Transcriber: Cynthia Ortega Reviewer: Denise RQ
Let me tell you a little bit about myself.
I was raised in the suburbs of England.
I spent my childhood raised by my aunt and uncle,
and as a teenager, I spent my years in boarding school.
And when I was 17, I defeated the Dark Lord.
I am Harry Potter.
(Laughter)
Or at least, I was Harry Potter.
See,
I had a dream,
a stupid dream, but I had a dream.
And the best thing that my parents ever did for me was to let me live a lie.
See, in kindergarten, no one told me that I wasn't Harry Potter.
My parents didn't tell me,
my teachers didn't tell me,
my classmates didn't know whether or not I actually was Harry Potter
so they just let me do it.
A stupid dream.
It wasn't until high school that I realized how profound that dream was.
Because it was in schooling that I had my first cup of coffee.
And I couldn't believe that 12 ounces of beverage
could give me the same motivation, confidence, and positive energy
that I had when I was eight.
It'd been ten years, but I was Harry Potter again.
I believed and I had the drive to do anything again.
I'm not here to talk about coffee, I'm not pitching coffee.
I'm not pitching a legal drug; it is a legal drug.
(Laughter)
There is so much more to coffee than just a beverage.
Coffee is the results of caffeine,
that I attribute to being the attributes that lead to success.
Coffee makes you confident.
It gives you a deep sense of confidence.
It gives you the motivation to do anything whether you should be doing it or not.
It gives you a sense of positive energy,
And that's why I'm here to say,
just as a young Harry McOsker once believed,
"With enough coffee, anyone can change the world."
A lot of people would have you believe that talent equals success.
That is not true.
Talent makes success easier, yes,
but it lacks the backbone
that is motivation, confidence, and positive energy.
What behavioral science,
what behavioral psychologists
at the University of North Carolina are finding
is that success is related to an idea called self-efficacy.
Coined by a Stanford psychologist,
self-efficacy is defined as one's belief in one's ability
to succeed in specific situations, or accomplish a specific task.
There are two ways to link success and coffee;
or success, motivation, and confidence.
On one hand,
you can look at success as driving confidence,
and confidence is a result of success.
If you believe that, the two are linked together,
so when success goes up, so does confidence.
And when success goes down, so does confidence.
However, there's another school of thought
in which confidence drives and creates success.
It is not dependent on success.
No matter what happens, your confidence can stay high.
It's a deep-rooted sense of self-efficacy.
Both of these are fine.
Both of these ways of thinking are fine,
if you are going to remain successful.
But, as we know, failure is inevitable;
and in the face of failure,
both different ways of thinking have very different outcomes.
Let me give you an example of the stairway to success.
Both people are midway on the stairway to success;
everything is fine.
They've succeeded, they have not failed;
everything is going swimmingly; they are halfway there.
Exit failure stage left.
Wow, where did it go?
It's gone.
(Laughter)
So now,
there's two different types of people who are responding to the situation.
There are the ones whose confidence is linked to their success;
they lose success, and then they lose confidence.
These people look at themselves and think, "How am I failing?
What is wrong with me to produce this failure?"
Those people take their eyes off their prize,
and those people continue to fail.
It's tough to get back on your feet.
However, there's the second group,
which I like to call the Coffee Drinkers.
(Laughter)
These people don't lose success,
and when they fail,
they continue to keep their confidence high,
and they look past it.
They keep looking ahead instead of down,
and they think, "What can I do to better the situation
and continue on the path that I know I'm on to success?"
Those people keep their eyes on the prize.
The good news is --
If you examine both ways,
it is obvious that the Coffee Drinkers are the ones who remain successful,
and it's those who are able to believe in themselves,
even when success tells them that they shouldn't.
It's these people who continue to succeed.
And the good news is-- I already spoiled it,
pretend that you didn't see the next slide--
(Laughter)
The good news is that the group of Coffee Drinkers--
I got to say a disclaimer, everyone's got to remember it:
coffee is a metaphor.
Got to put that there.
