave tank, there's a giant vortex in there.

[Martha] I definitely was a dabbler in college.

There was me, and all different kind of spokes of different ways I can go.

There's definitely a lot of anxiety that comes with that too because I almost feel like I have to make a choice between those tracks.

So I've done a couple of things I've worked for an arts advocacy non-profit, I tried archiving stuff with music history stuff and everything is so interesting to me that I don't quite know where I fit in or focus.

I feel like I discover something new everyday and I'm like "oh!

that's so incredible, that's amazing" and then I'm just like well now I know less about what I actually spent my life doing.

Yeah that's kind of where I'm coming from.

[Olivia] Ok Cool, I can empathize with that, like I'm so excited to meet you three!

[Ben] We're excited to meet you.

[Olivia] I think there's a real commonality and sort of knowing, telling you my version of the backstory.

Like I started out, I've played violin my whole life since I was five.

So my entire life there's been this creative side, there's been this science and math side you know, I went to the math camps because I'm a nerd, but then I also when to interlock and arts camp and I did all of that and you know in junior high I actually spent three years at a performing arts school so I ended up going to Depaul University and I double majored in physics and music.

So I get to the end of college and still in music and a physics major and like ok, so what do you want to be when you grow up?

and there's that big scary decision.

I still love and am passionate about music I still love doing research and being a scientist, I can't choose.

[Martha] Yeah [Olivia] So when you get to the end of the whole process you're like there's door one, door two, I want to create door three and walk through that one and everyone is like 'blughhhhh,' If you really had to boil down the work I do it's really about translating science and brainstorming ways that we can present that to the public.

So let them tap into the excitement of the science that's happening out there in the world.

[Announcer] You're a scientist you're a scientist, come over here to the center and tell me what you experience what are you feeling.

[Olivia] And that challenge is totally right up my alley and it was the first thing I've seen that combined the creative side with the science nerdy side.

[Martha] I'm really intrigued by the whole idea of museum design because it is so interdisciplinary.

It's so much story telling and it's making stuff and it's spacial design and it's research and making knowledge accessible and interesting to other people.

It's so big picture in a way that I think my brain has always worked anyways.

I'm curious to know about what you think about just decision making generally.

Avoid it if at all possible!

[Martha] It's just something I know I struggle with I know we all kind of do in our own way.

I think trusting your instinct can be the hardest part of decision making especially when the people around you are like why aren't you following a standard path?

And something in you is ike nope I'm going to do it anyway.

You know, that's a really hard spot to be in.

[Ben] What kept you focused in that moment and what drives you to still seek that thing that's not even there, that you know.

My reaction a lot of times when it's like well you can't do that, it's like yes I can, and then it's just that inner voice of just sort of knowing inherently what I'm passionate about even if I can't articulate that to myself, I mean I know if I care about something or not.

We've talked to a lot of people that say, you know you have the answer inside you but then it's like trusting that to take the step in the next direction.

[Martha] Or even that answer could change, I mean you thought if you wanted to be a physicist but then it all kind [Olivia] Well that's the thing too, it's like there's a right answer at the moment but that isn't the right answer forever.

You are not deciding what to be for the rest of your life and you can't do anything else ever again but it feels that way like this is the last time you get to make that decision.

You just have to decide what's next.

[Ben] It's not a one and you're done decision anymore, the numbers are starting to look more like fourteen to seventeen different careers over the course of your lifetime rather than one or two.

Kind of puts it into perspective for you, it's not well pick one and that's it's try one.

Every passing day brings me closer to like, what's the next step.

It brings me closer to what's at the end of this road trip which is just nothingness right now, I don't know what's at the end of this road trip.

I'm running out of time of thinking about that next step.

We're going to New York which is the last city.

[Ben] The big apple.

It's so weird to ugh, I don't even have words for that feeling.

We don't have to talk about the end of the trip, but when you take it all into consideration, it's prettyclose.

After being all around the country to go back to somewhere that's three and half hours from my house is like woah, I'm kind of close to done here.

