TALK S HIGHLIGHTS
[00:06:35] You take a step out, right when the door opens
[00:08:53] I am from Oklahoma, a little town called Weatherford
[00:12:25] I got a GED, a 'Good Enough' diploma, or
in Oklahoma, a 'Git 'er done."
[00:14:15] with losers, you're
hanging out with people who are pulling you down.
[00:15;15] two of them succeeded, the other thirty-eight I call
business therapy
[00:15:53] The First thing is MINDSET
[00:16:42] Seventy percent of the time, it's the mindset thing
[00:18:20] You've got to get in there and go for it.
[00:18:58] I was pretty good at math, so I'm playing a little game here at
Harvard.
[00:20:17] Well, courage only equals seventy (70%) percent.
[00:20:35] HARDWORK only
98%
[00:20:45] Knowledge is
not quiet there either . . . only 96%
[00:21:40] What makes a hundred (100%) percent is attitude
[00:22:00] Discipline equals a hundred (100%) percent
[00:22:32] You can do it, because it takes discipline . . . from there, the
attitude happens.
[00:23:50] You can overcome fear by discovering your success.
[00:23:56] The second 'M' is MECHANICS
[00:25:21] Operating procedures. Think about synergy and masterminds.
[00:25:40] Teamwork and intelligence wins games
[00:27:15] The last 'M' is MONEY
[00:28:50] I have a little bucket list I've made. One of them was to speak
at Harvard
[00:29:35] "My worst day is somebody else's paradise."
All right. So, I'm conflicted here. I need your help. I normally put
together a little presentation and I talk about the Three M's of success. I'm
going to do that, but I've been absorbing how everyone's presentations are
going so far. I have kind of two presentations, so I need your help. First
presentation, I've done a thousand times. You'll get some nuggets from it and
we can go on our merry way. The second presentation, I've been back here kind
of making some changes. The second presentation, let me just be really
transparent here with you, I have never showed anybody. (audience laughter) Wait! Wait! It's border line
offensive.
Audience Member: [inaudible ]
It is dangerous, but it is a dog eat dog, real what it takes for
having success for, and the mindset of success would be an entrepreneur. I
think I already know. I have the presentation loaded right now, but if you need
me to change it, I will. Show of hands, who wants the boring presentation? Who
wants the one that's boarder line offensive? (audience
cheers) Okay! Fantastic! Here we go. Lesson one, right here in Harvard,
formal education means nothing! See you later.
Audience Member: Boo!
Yeah, right? Let me tell you something. I'm going to qualify that
statement, okay? Because lesson two is this, specialized knowledge, that means
everything, period. Everything. Period. Let me ask you a question, who is more
successful, the general practice attorney or the specialized attorney?
Audience Member: Specialized.
Who is more
successful, the specialized doctor or the general doctor?
Audience Member: Specialized.
Specialized, right? Flipped around on you that way. Specialized
knowledge means absolutely everything. You can be a master of whatever it is
you want. You can focus on that, or you can be a jack of all trades, learn a
lot about a lot of things and really not make much difference in the world. I'm
a fan of education. However, I will tell you that I have friends that went to
Fantastic Ivy League Colleges and they don't have what they would even consider
success, much less what other people would say is successful. Some of them
actually work as waiters.
It's interesting to me because you take a lot of time, money and
energy to devote and put it into learning things, the education. The challenge
is that you become usually really, really good at like, answering all the
questions for Jeopardy, (laughs) right? But when
you get out in the dog eat dog world, you know what really happens, is that
doesn't really matter. What really matters is the bigger part of coming to a
University like this, is your network. How many people agree with that?
Look at all the hands. Keep them up. All the hands in the room.
Everyone. Everyone has their hand up, and you're here at Harvard, one of the
most prestigious, incredible colleges in the country. I just sat here and border
line offended you, and no one's throwing anything at me, so I feel like I'm
okay right now. Good. Okay. There's a tomato coming? Okay. It is the truth. It
is the absolute truth. My name's Cory Boatright. I'm going to go
ahead and tell you just a few things that had success in my life, just brief on
that.
I want to
talk to you about the 3M success
formula that I think you're going to get a lot from. Just so you
know I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, CNN, NBC, a lot of companies
have interviewed me. They have talked to me about internet marketing. I've done
consulting with several Fortune 500, Fortune 100 companies. Wall Street Journal
was one of them that you heard. They interviewed with me. When I grew up, one
of my businesses grew it up in my bedroom. It took me about four years, grew it
up to four million bucks and I sold it, and that was before the age of
twenty-five. It's pretty cool.
