The Social Media Opportunity In 2024
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00:00 To grow a business, it's called social media.
00:03 I don't know if you heard, it's free.
00:06 Everyone's always mad at it, the fucking thing is free.
00:09 Attention is the number one asset.
00:11 - Gary!
00:12 - Gary!
00:13 - Gary!
00:14 - Gary!
00:15 - Thank you, thank you, thank you.
00:17 That's some real love, San Diego, I appreciate you.
00:20 How you doing?
00:20 (audience cheering)
00:23 All right, let's get into it.
00:26 So much to talk about.
00:29 When I think about talks on the way to them,
00:31 I try to think about what today, as I'm sure,
00:34 actually, by some noise,
00:36 how many of you consume some of my content?
00:39 (audience cheering)
00:42 So you can imagine the thing I think a lot about
00:45 when I speak is, if I'm putting out so much
00:47 and I'm putting it out every day,
00:49 what can I actually bring in value
00:51 that might be a little bit different?
00:53 And so, it's why I really love Q&A.
00:57 But what is also interesting about what I do for a living
01:00 is, like the sign said earlier,
01:03 I think a lot about day trading attention.
01:06 Because I think, when I look at a room like this,
01:09 the reality is that no matter what you do in here,
01:14 whether that's B2B, B2C, if you're an entrepreneur,
01:16 if you're an employee, fitness industry,
01:18 wine industry, sneakers,
01:19 it really is not any difference to me
01:24 because the reality is, if I talk about attention,
01:27 it is relevant to everyone in here,
01:29 including people that are running for local office,
01:33 for people that are trying to raise money
01:34 for their favorite charity,
01:37 for people that are trying to impact their school.
01:40 The thing that I've been obsessed with
01:41 since I was selling lemonade at seven years old,
01:44 and on a stage like this, maybe 10 years ago,
01:47 I realized, man, I don't even really remember
01:49 pouring the lemonade, and I had an epiphany
01:51 that when I had lemonade stands,
01:53 my friends would hold down the lemonade stand,
01:56 and I would walk around the streets of New Jersey
01:59 and try to figure out where to put my signs.
02:01 I've been chasing attention my whole life.
02:06 And so, baseball cards went well for me
02:08 because I gave thought to how my table looked at the show.
02:11 My dad's liquor store was real easy for me.
02:13 I would watch people walk in the store,
02:15 and I would pay attention to how they would move,
02:17 and I changed the way our setup was,
02:19 and I made sure the stuff we wanted to sell
02:22 was in front of them instead of
02:23 somewhere they couldn't find.
02:25 As you can imagine, when I launched
02:26 winelibrary.com, a website, it's crazy.
02:29 The fact that I launched winelibrary.com in 1990,
02:31 how many people here were not born in 1997?
02:34 Make some noise.
02:35 (audience cheering)
02:38 Getting fucking old.
02:39 Getting old up here.
02:41 The fact that I launched a website in 1997,
02:44 actually, I'm writing a new book
02:45 called "Day Trading Attention"
02:46 that will come out next year,
02:47 and on the flight here for five hours,
02:50 we were editing it, and there was something about YouTube.
02:53 We were talking about YouTube in it,
02:54 and I made a reference in there of when I started,
02:58 and in the reference, it said that I started
03:00 Wine Library TV five months after YouTube came out,
03:03 and I thought that was too soon,
03:04 so we looked it up, and it was actually wrong,
03:06 but the other direction.
03:07 YouTube came out, I think, December 15, 2005.
03:10 I launched Wine Library TV February 21, 2006,
03:15 and it's probably the thing that
03:17 what I'm setting up here for you is
03:20 it's kind of scary how big the opportunity is
03:23 for everybody in this room,
03:25 regardless of where you're at,
03:27 if you actually make a commitment
03:29 to what I now recognize is the commitment
03:32 that I've made my whole life,
03:33 and very aggressively for the last 20 years,
03:36 which is if you actually understand
03:38 where people's attention is,
03:39 and then you actually figure out
03:41 how to story tell on those platforms,
03:43 whether in the written word, in video, or in audio,
03:47 and most of all, which I think fucks up most people,
03:50 you stay patient and try to actually bring value,
03:53 not extract value.
03:55 It takes me two seconds.
03:57 When I go to the airport, somebody rolls up,
03:58 they're like Gary V, I'm not fucking growing.
04:01 It takes me one hundredth of a second to know why,
04:04 because they're only about themselves.
04:06 They care about how many followers they get.
