THIS is the MINDSET You Need IF You Want SUCCESS! | Gary Vaynerchuk | #Entspresso

What's been your biggest fear in all of this? Or do you feel like you're pretty fear-proof at this moment? I'm fear-proof because I'm willing to go to zero. I don't know what else to say. Like, this has proven it to me even more. Any 0.0001% of me that thought, well, I've been saying this for the last 2 years, am I full of shit, has completely gone away. Like, I just fear because I don't value things and money. Like, I know for a fact that if I became a 100% full-time garage sale Amazon flipper, that I'd make $1 million a year. I know that for a fact. And that doesn't take into account that I built a brand. And sure, my brand would take a hit if all my businesses went to zero. But the reality is America's funny, man. Like, there's people following and helping O.J. Simpson. There's, you know, Wolf of Wall Street. Like, this is a country that gives second, third, fourth chances regardless. And so, like, I'm already at a place right now where between brand and capability and humility, I'm bulletproof. I believe that.

The biggest fear we have isn't failure. You're not afraid of failing. The biggest fear we have is of failing in front of other people. You're afraid of people's judgments. The reason why we stay stuck, the reason why you still are where you are, is because you're afraid of other people's opinions. You have great ideas inside you. You have great ideas. If you're watching this video, you're subscribed to this channel, you have great ideas. You know you're capable of more. You know you want to serve. You know you want to help. And great ideas are flowing through you, and we shut them off. We shut them off because we find a logical reason why we can't do it. The logical reasons in our head are, well, the timing's not right, or I don't have the gear, or I don't have the connections, or I'm in the wrong country, or whatever logical excuse that we come up with. That's, listen, it's based in reality. It's actually based in fact, 'cause you wouldn't, you're a smart person, you wouldn't believe a stupid reason. So the reasons that we're listening to are actually based on some kind of fact, but they're still an excuse. And underneath it, underneath that reason why you can't do something, is because you're afraid. You're afraid, I'm afraid, we're afraid to take the next step. And the fear underlying that is not the fear of it not working out, it's the fear of it not working out and who's going to see you fail. We're so tied up into what other people think about us that we'd rather play small for life than actually go off and accomplish and risk failing in front of other people. We're so afraid of that that we never go off and chase our dreams down. And you're stuck in this mental exercise of what you could do and then never actually doing anything. My biggest fear is disappointing people. You know, it's that still fear of judgment. It's still fear of I'm going to show up and speak in an event and it's just not going to go well, that people will be unhappy with my speech. And I put a crazy amount of pressure on myself. And in my head, I think people are here, and if I struggle, then the whole thing is ruined, right? I remember I was speaking at Brendon Burchard's event, and it was in Puerto Rico, and people are paying tons of money to be here. You know, it was a $30,000 to $50,000 mastermind, and everybody's got giant businesses, right? These are multi-million dollar business owners who are in the house, and it was a multiple day event. I think it was a 3-day event, and I'm speaking for one of them, not even a whole day. I'm speaking, I have one, I've got an hour or something of time, right, at that event. In my head, it's, if I suck on stage, then people will freak out and be unhappy and say this was a total waste of an event. Well, really, I'm a really tiny nothing part of this event, right? I mean, people are there to see Brendon Burchard, to see Dean Graziosi, to see the other speakers there. If any one speaker sucks— I mean, if Brendon sucked, that's a big deal because he's speaking for 80% of the time. If I suck for 1 hour, nobody's really gonna care. Nobody's really gonna be asking for a refund. But even though that's the actual answer, it's not the thing that's in my head. And that's what we need to fight. That's what we need to fight. Because I used to say no to opportunities because I was really deep down just afraid that I would not be able to deliver. I remember that I used to secretly hope people would cancel on me. I would secretly hope that interviews would cancel on me, that meetings would cancel on me. I remember I would book something out like it's 2 months in advance, right? I don't know if this has ever happened to you. This— if this makes sense or if it's happened to you, let me know in the comments. I would book something out that was a month in advance or 2 months in advance, and so yeah, I mean, that's exciting, I'd be happy to do that. And then on the day of, I'd look at my calendar and say, ooh, that's coming up. And I would secretly hope— I would check my email, remember, would be checking my email hoping that that person would cancel on me to say, oh, I'm busy or I got sick or it's not going to work out anymore and let's reschedule. And I remember I'd check in the morning and I'd check 2 hours before and check an hour before and check half an hour before and check 10 minutes before. And like, if there was no email, then, then I would go ahead and do it. So I'm losing insane amounts of productivity, right? Like, how many times am I checking my email before this thing happens? Losing