Fast company. Did a social media influence project. Out of thirty
thousand plus applicants, I was number four, beating out, I think, Justin
Beiber and Brittney Spears. (laughter) Justin,
Brittney, love ya! I also wrote a best seller on Amazon. What was cool about it
was that it went Best Seller the first day. It's called Recession Riches. I'm
sharing just some of these things with you, because I want you to just get a
little idea of where I'm coming from.
I went and spent some time out of Oklahoma, which is where I'm from.
I'll tell you that story in just a second. That's me there in Cinque Terre,
Italy. How many of you people have been there? One person? Amazing isn't it?
Audience Member: It's nice, yeah.
It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. I went skydiving. How many
people have skydived? Yeah? Okay. You know what's interesting about skydiving?
Is that the synapses in your brain work differently now, how you think about everything.
That gives you another reason, all you 'K's' out there. You green guys, green
women, that if you're just thinking like, "Oh, it's just fearful."
No. You'll think about things in your life completely different, because you've
overcome death. Your mind is telling you, right? Your mind is telling you that
this is death.
You take a
step out, right when the door opens, you take the step out and there's no coming back. You just made this
decision that, "You know what? I potentially can die right now, and I'm
okay with it." Your mind thinks differently about everything else.
Everything else is dwarfed because you just overcame death. Interesting. I went
to the Sistine Chapel. I used to think that was called the Sixteenth, but it's
Sistine Chapel. (laughter) That's a little
Oklahoma for you. Sixteenth Chapel! So, that's Sistine Chapel. That was
amazing. Absolutely, one of the most incredible things.
There in Abbey, went and traveled there. Went to Pompeii. How many
people have been to Pompeii? World traveler over here. Neil?
Audience Member: Incredible.
Wow! To see civilization and see this technology that right around BC
times is unreal. The catacombs in London. Where the bodies were buried. You can
actually see the skulls, still. Lastly, or almost lastly here, I went over to
Indonesia. I went over to, actually, Thailand in this picture and got a chance
to walk tigers. Let me tell you, a tiger walks you. You do not walk a tiger. (laughter)
Audience Member: [I'm a Thai girl]
Hi, girl. This last one here, I think, is the most exciting for me.
How many people know where that is?
Audience Member: Hong Kong.
Hong Kong! Where? The ... Peak. The Peak. The Peak in Hong Kong. Let
me tell you why this is significant. The reason this is significant because I'm
from Oklahoma. I'm from Oklahoma and this moment right here is when I look over
the Peak in Hong Kong, where you can see the whole city, just everything right
there in front of you. It literally feels like, "Oh, My gosh! It really
happened!" I just had enough belief. I put some effort behind it, took
action, and it really happened. Right? This Oklahoma boy. It was pretty
powerful.
I am from
Oklahoma, a little town called Weatherford. About fifteen thousand people in this town. This is the hard part. I
know it's going to be the hard part. This is my dad and my mom. I told you I
haven't, I'm just being transparent with you and I need your love. So just give
it to me. My mom and dad, they got married and they had three boys. I was the
youngest of three. My first ... my brother, is Dusty. He's the oldest and he's
the athlete of the family, everything, just athletic. My other brother Brannon,
second oldest, he's a mechanic. Can take apart an engine, put it back together.
Pretty amazing.
I turned out to be the musician, entrepreneur. (laughs) That picture of my mom, so beautiful. Isn't
she? My dad, he passed away when I was nineteen months old, that was one of the
only pictures I have of he and I really together, holding me. He died one day
before his birthday in an airplane crash. I often wonder what it would be like
for me to have fathers growing up. What it would have been like to have that,
but I didn't. I made a lot of choices that may not have been the best ones, but
I'll tell you that at the end of the day, what doesn't kill you makes you
stronger. How many people know that? Yeah.
Most of my friends and colleagues and people growing up in this little
town of Weatherford, most of the what I would consider a peer group, they all
went to prison or boys' homes. I was booted in school, because I was missing so
many days of school. It wasn't that I wasn't a bright kid or couldn't pick up
things quick, or apply myself, even though I used to have massive arguments
with my teachers. One time I used to think that history wasn't even ... I mean,
who cared about something that happened twenty years ago. I used to have these
big arguments about history. It didn't even mean anything. Now, I love history.