04:08 They care about how many likes they get.
04:10 They care about how many fucking things they sell.
04:13 There's just literally no relationship with the audience.
04:18 I know why I get to stand up here.
04:19 I know why I get this love for you.
04:21 It matters to me to provide value.
04:23 I'm not scared to be a businessman.
04:24 I got sneakers to sell, and books to sell,
04:26 and wine to sell, and V friends to sell.
04:28 I'm not scared, but I don't understand
04:31 how people don't understand what's happening.
04:32 The whole world's competing now.
04:35 Every single person's competing with every single person,
04:37 every business, and how are you gonna break through?
04:40 You're not gonna break through by showing the same shit.
04:43 A billion people are posting a fucking flexi watch.
04:48 That shit's not gonna break through.
04:49 I think that most of us in general need to understand
04:53 that the science behind the game,
04:56 and the game is attention on this device.
04:59 There's eight or nine platforms that dominate this thing.
05:02 And the question to me that I always think about
05:05 when I look around the, by the way,
05:06 that lime sweatshirt you're wearing is fire.
05:09 Fire.
05:10 Can we clap it up for the, can you stand up?
05:13 Shit's nice.
05:15 (audience applauding)
05:19 Attention.
05:20 Shit caught my fucking eye.
05:21 Look, listen.
05:24 It's the same shit for the last 20 years.
05:28 Like, marketing is how you grow a business.
05:33 Right, obviously the product has to be good,
05:35 but you have to get out there
05:36 and create demand for your business.
05:37 Right, you can do it through word of mouth.
05:39 You can be great at what you do,
05:40 and people talk about it, that's great.
05:42 But if you wanna accelerate, and I have no idea,
05:44 I mean, there's no reason anyone's
05:46 in this auditorium right now, you know,
05:48 on this Thursday, unless they're trying to grow.
05:52 So I'm just defaulting into thinking
05:54 everybody here has ambition and hunger
05:56 and trying to do shit.
05:57 So I know everyone here is trying to do something.
06:01 What I'm always confused by is why we keep looking
06:04 for some sort of shortcut.
06:05 My favorite entrepreneurs are fitness entrepreneurs.
06:09 Fitness entrepreneurs make me laugh so much,
06:12 because unless they cheat,
06:13 which I know a lot of fucking people do,
06:16 they know the way to do it is the discipline.
06:19 Like, you gotta do the exercise properly,
06:22 you've gotta do it every fucking day or often,
06:25 and you've gotta eat properly.
06:26 Like, people know how to get into better shape.
06:30 There's no fucking secret.
06:33 I mean, there's no Obenzik,
06:34 or whatever the fuck that shit is now,
06:35 but, you know, like, the right way to do it
06:39 is pretty simple, with the gym,
06:42 and with your fork and spoon, but it's hard to do.
06:45 But fitness entrepreneurs are always, like,
06:47 rolling up, they're like, "Yo, but yeah,
06:48 "but how do I do it fast?"
06:50 And I'm like, you spend your day, every day,
06:52 teaching people that there is no fast physically,
06:56 but you're looking for fast business-wise.
06:59 The reason I pound patience, and I know,
07:01 I watch the data, I know how many of you are tired
07:04 and have no interest in me telling you it takes time.
07:07 I get why everybody wants it fast.
07:10 Everybody wants it fast 'cause the world's insecure.
07:12 Everybody wants to win fast 'cause they wanna show
07:16 everybody else that they won.
07:17 I understand you wanna prove it to the girl
07:19 that didn't fuck with you in high school.
07:21 (audience laughing)
07:22 I get that you wanna prove it to your dad
07:24 who never said you had it.
07:25 I understand.
07:27 All this shit, all this business stuff, it's all this.
07:31 It's always this.
07:33 I understand fake it 'til you make it.
07:35 I understand, I'm watching it all, it's all I do.
07:38 All I do for life is watch people.
07:40 Nothing confused me about people.
07:43 I understand you all, I get it.
07:46 The problem is it's the same shit every time.
07:50 For example, the thing that breaks my heart
07:54 is that people actually think money makes you happy.
07:58 I know what people say when they don't have it.
07:59 They're like, "Cool, give it to me and I'll figure it out."
08:01 I get it.
08:02 How many people here have rich friends?
08:05 Make some noise.
08:06 (audience cheering)
08:08 Of the people that just made noise,
08:10 how many of you have rich friends that you know right now
08:13 are super fucked up, super unhappy, drugs, alcohol,
08:16 all sorts of shit, make some noise.