insane productivity and also not actually serving, right? Not actually living my mission, my message, not, not actually being proud of myself for what I'm doing. And it, it almost always worked out. Like, I never had an interview or a meeting or something where I just massively underperformed and actually sucked, right? That, that never really happened. But I was always afraid of it happening. And so I had to teach myself, this is what I want to do. Like, the only thing worse than me not doing this is, is me doing this and canceling, right? Or them— me never doing an interview and me never doing a meeting. And just recognizing that it was just fear talking. And again, the fears of me disappointing people and failing in front of somebody else. I'm sitting here filming in, in the car. Nina just came back. We love you, Nina. Nina's, uh, doing some grocery shopping and I'm filming here, you know, in the car. We got the dogs here in the back Teemo's chilling. And this used to make me afraid, you know, that— look, there's a guy who just pulled up next to me. He's not watching, but in my head you'd be like, this guy's watching, you know. Be afraid of filming in a parking lot, be afraid of filming, uh, walking down the street. I'd be afraid of filming with my sister in the room, you know. I used to be afraid of all of that. So what is that? It's just fear of other people's opinions. Why am I afraid of this guy? Why am I afraid of that guy? I don't know that guy, right? Why am I afraid of him and his opinion? First off, he doesn't even care, right? He's not even looking at me. He doesn't even care. Maybe he never even noticed that I was filming, period, right? So we think people care. They don't care. On the off chance that he actually cares, Maybe he is judging me and thinks I'm crazy holding this camera up with the tripod in my hand. Maybe he thinks I'm crazy. Great. If somebody's leading with that, then they hate their own life. Like, if somebody's leading with just negative judgment, he's got his own issues to deal with that have nothing to do with me. Or maybe he's inspired. Maybe this guy goes, look, he pulled out his phone. Maybe he's making his own YouTube video. Maybe he's inspired. Maybe that guy is now going to be the next YouTube sensation. Let's go! So we assume that everybody's gonna watch us, everybody's only looking at us, and, and we're gonna disappoint and be a giant failure, and everybody's gonna laugh and ridicule us, right? Like, that's the thought that's, that's in our head, where the reality is most people don't care. Most people, right? Like, 90% of people don't even care. 5% of people might judge you, and they're in a really negative spot themselves. And the other 5%, maybe they're inspired by you and they see that and they go and do something with their life. But you playing small and listening to that fear instead of actually taking some kind of action will always lead to a negative spot. Like, you know that you could do more, you want to do more, you want to serve on a bigger scale, but listening to that fear instead is keeping you stuck. This is one of the biggest problems is for entrepreneurs is that you, you have all these great ideas that are flowing through you, right? You've got, you've got an endless list of ideas. How big is your list of things that you could do that you get excited by when you look at them? And then how many are you actually doing? Well, not very many. You're missing the momentum because at the end of the day, you could write down a list of all these reasons why it can't work out and, and when the timing is going to be just right and perfect, right? I'll start this on January 1st, or start this next month, or next week, or Monday, or on my birthday, or some artificial day. You come up with some reason of when you should be starting this thing, right? But if you actually examined it, if you actually took a little step back and looked at your goals that you haven't hit, that you haven't started, that just remain an idea and you've never taken momentum on— if you actually took 5 minutes to step back from it, create a little distance, and look at them and look at your list of reasons why you haven't started, really it's just fear. And when you can catch that, that's when you make a life-changing decision. Because as long as you are not chasing down the things that you want to do because you're afraid of somebody else's judgment of you, as long as that is the thing that rules you, you will never win. You will never accomplish anything great, and you'll you'll live life with regret. So even now, my biggest fear is still disappointing people, and the ongoing challenge is to catch it. And when you can catch it, and when you can no BS catch it, to say, I'm just throwing up a bunch of excuses, but really I'm just afraid— when you can catch it, then summon the courage to go do the difficult thing. Summon the courage to say, I'm gonna I'm gonna take this fear head on. Because as long as that fear runs your life, you stay stuck. And every time you catch the fear and you do it because of, not just feel the fear and do it anyway, feel the fear and do it because of, you start to teach yourself to be a little stronger, a little more courageous, and you move a little bit closer to becoming the person that you are capable of being. Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight all of the lessons learned in this video, as well as pull out our 3 favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something. The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, There's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business. I'll see you there.