I could watch history channel forever.
Those are my colleagues, my peers, most of them, they went to prison.
I got a, even though I had three older brothers. God love them. Fantastic in
their own right. Done a lot of powerful things in their lives. I respect them
each their own, a lot of different ways. How many people know growing up, when
you're like maybe eight, and somebody's like, maybe fifteen and thirteen. You
don't really want to hang out with an eight or nine year old, right? I actually
got a Big Brother. I had to go and get a Big Brother, and that's Dave Storm
right there, and that's me. He made a big difference in my life. Even with the
big brother, that Big Brother/Sister Program, even with the big brother, I
still was making a lot of mistakes, making a lot of mistakes. I had some
happened is, who said the PhD is ...?
Audience Member: [inaudible 00:12:23]
Public High School Diploma? Well, I got a GED, which is a 'Good Enough' diploma, (laughter)
or in Oklahoma, a 'Git 'er done." (laughter)
If we can come up with another acronym. I dropped out of high school when I was
my junior year and making a lot of bad decisions. I just felt like, at that
time, my perspective, my chapter in life, was that I didn't really need school.
I'm going to go to school to learn to work for somebody else? I'm going to go
do my own thing now. I don't need anybody else. I was a very me-istic, myopic
type person. It really made a big impact on my life.
What happened was when things started to change, is I started to learn
how to play guitar. That's me. Had the hair all the way down to here. Into the
80's bands, rock bands, Nelson, back there. (laughs)
Nelson twin. I got into playing guitar and lo and behold, I joined a Christian
heavy metal band. I got around some people that really said, "You know
what? You can do more than what you think. You don't have to end up in prison,
in jail, in boys' homes. We think you're really cool. We think you can do some
cool things. We want to do it, work with you."
I want you, if you write ... if you're taking some notes, I don't
know if you are, but if you are, I want you to take notes on this because this
is pretty powerful. You are the five, right? You are the average of the five
people that you spend the most time with. How many people believe that? It's
absolutely true. It's absolutely true. If you're hanging out with losers right now, you'rehanging out with people who are pulling you down. You know you need
to get away from, maybe there's kind of friends here and there.
You will be the average. That's fine. You've made the decision to hang
out with them, but you will be the average of those five people you hang out
with. That is a one hundred percent truth. So, along the way, I read a little
book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. How many people read the book?
Audience Member: [inaudible ]
I'm out of high school now. I start reading book, learning how to play
guitar myself, doing all these things. So, I started all these different
companies. Let me tell you something. Nine out of ten businesses fail. That's
what Rich Dad, Poor Dad said, okay? I had this brilliant idea, being pretty
good at math, I started forty different businesses, because what are my odds
there, right? (laughter) I mean, one, right?
Someday I'm going to get one of them, right? (laughter)
What happened was that two of them succeeded, the other thirty-eight I call
business therapy.
What I want to talk to you about here, thank you for letting me share
my story, is, how many people would like to know a smarter way than starting
forty different businesses? Yeah?
This is
called the Three M's for Success. It's very powerful. These are things I've learned along
the way. These are the things that I want to share with you, that are the most
powerful I can get across to you in a thirty minute period. How are we doing on
time, by the way?
Audience Member: [inaudible ]
Fantastic? Good. Okay. The First thing is MINDSET. Mindset, okay? Why
is mindset so important. Well, the reason mindset is so important, is because
you have to first understand that whatever you are going to do, there is going
to be many obstacles that come up along the way. Right, Sherry?
Audience Member: Right.
A lot of obstacles along the way, you've got to know that when they
do, that your mind has got to be prepared to be able to handle it. You've got
to be able to get this mindset thing correct. I know it sounds hokey-pokey
sometimes, but whenever I done ... because whenever I do some consulting with
someone and they pay me a thousand dollars for doing this one or two things.
Spend one or two hours with me. Seventy percent of the time, it's the mindset thing.
It's thirty percent of the time it's something else. Seventy percent of the time, it's mindset.
What you're going to realize is that there's these constraints that we
ourselves put up. They aren't really there. What are they called, Will? The big
...? Lie. The big lie, because that's what they are. Our mind tells us a ton of
lies. What makes you so special? What makes you so special? Why do you think
you can succeed? Look where you're from. You're from a little town in Oklahoma.
You can't succeed. Hell, all your buddies, they live for Friday, to go out and
drink beer, get fat. Don't care about their bodies. You can't be successful.