Oh feel that ocean breeze baby!

New York, look at her!

[Wind blowing] [Ben] Woohoo!

Later Jersey!

[Sofaya] We drove into New York and we were like so nervous going into it, I'm like oh my god we're going to have to drive through Manhattan, this is going to be crazy.

That was a very unnerving experience.

[Ben] It was a team effort, like all hands on deck trying to sail that ship around the tight little streets on the upper west side.

[Sofaya] Right here?

[Ben] Take this spot, no?

[Martha] Is this a spot?

[Ben] We had no idea where we were going to park and surprisingly we were able to land some parking in like twenty minutes, which was incredible because it could have easily been a few hours had we not seen that spot.

[Martha] Is this going to work?

[Ben] I mean a little bit this way.

[Martha] I can't tell if my wheels are straight.

[Ben] That's good!

[Martha] Are we good?

[Ben] Yeah.

New York's a big change up for us.

It's the first time where we really had to utilize public transportation to get around.

Any business in Manhattan, they're not going to have a place for a thirty-eight foot RV to park.

We had just adopted the New York City lifestyle for a bit.

We went to Quirky.

This dude had one heck of a crazy life story for a twenty seven year old and he's the CEO of a multi million dollar company.

[Ben K] I've had a singular mission for nine years and while many people think it's been fast or easy or whatever it might be, I can tell you about nothing that you see here came just because of confidence or anything like that.

Confidence played a part in it but I've just never stopped and as **** gets thrown at you as it always will, you just got to keep rolling, see what happens.

[Martha] If you want to start with maybe where you were at our point in life or even earlier growing up and kind of your story.

[Ben K] Sure.

Well I was a bad student, really really bad.

Probably as bad as you can get.

My high school grade point average was one point seven, which was a D minus in case you were trying to do the math.

And yeah, that explains how this all got started, I was literally in the back of math class trying to figure out a way to listen to my iPod without my teacher realizing I wasn't listening to her and I sort of had this idea for a product that would conceal the wires for my headphones.

[Sofaya] What was the product?

[Ben K] It was the lanyard headphones.

You know the lanyard key chains?

So the only distance the headphone needed to clear was here to here because the iPod would sit where the keys would sit.

So I went home, and I prototyped the product with ribbon and gift wrap that's all I could find.

And I thought it was a great Idea, I thought the only thing standing in the way the great idea was a little bit of money.

So I convinced my parents to remortgage their house.

They remortgaged the house, I flew to China before my high school graduation and I started building this product.

[Sofaya] You convinced your parents to remortgage their house so you could have the capitol to get the project off the ground.

[Ben K] Correct.

[Sofaya] What did that conversation look like?

I never explicitly asked my parents to remortgage their house.

I said I'm doing this, I'm going to make this product and I think my parents knew that if they didn't put up the money, I was going to go out and like find money.

And I think they were more afraid of who I was going to find the money from.

[Group laughs] And who, I was going to hit up all my parent's friends.

So I think they were just like alright, well there's just no stopping him, so we might as well look in and see if we can help him.

But I slogged it out and got the product out, started the first company based off that product.

First company is called Mophie, It was named after my two dogs Molly and Sophie.

Mophie is known today for the iPhone cases with the built in battery inside.

[Martha] So you said you hated school, terrible at school.

What do you think were the biggest things you've learned from starting your own company, that you couldn't have learned in school.

Or that what was different about it?

I mean doing things, I don't think you learn how to do things in school.

Yeah I would like school if it was doing something.

The thing I always just didn't like was, I'll give you an example, the night I dropped out of college.

So I was already into Mophie right, because I started Mophie in high school and I was sitting in a class called international business and my phone rang and it was my factory in China, so I'm like dude I've got to take this call, this is some international business right here and the professor was like no no no you can't take a call in the middle of the class, you have to take the class.

And I was like alright, this is it this is the perfect metaphor for what is wrong.

He doesn't want me to do it, he wants me to talk about it, and I'm not getting that kind of dude.