Let's not demonize technology, which a lot of people are doing because they want to use it as an excuse to not do it. Realize that technology is the gateway to real interaction and your life will change. The biggest reason people are unhappy right now is because they value somebody else's opinion more than they value their own. That is the number one blanket statement that I've got for everybody. Your mother's point of view on you, your wife's point of view on you, your boyfriend's point of view, your homie's point of view, like the reason I'm super happy is nobody can tell me nothing. My wife, mom, and daughter can walk into my room right now, tell me I'm a piece of crap, and I would be 100% unfazed. That is some gangster emotional structure. And that's why I can never lose. I know who I am and I just am unfazed. So if my mom, daughter, and wife could come in and tell me I'm a piece of crap and I'm cool, what do you think that troll on Instagram that says I suck does? Nothing. So you need to figure out the following. It is very likely that either your mom or dad screwed you up. They made you insecure. They didn't love you enough. They told you they, you weren't good because they weren't good and misery loves company. Once you face that demon, once you cut out negativity and the people that hold you down and you surround yourself with positivity and don't confuse delusion. Don't watch my videos and rah-rah up and you don't put any work in, nothing good's gonna happen. You're just gonna watch my videos. So don't get it confused but life is basic. You're either on the optimism team or you're on the pessimism team. You're either on the offense or you're on the defense. The reason people are unhappy is because, let's talk about money and unhappiness. Your 3 best friends have a BMW and you don't. You think it's that. You don't realize that I loved when all my friends had BMWs and I had nothing. It's just perspective, man. What are we doing here? Like, what are you valuing? Everybody's on defense. All the immigration issues in the world. Nobody's taking yours. You think some immigrant's taking your job? You suck. Like, if you think that, right? You think somebody else is taking your spot? This is the world. We live in the richest, like, you know how rich this world is? In the UK market, you live in the UK and you're complaining? Get the hell out of here. So that's practical. You have a family member or a childhood that put you in a mindset of defense? And listen, I know I'm gonna get a lot of hits on Twitter and Instagram about this interview now when I spit this 'cause I know a lot of people haven't heard of me or have context on me. Let me just say this, the answer to everything is and what now? Right, like I know people grew up in alcoholic households. I know people were molested. I know people had somebody steal all their money. Here's my problem, nobody Nobody cares. Like, what are you waiting for? Like, nobody's— there is no fair fairy flying down from the earth and saying, you were born an African American in America where that's an issue. Here's a million dollars. That's not happening. So my thing is, instead of dwelling and wishing how it was, understand, back to the next practical part of your question, that the internet is now here. And guess what? The internet's not a 76-year-old white man. It's the internet. And that means everybody's got a shot. So go take yours. It's happening on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. Go figure it out instead of shitting on it and thinking it sucks and go get your money, happiness, and that's it. Simple as that. I got no time for people complaining because it's just not true anymore. 1986? Yes. 2018? Why do you think #MeToo is happening now? The internet won. It's over. Minimum amount of money you want to make for your life. Like, what would be the minimum amount of money that you make every year that allowed you to live and do that content media site? What do you think?

Maybe £40,000, £50,000 maybe?