08:18 (audience cheering)
08:20 That.
08:21 - All of them.
08:22 - All of them.
08:23 You're right, bro.
08:24 Honestly, on some real shit,
08:26 one of the advantages of growing up in the dirt
08:28 and coming up a certain way
08:29 is you have lots of friends and a lot of family
08:31 that you know live not in a millionaire lifestyle
08:34 and you watch.
08:35 I wish some of my millionaire friends
08:38 could have the lifestyle of some of my high school friends
08:40 that are deeply happy
08:42 but don't make the same level of paper.
08:44 Money doesn't make you happier.
08:46 Money exposes you.
08:47 Money and fame expose.
08:50 They don't change.
08:51 He changed.
08:52 He didn't change.
08:53 You didn't know him.
08:54 Now you know him.
08:56 You understand?
08:57 So that's a whole separate thing.
08:59 But on this business front,
09:01 I'll give you,
09:03 maybe I had it right with my first book.
09:05 My first book,
09:05 subtitle of Crush It was Cashing In on Your Passion.
09:09 Maybe what was clear to me in my early 30s
09:11 has become again very clear to me
09:14 as I get closer to 50.
09:16 I don't know how you can work hard enough
09:18 to beat your competition
09:20 if you don't like the thing you're doing.
09:23 I watch every day for the last 20 years,
09:25 people chase whatever current trend
09:27 they think they can make money in.
09:29 Real estate every eight years,
09:31 crypto, cannabis,
09:34 like social media influencer.
09:36 Like I've watched people's profile on Twitter
09:39 over the last 15 years
09:40 change nine times of what expert they are.
09:43 You can't win if you don't like it
09:49 because somebody else likes it
09:50 and they're gonna outwork you.
09:52 You can't.
09:55 It's not sustainable.
09:56 Unless you love the fucking process,
09:59 it's too hard to be an entrepreneur.
10:01 I know it got cool 'cause I'm 47.
10:05 I remember when it wasn't cool.
10:07 I'm a direct beneficiary of it becoming cool.
10:11 This is like a different,
10:12 this is not the life I expected.
10:15 Businessmen were just behind the scenes
10:16 and you lived and you built businesses.
10:18 I understand that it's pop culture now.
10:20 I understand that people aspire toward it.
10:22 But if I could wish anything for everybody in this room
10:25 as I look corner to corner,
10:26 besides health,
10:28 I would wish you self-awareness.
10:30 There's a lot of people sitting in here
10:33 wanting or are delusional
10:35 that they're a great entrepreneur
10:36 and what they really are is a great number two
10:39 and a great number three.
10:41 The number four at Facebook and Tesla
10:44 made a lot more money than 99.9%
10:46 of the number ones that started companies.
10:49 Thanks, mom.
10:56 Self-awareness.
10:58 Everybody's so focused on what they wish they could be
11:01 that they're not paying attention to who they are.
11:04 So I, thank you.
11:07 Seriously.
11:08 (audience applauding)
11:11 Let me tell you why I understand all my spiel to be true.
11:16 Because I've been putting out
11:18 and millions of other people have been putting out
11:21 the direct black and white content to make it work.
11:26 There's unlimited content on how to build a business,
11:29 what the right tactics are,
11:31 how to use Shopify, how to use WordPress,
11:34 how to use eBay, how to use TikTok.
11:36 There's unlimited content.
11:38 The reason I started to over time evolve
11:42 into like I gotta figure this out
11:43 because why hasn't everyone figured it out?
11:46 You start realizing it has nothing to do with the tactics.
11:49 Literally, literally, there's nothing
11:55 from a knowledge standpoint when it comes to business
11:57 that isn't available for free.
11:59 I don't know if you've heard about Google
12:04 or Chat GPT or YouTube.
12:09 Use those three free products
12:11 and you can get the direct answer.
12:13 I don't know what the fuck you're doing
12:14 with your notebooks out here.
12:16 There's nothing to write down.
12:19 It's all here.
12:21 It's not the tactics.
12:25 Right?
12:26 Look, there's a lot to the tactics.
12:27 Let me segue to the tactics for a second.
12:29 Do I believe and I look at like a lot of times
12:32 when I come out to a talk, I'll look on social
12:33 to see who's here, what you're talking about,
12:35 and then I'll look at the profiles,
12:36 try to get a sense of the feel.
12:38 Do I believe that most people here
12:40 don't understand the science of social media?