And I never went back to class.

That was it, but yeah it all started with that simple idea and my whole path changed about a few months into Mophie where I was riding the subway in New York and I saw someone wearing that product I designed in high school and it was the best feeling in the world.

it was oh my god I made that, you know that came out of my face, without me that wouldn't have been real but at the same time I wasn't unique in the fact that I had a good idea.

I was kind of unique that I was sort of lucky, I had crazy parents, I didn't have anything to do.

I went to China, I dicked around.

That's why that product exists, that's why that person is wearing that.

These things didn't add up for me, right.

It feels great to make a product but too few people can do it so that means the best ideas in the world aren't actually in the world, they're locked in people's heads.

So this was the beginning.

And so we started Quirky with a three word mission statement, Make Invention Accessible.

Quirky is simple or complicated depending on the way you look at it.

The simple way is people come to our website, they submit their idea.

Ideas come in from the world and then every Thursday night this turns into our product evaluation space.

Our local community sits out here, product development experts sit at the panel.

Screen comes down, lights go on.

There's ten robotic cameras in the ceiling, and we broadcast live the debate about what the good idea is.

If their idea is good, we make it and then from there we do everything from industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, research, testing, manufacturing, logistics, distribution, marketing, all these different things that are barriers to the great ideas.

We sort of absorb that so that the only thing creative people need to do is be creative and we do the rest.

Started really small, it was three of us, making one product a week.

Now we're three hundred people around the world making three products a week.

[Dr. Garthen Leslie] The manufacturing process is often a mystery to a lot of people.

They see an idea, and they see some graphics, pictures, but the don't know what's behind that.

[Ben K] This is it, the first few Aros to come off the line.

It's been an amazing few days watching Garthen Leslie's idea go from just a submission to a website to a fully fledged product.

[Martha] How do you define success?

For yourself or for the company?

Maybe they're the same.

Maybe they're different.

[Ben K] I think it's just to find something you truly believe in.

You know if you believe something is right and you go convince the people around you that you know, I believe in this and one way or another I'm going to find a way to do it.

Wonderful things happen.

Who knows if this thing will be successful.

I don't know, and frankly I don't care.

Because I know it's right.

It feels right to me.

[Ben] I mean you took a very like, you took your own route you defined your own road.

What advice would you give people like us in this stage?

[Ben K] Probably just to define your own road.

[Ben] I know right right right.

Hash tag define your own road.

[Ben K] I'm going to get into trouble for this, but my advice is to always find the right amount of dick.

Am I ok?

All good?

So listen this is important ok?

This is the key to life.

This is the key to life.

So I think there's three types of people in the world.

There's people that are not enough dick, there's people that are too much dick, and there's the people that are the right amount.

Not enough, you just sort of go with the flow, you're not confident.

You sort of let people bully you around and define what your life's going to be.

If you're too much dick, everybody hates you.

You'll probably wind up to be some banker dude or something like that right, and nobody is going to want to work with you or try to make your purpose or mission come life because you're abrasive and arrogant.

In the middle there, that's when you fight for the things you truly believe in, you care about everyone around you and know when to just say ok you know you're right.

You pick your battles.

But that middle part is best served when you know what that mission is and what that purpose is.

So find the right amount of dick.

[Ben] Alright.

[Ben K] There you go.

Censor that.

[Group laughs] [Sofaya] Pretty interesting, I mean like yeah that's pretty solid advice.

[Martha] We met him, we met his face.

That guy's face was talking to our faces.

Yeah it was definitely quite an encounter and well I don't think I need to swear anymore I think he swore enough.

But you know I think his mentality about how assertive you are in what you do is definitely something I've been realizing in the past couple of years working on a lot because I think I have a tendency to be too little in the arrange for standing up for what you believe in, I think I just like am sensitive to other people's feelings, kind of just want everything to be fine to avoid conflict, just like ok, like, you know I think remembering that people respect you more if you stand up for what you believe in, it's like a really cool reminder to yourself.