Great, so you're like, what is amazing about that, If that's where you're at, well then at this young of an age and that's where you're at and the fact that you're even here and you know, it's just unbelievable amounts of content in written, audio, and visual form on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and podcast and I will tell you I would be flabbergasted in 3, 4, 5, 6 years unless you suck, which you may, but if you don't suck, And you have that little of a financial need, right? Which is remarkable. Which is the biggest thing. Somebody here, I don't know if they're here, said, "You made me realize I didn't need Rolexes," and things of that nature, right? Like, the biggest reason so many of you will fail is your number for success is far greater than his. You think you need a million, which will then mean that you're gonna do a lot of things when you don't get a million very quickly that won't ever get you a million. So if you think what I just said is cool, which is bleed for 6 years in a row, you'll probably get sponsorship or sales of product to $40,000 a year. To me, that's what I did. I knew what I wanted. I was willing to give up my 20s for it. Gave 'em up. Gave 'em up. You know, somebody said it's difficult not to document right now. I'm like, But I didn't, right? They're like, "Should I build my business or should I document?" I'm like, "Both." He's like, "Well, I gotta pick one." I'm like, "Build your business." So if your ambitions are that humble, which they are, that's incredible. That excites me. Because by the way, here's the funny part. That's who I was too. I just needed $100,000 a year. Just, that seemed rich to me, right? I was like, cool. I'll be okay, like I'll have a house, like, you know, it's not, you know, I just needed to play, I needed the game. And too many people, too many of you in here want the stuff, not the game. When you fall in love with the game, everything's different, 'cause you've already won, that's real, it sounds cliché, but it's real. You find what you're looking for. I've been giving a lot of thought to kind of just watching what I'm seeing out there in the social, digital, ecosystem, and very honestly, just real life. And I'm watching so many people over the last 2 to 3 years look for negativity, look for something that's wrong, find where people disagree with them, fight, look for woe is me, downside, half glass empty. And then I go to a Twitter search or look around the world, and I find ridiculously beautiful things every day. Every day. Thousands of kind acts randomly by people. People that I have conversations with who see the opportunities, whether it's in business like voice and AR or crypto or whatever it may be. Just this amazingly interesting thing that I feel the majority of you are looking for the wrong. While there's plenty of wrong and plenty of right in the world, it comes down to one very simple thing. What are you choosing to look for? Because I promise you, if you right now, and I'm making this video for one reason, 24 hours of trying to find the good, somebody saves a kitten, somebody opens the door, somebody does a nice thing for you, somebody says thank you, 24 hours of looking for positivity could change your life. Honestly, making this for one fucking person, one. One person watches this video, chooses to do 24 hours of looking for good instead of looking for bad, and they're game changers. DRock heard somebody at a convenience store saying, "Mom, you're always so negative. You're always so negative." I am blown away by the fact that life gets real simple if you break it down into this. Are you looking for the negative? This sucks, this government sucks, this person sucks, this is fucked. Or are you looking for the positive? She's nice, that's remarkable, I've got this opportunity. You choose what you're looking for because what you look for, you find. That's how fucked up it is. Life works. I know you help a lot of people start, especially younger people, but how does a person with 4 kids, yeah, existing right now, doesn't like his job, yeah, but just can't quit and sell stuff, yeah, and find stuff in the junkyard? So if you're listening and you're over 42, let's just use my age, um, there's something interesting. You said something that I help a lot of people that are younger. It only has to do with one thing: they actually believe in the technology we live in, right? This room is filled with guys right now who've taken advantage of YouTube or Instagram or just the Facebooks of the the world. And the only thing I need to do to break through somebody who's 47 in the suburbs of London who has a mortgage, debt, and 3 children is for them to understand that unlike when he or she and I grew up and there was no internet, the thought of like having a happy life was separate than taking care of what you were supposed to take care of. The fact that everybody can come home tonight at 6, 7, 8, 9 PM and then take out their phone or their iPad or whatever and get to work for 3 work more hours and go to sleep at midnight, get their good 6 or 7 hours of sleep. I'm not talking about don't sleep. A lot of people get me confused. My big thing is, if you're not happy— if you're happy and you make £37,000 a year, mazel tov, do you. But if you are not happy, if you hate your job, right, you can do something about it instead of blaming Brexit or blaming Trump or blaming your mom. Like, do something about it. And my point is, it's the internet. Today I lost 50% of all the money that I have. People are ditching me because they don't want to go to the conference anymore, so I've been just full-on fucking pissed. Right, getting fucked on today. Yeah. That sounds awesome.

All today.