12:42 And the answer is yes.
12:43 Do I believe when I look at all of the accounts
12:45 I looked at over the last couple days,
12:46 hyped for this event or here or what have you,
12:48 that when I look at your profile, I'm like,
12:49 oh, they don't understand that the thumbnail has no shot.
12:52 Or oh fuck, they're one of those people
12:54 that think on Instagram, it's all about the picture
12:56 and the video and they put no effort into the copy,
12:59 which is why it's not happening for them.
13:01 Do I look at TikTok and be like,
13:02 oh, they just posted their Instagram reel
13:04 on TikTok or vice versa.
13:06 That's why they don't get it.
13:07 Do I think that there's extraordinary science
13:11 behind the art?
13:12 I do.
13:13 The thumbnail matters.
13:14 The first three seconds matter.
13:16 The style matters.
13:18 If you're still doing what you did for,
13:20 like how many people here are stagnant
13:22 in their growth on Instagram?
13:23 And don't be full of shit, raise your hand
13:25 'cause I want everybody to see this.
13:26 Actually stand up, please, on some real shit.
13:30 Are you stagnant on your growth on Instagram?
13:33 Put on the lights.
13:34 No, no, no, no, this is good.
13:37 By the way, I'm standing.
13:39 I'm standing.
13:40 So thank you everybody.
13:43 I wanted everybody to visualize it.
13:45 Actually, if you can keep those lights on,
13:47 that'd be epic 'cause the dark freaks me out.
13:50 It doesn't, I just like seeing the faces for reaction.
13:52 Listen to me, the reason everybody stood up
13:54 is all that social media is is supply and demand.
13:58 My favorite thing is like, Gary, you need to help me.
14:00 I've been shadow banned.
14:02 No, you haven't, Don.
14:03 You just suck.
14:04 Nobody here is shadow banned.
14:07 You're not shadow banned, you just haven't changed up
14:11 your game in the last three years
14:13 and there's more people posting on the platform than ever
14:16 and some of the attention is now fully just on TikTok.
14:19 It's called fucking supply and demand.
14:21 You remember when I was yelling and going crazy
14:24 five years ago telling you get on TikTok
14:26 and you were like, nah, fuck that shit.
14:27 That's girls that dance that are 14.
14:29 You fucked up.
14:30 (audience laughing)
14:34 This game is simple but hard,
14:36 just like getting into better shape.
14:39 There are core platforms that have the world's attention.
14:41 Almost everybody here does not post
14:44 three times a day on LinkedIn.
14:45 Everybody here should post three times a day on LinkedIn.
14:48 I don't care if you sell T-shirts.
14:51 I don't care if you sell peach ice cream.
14:54 LinkedIn is not what it was when we all came out the gate.
14:57 It's no longer a recruiting tool.
14:58 It is a social network that has crazy organic reach
15:02 that has very high value customers
15:05 that are usually at work when they're in it
15:06 so they're paying attention even more
15:07 'cause they don't wanna work.
15:09 And so, you know, I can go around the world and speak
15:15 and I can put out the content
15:17 but when I was thinking about this,
15:18 I'm like, look, I can go into the tactics.
15:20 You know, I can tell you right now that on Instagram,
15:23 if you post an image first and a second carousel video
15:27 instead of just a Reels video like we've all been doing,
15:29 it will do better.
15:30 There you go, go, good, go.
15:32 Write that shit down on your fucking pad.
15:34 (audience laughing)
15:37 But what I know is that when you do it seven times
15:40 or 12 times and it doesn't go
15:43 'cause the quality of the content wasn't good enough,
15:45 that you stop.
15:46 And so I guess for me at this point,
15:49 I'm just trying to figure out
15:51 what are people worried about?
15:53 What's stopping people?
15:54 And it's all the same cliche shit.
15:56 Some people don't like the way they look on camera
15:58 but you don't like the way you look on camera
16:00 because for some reason you've decided to value
16:03 a stranger's bullshit comment on you
16:07 coming from their own hurt
16:09 instead of the way you feel about your own self.
16:12 (audience cheering)
16:15 Like the thought of how many people here
16:18 don't want someone from their high school or college
16:21 or a neighbor or a coworker
16:23 or even worse, the thing that kills me,
16:25 that you literally are not building your future
16:28 because you're worried about Johnny Pants 67
16:30 coming on your account
16:33 and fucking shitting on you.