You can still be a totally like personable sensitive human and also have things you're committed to.

So that's definitely I think going to stay on my mind.

[Sofaya] He said find the right amount for yourself to be, which is something I struggle myself a little bit sometimes.

Sometimes I'm a little too abrasive.

So he said that like you don't want to come across as arrogant because then no one wants to work with you.

Not because that makes you a terrible person but because that's not like conducive to like advancing whatever it is you want to do.

And you need people to work with you if you want your business to advance and then again you don't want people to walk all over you and so you just have to find the right middle ground.

Think it's something that's definetly going to be in the back of my mind for a while.

[Martha] That was such a day.

Such a (sighs).

You know I feel like human brains kind of, you do what you know in some way and as imaginative as we'd like to think we are, I think it's hard to totally create something without seeing that someone's done it before.

I think that seeing someone doing something incredibly inspiring and living a life that you want to try and find a way to emulate in some way is like hard to define but I don't think we could put a value on that, I think it's much more than that.

[Ben] Today is helicopter day.

We are going to get to experience the city from a helicopter.

It's like an elevator.

[Martha] Oh yeah!

just like an elevator, oh my we just went straight up like two hundred feet.

[Ben] That's incredible.

[Martha] We talk about this trip being all about perspective.

That was a very cool like literal perspective.

[Heli Tour guide] The tallest building in the US now is the Freedom Tower.

[Ben] Whoa look at her.

[Heli Tour guide] And it is one thousand seven hundred seventy six feet.

[Music] [Ben] So here we are flying over one of the greatest cities in the world.

Just the immense amount of unknown that's out there.

I keep going back to the unknown but I feel like this summer has been an accomplishment in starting to crack into that.

Looking out at New York City, you feel that sense of opportunity in whatever next step you take in life and this whole summer has been such an amazing experience but it's going to end soon.

[Ben] Today is the last day of the trip, it doesn't feel like the last day of the trip.

We're about to interview Tina Roth Eisenberg.

[Martha] And Gary Hustwit, documentary filmmaker.

[Tina Roth] I was always waiting for that you know perfect moment, angelic choir coming down saying Tina you should start your own business now and that never comes.

[Gary] I really wanted to make a film of my own.

I hadn't directed a film at that point.

That was the first time I picked up a camera.

[Martha] I could keep doing this for another couple of months.

[Music] [Female narrator #4] Roadtrip Nation extends beyond the program you just watched.

Online, you'll find an extensive archive with even more stories from the road Here's a quick snapshot of another interview from this road trip.

[Leader #1] For me I think, the guiding light was that I just knew I loved drawing.

It didn't matter that I didn't think I was that great.

But just that I could keep seeing improvement, that was enough [Leader #2] I always thought that computer animation was sort of this untouchable, very sophisticated you have to be a coder.

And you know think in a scientific way.

And I had no idea that it was actually something that sort of non-computer nerds can learn [Leader #1] Akira and I are in the design department at Framestore.

We spend a lot of time trying to come up with ways to make those broad concepts work or exist, or what just makes it look good, asthetically.

[Leader #2] You never know what the next project is gonna be, what your role is gonna be, what sort of style its gonna be in.

It's a lot of fun.

I get to animate, do 3D stuff, rendering, a little drawing [Leader #1] I've been really lucky with some projects that somehow made use of my love for drawing.

It was just pretty much a playground for fun things to experiment with.

It's also amazing when you really struggle with something as well, and you're able to come up with a solution.

That's also when it's the most rewarding.

but knowing that it's never gonna feel super easy.

That always helps me go.

And then usually when im in that zone, it's a lot easier to start and keep going.

[Narrator #4] No matter what you do, [Narrator #5] or where you come from, [Narrator #6] You've got wisdom to pass down.

[Narrator #7] Help young people find their way by sharing the lessons you've learned.

Take fifteen minutes to tell us what you love to do.

[Narrator #5] The door's open, [Narrator #6] we're all ears.

[Narrator #4] Become a leader at ShareYourRoad.com