Yeah, I like it. I like it. I like it, I'll tell you why. 'Cause even I can tell by your demeanor that you're gonna be okay. The fact that you realize that that negative moment has positive impact, the question is, The question is why did it happen? And that's why you have to be honest with yourself. I don't know, you know, but that's, you know, I'm pumped that you can have the, I mean, you're more positive than half the people here and it sounds like you're having a terrible day. [LAUGHTER] [Speaker] I'm definitely like, you know, super raged. That's why I wanted to ask you, how do you keep the positivity, the calmness when everything you said is hitting the fan? [Speaker] Because basically when things happen, I go the other way. Tonight, I just was reminding myself every time you came and the next person came, I was just reminding myself, literally in my own head, saying, you don't mean shit. I said it to one of you. I said, they said, how do you stay humble when you're so successful? I'm like, because I know if I die tomorrow, I'll have a good day on social media. Like, most comments ever on my latest post on Instagram, everybody's really nice. You'll be like, oh, fuck, that was the last one, weird. And I know that all of you will be on with your life a week later. You have to balance your ego with humility in the same way when I'm having my worst day, I realize I'm the best. I'm gonna be the best that ever does this. And so the way I handle things is when something's going one way, I use all my emotional strength to push the other way. What, are you gonna cry for the rest of your life 'cause your conference got fucked up? Like, I just, like, to me it's just like, look what the fuck's going on. Guys, if you're in this room right now, let me just remind you that there are 7.7 billion people. Literally right now as we stand here, there are women being shipped to be strippers in parts of our world. Right now as we stand here, there are women who are basically caged mentally, usually, and are being shipped to dance on a pole in Manhattan and in London. Do you understand what's, there's genocide going on right now. What do you think's going on? We lack perspective. Your conference got fucked up? Boo-hoo. I lost a client? Boo-hoo. There's people dying out there. So when Americans or Europeans talk to me about race or gender, I'm sad. It's their real life, but I remind them 'cause it's a positive thing, cool, but let me tell you about the person that's ranked 7 billion in the world. They fucking have it bad. And so I just, I struggle. Like, I wanna, listen, I'm weird. I think about things like animals. Like, I don't know. Like, if you're the best elephant, we are still better than you. Like, you know, like, we got Listen, you know I got hot on this about a year ago, the 400 trillion to one. It's impossible to be a human being. You won. I don't know how to get upset after that. I keep shit in perspective, right? Like, you're gonna learn from this. You fucked up. I promise you it's failing 'cause of you. And when you start owning your shit and not blaming other people, and I think this is the kick I've been on lately on Instagram, right? Like, blame yourself. You know why I'm always happy? I blame myself. When you blame yourself for real, you're gonna always be happy because you don't feel like somebody else controls you. My big ambition is to be an all-time entrepreneur by both my success in my career, but what has become more evident to people, I think, recently is also by influencing as many people as possible in a positive way. So that they get theirs. And that means the person that goes from the job that they're not excited about to making 84, you know, thousand sterling a year, being happy talking about their proper football team on Instagram and YouTube, to the young gal right now in Sweden who's gonna start a $500 million media company. So I think to be the great entrepreneur of this generation, there's clearly the Bezos's and the Elon Musk's and the Zuck's. I don't think I'm gonna be able to create that kind of wealth. I just wanna create obnoxious amount of wealth. But, you know, a billion dollars and a billion people, I think puts you above everybody else, and I think that is where my behavior is right now. Like, why am I doing this podcast? But VaynerSports, VaynerMedia, the book, K-Swishies, podcasts. You do a lot. Yeah, man. Look, here's what I think. I think we get one at-bat. The number one thing that scares me in life is regret. I really, really, really don't want to be on my deathbed, whether that's tomorrow or when I'm 97, and think I should have done that. I should like— that's, that spooks me, right? Like hard work, people judging me, leaving, you know, trolling me on social media. Like all the stuff that normal people worry about, I don't worry about. I worry about regret, and so I'm trying to squeeze everything out of my life, and so yeah, I do a lot.

How would you say, you know, okay, might be on Twitter in 2 years, or how do you go about finding that underpriced attention, and how do you know it's underpriced?