What are you thinking?
Your mind is telling you these things. Guess what happens whenever
you're like, "Oh, yeah? Yeah?" You're listening. You've got to be
careful because you're listening. Does that make sense? You are listening.
You've got to be like a mouse. Right? Hard headed! (laughter)
You've got to be a mouse. You've got to be excited to go in there and get the
cheese! Right? I want to be this mouse so bad! Except I would probably, I'm
forty, so I'd have pads and shoulders on there, too, but he's got the helmet,
it's good.
You've got to be the mouse. Yeah. You've got to be the mouse. You've got to
get in there and go for it. What really matters, what really matters
are the things sometimes that we don't realize that matter. What really counts
are the things that we can't count. Right? How do I know what you're really
thinking right now? I can't count that. I don't put a metric to that right now.
Guess what? That's what really matters. That's how ... that's the things that
count in life. The mindset of where you are. That you can succeed. That you
will succeed. That you're going to be the mouse and you're going to be a little
hard-headed, and you're going to get the cheese.
Even though I got a GED. Dropped out of high school. I was pretty
good at math, so I'm playing a little game here at Harvard. Imagine
the alphabet, okay? Imagine every letter represents a number. A is one, B is
...?
Audience Member: Two.
Cory Boatright: C is
...?
Audience Member: Three.
Okay, right. Yeah. So what we're going to do, is we're going to try to
equal a hundred. We're going to try to equal a hundred. We're going to do it in
an entrepreneurial way. Entrepreneurial way. Many times, people think one of
the biggest challenges of being an entrepreneur is what? Name some things out.
Audience Member: Capital.
Cory Boatright: What is
it?
Audience Member: Capital.
Cory Boatright: Capital.
What else?
Audience Member: Sales.
Cory Boatright: Sales,
what else?
Audience Member: Marketing.
Cory Boatright: Marketing,
what else?
Audience Member: Time.
Cory Boatright: Time,
one more.
Audience Member: [inaudible ]
Cory Boatright: What?
Audience Member: [inaudible ]
What happens is this. What equals a hundred percent, is not what we
think it is. Fear is one of the big ones. Fear is one of the big ones. We think
that if we just overcome the fear, if I go skydiving and I jump out of the airplane,
then I'll be okay. I'll just get through it. I'll be fine. Fear only equals
thirty percent. Courage! Some people are just kind of wimpy. Need to get a
little courage. Not being the little cat, be the big lion. Well, courage only equals seventy (70%) percent.
Hard work. Hard
work. Put in the time effort for the work. Not necessarily work
smarter, we hear, but work harder. Industrial age, with what they learned,
that's what they teach us. That's not the case. Only ninety eight (98%) percent.
Knowledge, right? How many people just say knowledge is ...? Power,
right? Guess what? Knowledge is not quite there either, is it?
Love. Aw. (laughter) Love is very, very
powerful, but as an entrepreneur, it's not a hundred percent. Unfortunately, I
can love you all to death and you can still screw me. As an entrepreneur, it's
not a hundred percent. Luck. Who's got lucky? I remember Phil was saying that,
you know, [inaudible]just got lucky. I did. I
got a little bit lucky, but that wasn't all it took. What makes a hundred
percent? Someone yelled it out and I didn't ... You. So smart. Audience Member: [inaudible)
Not money and it's not leadership. What makes a hundred (100%) percent is
attitude. It's a trick question, O'Neil. It's a trick question,
because it's almost everything. Do you know what happens before attitude?
Discipline. Discipline
equals a hundred (100%) percent. You have to have discipline in
order to have that positive attitude come out. It begins with discipline. The
reason not everyone's going to be able to do it is because they're not
disciplined enough, but you can be. You can be.
You can put in a little extra time and effort. You can talk to
somebody else. You can knock another door. You can make another phone call. You
can get into another network, and another mastermind. You can do what it takes.
You can be the one that's up working when everybody else is sleeping. You can do it,
because it takes discipline. (audience
applause) Then, from there, the attitude happens.
Let me tell you something. Whenever you get this mindset thing rocking
and rolling, you'll find that prayer is a place that you go for solitude. Start
really thinking about what matters. The things that count, the things that you
can't really count, those are the things that really do count. Kind of
interesting to share this. Whenever you pray, (holds up praying hands) what
does that look like to you? What number?
Audience Member: One.