16:36 Do you understand how sad of a life it is
16:41 to spend your time at night laying in your bed,
16:43 going around your feed,
16:46 seeing someone's bright light
16:48 and you're in such a bad place
16:49 that you wanna say you suck or you're wrong or fuck you?
16:53 You shouldn't be feeling bad for yourself.
16:55 You need to feel bad for these people.
16:58 We need more empathy.
17:00 Like this is someone who's hurt.
17:01 The thought of spending a second of my time
17:06 to hurt someone else's feelings
17:09 is fucking insane to me.
17:12 (audience cheering)
17:15 So I'm just gonna,
17:19 you know I'm trying to systematically think about
17:21 like why won't you post 33,
17:23 like if you're here and you want something to happen,
17:27 the fastest and most significant way to grow a business
17:30 in 2023 and '24 besides the operational part,
17:34 besides the fact that it has to be able to operate,
17:38 to grow a business, it's called social media.
17:41 I don't know if you heard, it's free.
17:45 Everyone's always mad at it.
17:49 The fucking thing is free.
17:50 I built my daddy's liquor store not with social media.
17:55 I built it with newspaper ads.
17:56 Shit cost money.
17:58 Television commercials that were local.
18:01 We didn't have that kind of money.
18:03 That cost money.
18:04 Fucking billboards.
18:07 Those motherfuckers took my money.
18:09 Google AdWords killed for me
18:13 but it was still fucking money.
18:14 This shit's free.
18:17 And I don't know if you paid attention,
18:18 what happened the last two years in social, it changed.
18:22 Social for the first 10 years
18:24 was based on the social graph.
18:25 Now it's based on the interest graph.
18:27 Let me explain.
18:29 The first 10, 12 years of social media
18:31 was more like email marketing.
18:33 You amassed people to follow you,
18:35 you post and a percentage of them opened.
18:37 Right?
18:38 They saw it.
18:40 Now the algorithms are taking over
18:43 and it's around interest.
18:44 There are people in this room who've never been on TikTok
18:47 who can leave this conference and say,
18:48 fuck it, Gary got me, I'll do it, let me go.
18:51 And their first post with zero followers
18:54 can get 8,000, 20,000, 100,000, a million views.
18:58 That's real, that happens every day.
19:00 That's insane.
19:02 Not only is it free,
19:04 it actually is being seen.
19:07 Unlike all my clients who continue to buy TV commercials,
19:11 who here has seen a fucking TV commercial ever
19:14 besides the Super Bowl?
19:16 We don't even watch regular TV and cable TV anymore.
19:20 Every one of you fuckers have four,
19:22 you complain about money
19:23 but you have six subscriptions to every streaming service.
19:27 You haven't been on fucking HBO Max in 100 years.
19:32 YouTube, social, streaming,
19:34 we don't even watch those things.
19:37 So look, there's such an outrageous level
19:40 of opportunity right now
19:42 and it's a game of the haves and have nots,
19:44 meaning either you see it,
19:46 AKA either you decide the world sucks
19:50 and everything's hard and there's a lot going on,
19:52 I get it, or you decide not.
19:54 Sometimes when someone's complaining and is my homie,
19:57 I give them my phone and I'm like, look at my stream.
20:00 My stream is like fucking kittens kissing each other,
20:05 like the fucking sun coming out.
20:08 My stream's positive as fuck
20:10 because I protect my fucking sanity.
20:13 (audience cheering)
20:17 No shit you're gonna be upset
20:22 if you only consume negativity.
20:24 No shit you're gonna be upset
20:25 if the core people in your life
20:28 spend 100% of their time complaining.
20:31 And it's hard.
20:33 Almost all of us have either a negative mom or dad,
20:36 that's already hard.
20:37 And that shit's hard.
20:39 But I remind my friends, I'm like, you're 40.
20:42 You're gonna still complain
20:43 and blame mommy and daddy for everything?
20:46 Instead of buying a fucking Maserati,
20:48 go get therapy, dick.
20:49 (audience laughing)
20:52 (audience cheering)
20:55 And I get not everybody can afford therapy,
21:00 but exercise, free meditation apps,
21:04 like just genuinely putting positivity in your ears
21:08 instead of negativity.
21:10 The number one thing the world lost was accountability.
21:13 We've gotten so good at telling everybody else in the world
21:15 what they should be doing.
21:17 We love pointing fingers, right?
21:20 How about thumbs?
21:21 Where the fuck have thumbs gone?
21:23 Let me give you the biggest indication
21:26 that you're a fucking loser entrepreneur.
21:28 Gonna give it to you right now.