Too many of you in here have ego around your time when it's the only thing you got. So the reason I always know is 'cause I work. 'Cause I work. I work, I try things, I test, I DM you back, I tweet, I work. So when you're in shit, you taste it. And when you've done it for 20 years, you see patterns. Facebook's still underpriced, you just can't target 22 to 25-year-old African American fans of football because other people are doing that too now. It's just like Google, early on you could just target soccer. One word, 5 cents a click. I did it. Wine. Wine. Wine. But then I had to put, at the end of the game now, I gotta put 2013, you know, Heller Cellars, Zinfandel, like long tail. Real estate. If you're right about London. Look, this is my favorite. Do you know, do you understand that somebody once bought this building for a dollar? Somebody bought the land we're on for a dollar once. That happened. It's a long time ago. How do you know? You're a practitioner. The reason I do is how I learn. You gotta put out, all of you are like, well, I can't do podcasting and Facebook and Twitter. Oh, but I can't, I can vlog, but I can't. Why? If you want it so bad. My thing is why? If you want it so bad, why can't, if you wanna have a media company around Caribbean food culture, in this culture, why can't you? You know what I want to see? I want to see all your minutes. I want to see all your minutes. I want to give you DRock for the day. I want to watch you from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. Let me promise you something. You're gonna get exposed. So that's why DailyVee happened. 'Cause you guys, like a lot of you didn't know me before DailyVee. How many people knew me before DailyVee? Oh, not bad, right? You got to really know me post DailyVee. You heard hard work and hustle before, you were confused. And I've been doing that shit every day for 20 years. Like I wasn't born 6'7" and can run like a cheetah. I could wish I was something or I can realize I am something and try to maximize on that. It's a game of poker. You get a hand. Nobody's gonna cry for you about your hand. Nobody's gonna say, oh, it's terrible that you're not fast or tall or gorgeous or talented or can sing. It is what it is, and now the only thing that can happen is you can figure out how to navigate it. The second you stop dwelling and the second you start doing Everything changes. They don't give a fuck. The second you understand that and just start trying to make it happen with that energy, you win. I'm 26. I want to be, I want to say a marriage counselor. I'm finding that every time I mention that, like, oh, you know, what do you want to do with your life? And I tell people this, their instant response is, you know, how are you gonna do that? You're not married. My parents are divorced as of I was 8, since I was 8. I'm not married. I can answer your question right away. We're gonna build an amazing— Can you? Yeah, we're gonna build an amazing case study together. I'm gonna give you 3 names and then you're gonna cruise into the sunset of success, which is let's figure out the 3 most successful coaches in the history of sport that everybody knows of that didn't play that sport. Bill Belichick, even though I hate him with all my guts, did not play football. He grew up in the football game, right? His dad was a coach, what have you, but Bill Belichick did not play football, and he will probably, unfortunately, go down as the greatest, or if not one of the greatest, head coaches of all time. You don't have to be, listen, I think you have to be, people have to be thoughtful. I hate 22-year-old life coaches that haven't lived life, but if they speak about, here's my life experiences, and why, you can eliminate though very quickly the argument. When somebody says to you, but how are you gonna, you can't do, let me, first of all, a couple other questions. Are your friends and your circle telling you you can't do that, or are customers that you're trying to do that with telling you that they don't wanna go with you because you're not married? No, this is, This is more acquaintances, uh, people, you know, that I run into. Yeah, so listen, that's a mistake. Listen, that's a mistake. Like, you can't listen to acquaintances. Their opinions don't matter. Okay, you can't listen to— you can't listen to that. How do you— without— I'm sorry. No, go ahead. I'm sorry, I'm getting excited. You should talk. Go. So am I. I'm like pumped. Um, Basically, like, I wanna, because I follow you and I've been following you for a couple years now, and I do agree with what you have to say about education. I do think people are gonna start moving from, you know, going to school and sending their kids to school to finding ways— I've got your answer. I've got your answer, and a lot of people get it. You know what I'm gonna ask you. Of course I know. I know exactly where you're going. So if you're not gonna get the PhD, there's only a few ways to justify and gives confidence to the end market what, why they would jump with you. It's crazy to me that so many people, I was watching 60 Minutes last night in the background as I was working, and the way that Oprah was justifying the person was, he has a PhD in this and a master's in that. Even 60 Minutes used those pieces of paper to create authority. In our society, pieces of paper paper from businesses, and that's what colleges are, has been the authority. The only other people that get authority are the people that have gone out and done it and have people co-signing them, right? Makes sense. So the way you're, and this is why I love working for free. When you don't have a piece of paper, right, one of the reasons I love working for free is working for free for somebody who is that person in society, whether they got a piece of paper or they're puffed Daddy and they just did it becomes the equity that you trade under once you become great at something, right? Andy, Andy who's sitting here right now, every single famous person I see gives him a lot of street cred right away, not because he got a degree for personal branding and marketing from Virginia Tech. What degree did you get? Political science. Not because of his political science degree from Virginia Tech, but because he went and worked underneath me and I went out and did it and I always give him love and good vibes, the end. It's not Babin's degree from the USC School of Film or NYU.