One. One. You know why, because there's a part of you that we abandon.
We don't like to think about ourselves. We think we're selfish and all those
other things. I'll tell you what once you figure out what it is inside of you,
that gives you the abilities of strength, the greatness that I believe God
instills in every single person, once you figure that out, then you can serve
others in the massive way, the best way possible, because you spent some time
working on yourself. You can overcome. You can overcome fear by discovering your success.
It's absolutely one hundred percent true.
The second'M' is MECHANICS. The
second 'M' is mechanics. Most entrepreneurs, they're just crazy really, because
they're self employed and they call themselves business owners, but really
they're not. They're not. They're crazy, because why? They work for themselves!
Right? They look like this guy. That's not a boss that I want to have. Even
though that's what all of us look like when we work for ourselves.
FedEx. Think about this. FedEx is not one big business. It's small
businesses duplicated. There's no such thing as a big business any longer, it's
small businesses, duplicated. It's not one Wing Nuts, it's fifty, a hundred, a
thousand, two thousand, five thousand. Then it just spreads all over the place
because it's one little Wing Nuts that works, one little FedEx truck that works
and then you can go out and duplicate what's working. It's not that you have to
get this one huge business. It is you have to get your mechanics in order.
The first one's Mindset. The second one's Mechanics. Think about a
watch. Think about the gears of a watch. Everything's got to be working to get
that right. Operating
procedures. Think about synergy and masterminds. What Michael Jordan
says, you know, it's awesome. He could be the greatest player in the world, but
that's not what wins games. What wins games?
Audience Member: Teamwork and intelligence.
Teamwork
and intelligence wins games. That's being a mastermind. That is a synergy. That's thinking and knowing what you
can leverage, what you can give and you can help others. That's how you serve
others, by creating that synergy and having a mastermind. How can we do it
together? Think about the difference of just one makes, just one. Look at the
difference, the vast difference. Two plus two is four, four plus two is eight,
but just one, and this mindset right here. This, on this side right here, that's
a self employed business owner right here.
This is the guy thinking about just himself and he doesn't care about
anybody else and he doesn't care about anything he's going to ... impact he's
going to make for the world. This guy thinks about synergy and mastermind. He
thinks about how he can serve others. He thinks about outside of himself. He
wants to give and help. That's the most important thing to him. Look at what
one difference makes, just one.
This powerful idea, a mechanics, is something that is really made a
huge difference. Think big, really, when you're being a self employed business
owner. Got one minute? Think big. As a self-employed business owner, you think
a little small. Think a little bit bigger. How can you serve others? How can
you help others? How can you get those procedures going. Not just make one Wing
Nuts and have a good day. How can you make five thousand and have other people
run them. Have other people that like-minded for you that can go spread the
word. Spread everything about the story and the vision.
The last 'M,' what do you think? It's money. The last 'M' is MONEY. The
reason is, is because being rich, it really isn't about just loving money. It
really is having time, having time. This study is very interesting to me. The
person that puts the emphasis on, "Oh, my time is worth so much money, it's
only worth a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars an hour, of five thousand
dollars an hour.", that person, a recent study that was done, has shown
that they have less happiness in their lives.
The reason that I had these 3M's' of Success, in this order,
Mindset, Mechanics, and Money, is not by accident. It is because whenever you
chase money, money runs. It runs fast, but I tell you what, whenever you find
other people in masterminds. Whenever you find ways that you can create synergy
and you can serve others, which I believe is one of the core components, one of
the most incredible ways to have fulfillment in your life is by serving others.
Whenever you do that, you attract money into your life. Money comes looking for
you. To all the smart people in the room, what's the first 'M'?
Audience Member: Mindset.
Cory Boatright: What's
the second 'M'?
Audience Member: Mechanics.
Cory Boatright: What's
the third one?
Audience Member: Money.
In that order. I share this last thing with you. Ever since I was twenty one years old, I have a little bucket list I've made. One
of them was to speak at Harvard. (audience . . .
awww)
I really ... (audience applause) I
sincerely appreciate taking the time. I do believe it's very valuable. I appreciate
Mark, you had me., and to follow up a CEO millionaire is not a bad day, either,
is it? Rememberand be a servant. That is one of the most powerful things that I can
leave with you, to let you internalize that. Is to remember and serve others.
In the shower, I say this when I get up in the morning. "My worst day is somebody else's
paradise." Thank you very much. (audience
applause)