21:31 You blame the current president for your shit.
21:34 (audience laughing)
21:37 I love that, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur,
21:46 and then you're blaming the president?
21:48 You fucking suck.
21:51 (audience laughing)
21:53 As if.
21:54 I've made plenty of money as an entrepreneur
21:57 with Republicans and plenty with Democrats.
21:59 Give me an independent and I'll crush, I don't give a fuck.
22:02 (audience cheering)
22:05 People make me laugh, people talk real shit,
22:10 but then we just aren't accountable.
22:13 Here's another one.
22:13 How many people have more than 10 employees?
22:15 Raise your hands.
22:16 Good.
22:19 Let me tell you the funniest thing
22:20 about running a company.
22:22 100% of the shit that's wrong is your fault.
22:28 It's crazy.
22:32 I sit with my homies, I read all the DMs, I'm in it.
22:36 You guys know, you get responses sometimes, I'm in it.
22:39 Gary, you don't get it, my CFO sucks.
22:41 I'm like, no, you don't get it, fire him.
22:43 You hired him.
22:47 Every single thing in your business that is broken
22:52 is 100% your fault.
22:55 You don't like the taxes in California, move to Texas.
22:58 (audience laughing)
23:03 We found the Texas dude.
23:04 Like, people are just so interesting.
23:08 We're in a really challenging spot.
23:11 You know who I blame?
23:13 Eighth place trophies.
23:15 (audience applauding)
23:17 Can somebody ask AI who the fuck invented that?
23:20 'Cause I wanna kick them in the dick.
23:22 Eighth place trophies fucked everything up.
23:26 We taught kids that losing was bad.
23:30 We need to teach kids that losing is good.
23:32 This is the mistake.
23:35 Because what happens is, listen,
23:36 I have 2,000 employees now at VaynerX globally,
23:39 and a lot of them are under 28.
23:42 About seven years ago, before this even became obvious
23:44 and kinda talked about, even before the whole,
23:46 and by the way, enough of bashing Gen Z.
23:49 The people that bashed Gen Z made them.
23:51 Bash yourself.
23:52 (audience laughing)
23:55 Like, you're mad at your,
23:58 I get all these conversations, like, Gary, my son,
24:01 he's a real mess, I'm like, how old, 25?
24:03 I'm like, we start talking, 'cause this is interesting to me
24:06 and I care and I wanna help, and then you find out
24:08 that there are parents paying for their 25-year-old's life.
24:14 I'm like, you want, and they're complaining
24:16 that their kid's not, like, it's impossible,
24:19 it's impossible to be hungry when you're fed.
24:22 You know, and listen, everyone's got different circumstances,
24:26 I'm talking general, and everyone's got their own shit,
24:28 I get that, but the eighth place trophy thing killed us.
24:32 We made people scared.
24:33 I don't know if you're paying attention,
24:35 that's all that's going on here.
24:36 In business, in life, it's just one game of fear
24:40 versus love, and fear's got a lot of momentum.
24:43 How many people here are happy, make noise.
24:46 (audience cheering)
24:49 I definitely do not believe that, by the way,
24:51 that was some loud-ass shit, like,
24:53 not everyone's fucking happy, but I'll take it.
24:56 So let me, given that everyone here is happy,
24:59 I don't know why the fuck you're here, then, but--
25:07 - For you. - Thank you,
25:08 I love you back for that, but listen,
25:10 if you're happy, one thing if you're following
25:12 of what I'm doing, and I think this is an issue,
25:15 and I'd like to actually challenge it,
25:16 especially 'cause I feel the vibes,
25:17 and I'm happy so many people are happy,
25:19 if you're happy, you have a responsibility.
25:22 What's happening is negativity is so loud,
25:27 and so on the offense, and happiness is content.
25:31 Happiness is chilling with their eight friends
25:34 and staying away from it.
25:36 The reason I'm so in and willing to deal
25:37 with the ridicule and the judgment
25:39 and all the shit that comes along
25:40 with being out there like that,
25:41 is 'cause I feel like I have a sense of responsibility.
25:44 My mom really built me like that,
25:46 and I feel guilt even sometimes, let alone gratitude,
25:49 and that's why I take on the responsibility
25:51 to put out the shit I do.
25:53 If there's that many people in this room
25:55 that are so happy, please change up your content
25:58 a little bit and add a post about happiness,
26:00 how to find it, how you found it,
26:02 how you see other things, start posting more happy shit.
26:05 You into that?