Coffee addiction is cool, don't get me wrong.
Metaphor --
it's the Coffee Drinkers that are the ones to continue to succeed.
And the good news is Coffee Drinkers are growing in size.
In fact, they are multiplying, exponentially.
They're a group which we all know as Millennials.
Raise your hand if you were born between 1980 and 2000.
We are among the most criticized generation in human history.
Generation Y.
We are criticized with being entitled,
with being selfish, and with being lazy.
In fact, there's a lot of negative things being said about us.
For better or for worse, we've been drinking too much coffee.
(Laughter)
Millennials want everything.
They want their time off.
They want the big bucks.
On Generation Y,
even if they fail miserably at a job, Millennials still think they are great.
(Laughter)
For better or for worse, we've had our fair share of coffee.
In fact, we've been spoon-fed espresso ever since we were born.
Let's check back in with the young Harry McOsker.
One year later, he broke the glasses--
still tragic--
he broke the glasses, he lost his wand, and he hung up the cape.
But it's OK.
Because now, he was going to be a baseball star.
However, physics told him that is just not the case.
(Laughter)
He was afraid of the ball, and he never swung.
He had no arm, and he was absolutely horrible.
(Laughter)
But at the end of the year,
you better believe that he got the same size trophy
as the kid who was going go on to play for the Dodgers.
And that right there, is why Millennials are so criticized:
participation trophies.
(Laughter)
We weren't rewarded for succeeding,
we were awarded for trying, for participating.
We were given a pat on the back, even if we shouldn't have.
But here is the thing: we were given the confidence,
and we were given motivation, and we were told,
''Hey, Mac, you're a great baseball player.''
And so we kept going, and we kept succeeding,
and the stats are in favor of Millennials.
Millennials are, on track, to becoming the most educated generation of all time.
Millennials vote
at a rate higher than any other American generation at our age.
Millennials are changing the way we communicate in a nation.
(Laughter)
Changing the way an entire nation communicates and sees the world:
Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, what have you.
Millennials are the first generation to collectively agree
that the LGBT community deserves the same rights as everyone else.
Millennials are absolutely killing it.
And it's this:
it's the sense of confidence, of motivation, positive energy, coffee,
that allowed Millennials to, somehow,
push a goofy, senior citizen socialist into the presidential campaign.
I must say Millennials though--
(Laughter)
Hang on, I'm going to lose half the crowd on this one;
You guys are excited for Kanye and, well, just let me talk, OK? --
Millennials are wrong about one thing.
Oh my God! Kanye West.
(Laughter)
Millennials are wrong about Kanye West.
Millennials see Kanye West as an enlightened muse.
And a lot of Millennials see him as the artist of our generation.
"Oh, he is a genius,"
"Oh, he is inspired, he is a god among men."
We're shown time and time again that he is not a genius.
(Laughter)
[I couldn't be skinny and tall
[but I'll settle for being the greatest artist of all time.]
[I wish I had a friend like me.]
However,
Kanye loves Kanye.
And Kanye believes in Kanye.
Kanye believes in Kanye so much that he compares himself to Jesus Christ.
Who does that?
But I'm not here to rip on Kanye.
In fact, I'm here to praise Kanye.
Because Kanye spent three summers of his life
locked in his room, cracking up five beats a day
until he had what he believed would be an incredible album,
The College Dropout;
it won Grammy's, it was incredible.
Kanye West believed that he was the best artist of all time.
And he put in so much effort to assure that he was going to get there.
Millennials love Kanye
because Kanye reflects the Millennial mentality.
Kanye reflects the idea of, "I believe in myself,
and because I believe in myself,
and I have this confidence, and I have this motivation,
I'm going to go out, and I'm going to succeed."
So what I'm here to tell you
is that I don't care if you want to be Harry Potter,
if you want to be a professional baseball player,
if you want to be a socialist,
or if you want to compare yourself to Jesus Christ.
I'm here to tell you that with enough coffee,
anyone can change the world.
Thank you.
(Applause)