This TED Talk features entrepreneur Letitia Gaska, recorded live at TED Salon Intersections 2018.

If we traveled back to the year 800th BC, in Greece, we would see that merchants whose business failed were forced to sit in the marketplace with a basket over

their heads. In pre-modern Italy, failed business owners who had outstanding deaths were taken

totally naked to the public square, where they had to bank their butts against the special

stone while a crowd jeered at them.

In the 17th century in France, failed business owners were taken to the center of the market,

where the beginning of their bankruptcy was publicly announced. And in order to avoid immediate

imprisonment, they have to wear a green bonnet so that everyone

knew they were a failure. Of course, these are extreme examples, but it is important to remember

that when we excessively punish those who fail, we stifle innovation and business creation, the engines of

economic growth in any country. Time has passed, and today we don't publicly humiliate failed

entrepreneurs, and they don't broadcast their failures on social media. In fact, I think that all of us can relate with the pain of failure,

but we don't share the details of those experiences.

And I totally get it, my friends.

I have also been there.

I had a business that failed,

and sharing that story was incredibly hard.

In fact, it required seven years, a good dose of vulnerability, and the company of my friends.

This is my failure story.

When I was in college studying business, I met a group of indigenous women.

They lived in a poor rural community in the state of Puebla, in central Mexico.

They made beautiful handmade products, and when I met them and I saw their work,

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