26:06 (audience cheering)
26:08 Seriously.
26:11 'Cause since this whole room's happy,
26:13 we're getting drained the fuck out.
26:18 We're drowned out.
26:19 And so we really, really,
26:23 it's so good to contribute to society
26:26 and there's so many ways.
26:28 People have different resources.
26:30 Some people use money and they do that, and that's amazing.
26:33 Some people do it through service.
26:35 But if you're happy, start showing more people
26:38 that you can be successful and happy.
26:39 There's so much shit that fucks me up.
26:41 Like, nice guys finish last.
26:43 Do you know how fucked up that is?
26:45 That's another person we need to find.
26:49 (audience laughing)
26:50 Who invented that shit?
26:51 We taught an entire generation, multiple generations,
26:55 that you can't be successful and nice.
26:57 Do you know how crazy that is?
26:59 That's insane.
27:00 - I'm posting all the negativity
27:02 because it goes 10 times more
27:03 and they want attention, it's horrible.
27:05 - I'm not worried about other people.
27:07 I'm not talking about other people.
27:08 I understand what people are doing.
27:10 I focus on you.
27:12 Fuck what everyone else is doing.
27:13 (audience applauding)
27:17 I know what everyone's doing.
27:20 I'm asking y'all, what are you doing?
27:24 What do you wanna do?
27:25 To me, if you wanna grow,
27:28 there is an incredible, obvious,
27:30 historical framework to this.
27:33 The only way you can grow is you have to have energy.
27:37 For example, if you spend one minute of energy
27:41 on envy and jealousy of someone who's winning
27:46 in your space, you're losing.
27:48 When I see other people in my space win,
27:53 I'm happy for them.
27:54 The world is abundant.
27:56 They're not--
27:57 (audience applauding)
27:59 My friends, nobody's taking yours.
28:02 No one's, yeah, you might lose a deal to someone,
28:05 somebody else might sell a shirt to someone,
28:06 you sell shirts.
28:08 Listen to me.
28:09 No one is taking yours.
28:12 You're taking yours.
28:14 I will, 'cause there's plenty in the back.
28:18 You're taking yours.
28:20 (audience applauding)
28:22 This goes back to accountability.
28:24 You wanna grow?
28:25 It's just energy.
28:26 Go into your cocoon, make it fucking flowery
28:30 and sunshiny and happy.
28:32 Start limiting your negativity.
28:34 Listen, I have a family.
28:35 Listen, my family's from the USSR.
28:37 The majority of my family is fairly negative
28:42 and that's because that was the world we lived in.
28:44 We lived in a 70-year jail.
28:46 It was a bad place.
28:47 Of course Russians drink vodka to the face.
28:51 It was fucking horrible.
28:52 Most of my family died before I met them.
28:55 I have a very small family.
28:56 It was fucked up.
28:57 I started looking at family photos when I was a kid.
29:00 At 13, I finally realized,
29:02 we didn't have that many pictures,
29:03 but we'd look, family gathers.
29:04 I was like, wait a minute,
29:05 there's not one fucking person smiling
29:08 in any of these fucking pictures.
29:10 It was that fucked up.
29:12 I got real lucky because out of that whole crew,
29:14 the most important one was the reverse, my mom.
29:18 Pure positivity, but not the eighth place trophy shit.
29:21 When I got out of line, she punched me in the face.
29:24 (audience laughing)
29:26 That's another thing.
29:27 I think kids should be fighting again.
29:29 (audience laughing)
29:32 (audience applauding)
29:35 When I think about why,
29:36 you know why everyone's so nasty to each other
29:38 on social media?
29:39 Because not enough people have been punched
29:41 in the fucking mouth.
29:42 (audience laughing)
29:45 'Cause I promise you, I don't talk shit,
29:48 mainly because of the neighborhoods I grew up in.
29:51 And if you went too far,
29:52 you got a fucking punch in the fucking face.
29:55 These eighth place trophies,
29:57 everyone's a zoo animal.
29:58 We're over coddling.
30:00 Of course people have anxiety.
30:02 By the time they go to the real world,
30:04 they're like, what's this shit?
30:05 (audience laughing)
30:07 My friends, that's us.
30:09 Maybe not in everything,
30:12 but all of us have a vulnerability too.
30:14 I had a real, real relevation about five, seven years ago.
30:18 Everything that's been bad in my life,
30:19 personal and professional,
30:20 was because I didn't have candor.
30:22 I wasn't able, Gary Vee on stage,
30:25 what I just did, that's fucking candor.
30:27 I can talk candor when I'm talking wide.
30:30 I can talk about parenting when I'm wide.
30:32 I would never talk to any of you one-on-one about parenting.
30:34 That's you and your family.
30:36 You know your dynamics.
30:38 I'm talking generalities up here.
30:39 And the more I liked you,
30:42 the more it was unlikely for me to give you candor.
30:45 I didn't care about the money enough,
30:47 so it wasn't about me paying someone who sucked shit.
30:50 And it fucked me up.
30:52 It was a huge gash.
30:54 It was, in a world where I think I got very fortunate
30:57 with DNA and circumstance, it was my kryptonite.
31:00 And I work on it.
31:01 And I'm a four right now.
31:03 And it's made a huge impact on my business
31:04 the last three years in my personal life.
31:06 And I'm a four.
31:07 And most things I'm at eight, nine, or 10 for real,
31:10 if I'm scoring my own homework, you know?
31:13 And I'm a four.
31:15 But going from one to four has changed my life.
31:18 And for a lot of you, it is patience.
31:22 But that patience is grounded in insecurity.
31:25 You need to figure out who you're trying to impress.
31:29 Who?
31:30 You understand?
31:31 Once you understand who you're trying to impress,
31:35 your life will change.
31:36 And the problem is for half of us,
31:39 we're trying to impress someone
31:40 who isn't emotionally strong enough
31:41 to give us the flowers we're looking for.
31:43 (audience applauding)
31:48 You know?
31:51 And a lot of us have been conditioned.
31:53 I've been conditioned as the oldest son
31:55 of an immigrant family whose dad worked every minute
31:57 that I gotta take care of everything.
31:59 But that leads to resentment.
32:00 Everything's always on my back.
32:02 So I've had to work on that.
32:03 Nobody's got it great.
32:05 Or everyone has it great.
32:07 730 million people on Earth
32:11 do not have access to clean water.
32:12 I'm on the board of Charity Water.
32:16 We build wells in Africa, in parts of India.
32:20 It's insane to me.
32:21 730 million people, almost 10% of the humans on this Earth
32:25 cannot get to a glass of clean water in 24 hours.
32:29 And it's 2023.
32:32 And you're complaining
32:34 that your Wi-Fi's a little slow today?
32:36 You know, like, what are we doing?
32:40 Accountability.
32:41 Somebody saw me the other day in the airport
32:44 with like an expensive coffee,
32:46 and they were razzing me
32:48 because I used to put out a lot of content
32:49 of like don't buy $7 coffees, but he misheard it.
32:52 And I broke it down.
32:54 We had a nice little chat.
32:55 He's like, Gary V, what the fuck?
32:57 (audience laughing)
32:59 And I was like, bro, no, no, no.
33:01 Remember the videos.
33:02 I said, if you complain about not having money,
33:06 I don't complain about not having money.
33:08 I'm like, if you complain about not having money,
33:11 and you're buying $7 coffees, you're fucking up.
33:15 If you complain about not having money,
33:17 and you're taking Uber four times a day, you're fucking up.
33:21 If you complain about not having money,
33:23 and you got an $800 belt, that's a fucking problem.
33:26 But I know why people do that.
33:29 It's their little moments of joy.
33:31 I get it, right?
33:33 It's how they want to project.
33:34 I get it.
33:35 But this goes back to the biggest thing
33:37 that I hope you didn't gloss over.
33:39 If I could get all of you to leave this and ask yourself,
33:42 who are you trying to impress?
33:44 I got real lucky.
33:46 I just wanted to impress my mom.
33:48 And the only thing she thought was cool
33:51 is if you were nice.
33:53 So I got real lucky.
33:54 I know not everyone has that.
33:55 But I promise you, you need to figure that out,
33:59 because most of you are making
34:01 almost every decision based on that.
34:03 And the second you decode that,
34:05 and break that shit down, and reframe it,
34:06 it will change your fucking life.
34:08 And then you can worry about the free tactics
34:10 you can find on the internet to build your fucking business.
34:13 You don't need to buy any course or go anywhere.
34:16 You don't need none of that shit.
34:17 You need this, and the free shit on the internet.
34:20 But this is the fucking problem.
34:22 Thank you.
34:23 (audience cheering)
34:25 (upbeat music)
34:28 (upbeat music)
34:30 (upbeat music)
34:33 (upbeat music)
34:35 (upbeat music)
34:38 (upbeat music)