I dropped out.

You know, so what you need to do is one of two moves if you're not gonna go get a PhD and have everybody comfortable with it. You either need to go work for somebody that is the authority and ask thousands of people that are authorities and work for them, or— You need to give your services for free to 5 couples, crush it for them, and use their word of mouth and endorsements and as your leverage point. Once you've got the money. Yeah. And you get your first paycheck and you're like, you know what? I've got some money in the bank now. Where do you go to then build that money? I think the reason you feel it right now is about a year ago I got into the whole mindset of like, oh crap, there's a lot of people watching me who have zero. So I started talking about the flip challenge and go to Craigslist. But in general, most of my career was talking more about people that had a little something. That's a very easy place for me. I think the answer to you or anybody who's listening is what do you want to happen in life? I wanna buy the New York Jets American football team. I've gotta be on the offense. But if you have a little bit of money and you don't wanna work super hard for the rest of your life and you don't have ambition for all-time legacy, well then you should put your money into Facebook and Amazon stock and watch it grow over the next 20 years and buy yourself a nice little cottage in the country when you're done. The answer to your question is completely 100% predicated on your ambition. What is the ambition that you have? If you wanna buy a Premier League team, you better go on the offense and pour every one of those dollars back into hyper upside. If you wanna just chill and smoke weed in Ibiza, well then you don't have to.

Why do you hate Fridays so much?

Because I hate people that live their lives for the weekend. I'm blown away by people celebrating the end of the week like the weekend is your escape from your reality. It breaks my heart. My friends like live for Friday night. Like they know they get the week— like Monday morning's the worst. To live your life where you love Friday night, Saturday and Sunday and despise Monday through Thursday or Friday morning, is devastating to me because you're wasting too much of your life. Like 50% of your entire life is predicated on what you do at work. It's just a huge percentage of one's life. And I'm trying to put pressure on the conversation to say if you love Friday that much, then you need to really look at Monday through Thursday and see if you can do something about it. Sunday night I'm like chomping. I'm like a fighter before a fight like in the dressing room. I can't, I try to go to sleep early on Sunday because I can't wait I'm excited for Monday 'cause I get to put my jersey on. This is not your grandpappy's life. We have the internet. You can make shit happen. You can build businesses or side hustles, take less money and like live a little more humbly to set up your next 50 years. So many of you are so hungry for short-term, short-term gains. Like maximizing the job that paid you $3,000 more but it's not as fun but you want that $3,000. For what? For what? For a new iPhone? For what? You get to live life one time. I'm talking about if you genuinely dislike what you do so much that you beg for Friday. Listen, I lived 12 years of this and definitely at least 9. I just don't understand why people relegate into losing mentality and just thinking they can't. You can't because you want to be on the bowling team or softball or play video games. That's why you can't. There's plenty of time. Technology and the way we live doesn't care about my opinion or my feelings, and it doesn't care about yours either. And so you can walk around Earth and judge, oh, it's so sad that all these kids can't communicate because they're on the phone anymore, and you could talk about a day and age when it was simpler and nicer and all this. Nobody gives a fuck. And if you don't adjust to the reality of the situation, you will be completely left behind. Too many people are executing or hoping or trying to figure out how to live in a world that used to be or the way they wish it was versus attacking the reality of the world. And here is the reality of the world, my friends. The cell phones that you're all holding right now or in your pocket are the remote controls of our society. They are the single most important thing in the world. There's nothing close. Whatever you want you want to happen in life, you first need somebody's attention and then you need to tell them about it. It was called the newspaper, the television, and the radio. Now it's called a blog, a vlog, or a podcast. It's the same thing. Nothing's changed except one thing. Your attention is moving to a new place and leaving an old place. I'm making this very simple, very black and white, very basic, if you do not spend next year completely obsessing over how you become successful on Facebook and Instagram, you will be disproportionately less likely to win. The ad product on those two platforms are disproportionately underpriced, and that, that is where you should be trading. You are grossly underestimating what's happening right now. 98% of people are grossly underestimating how good it is right now. You will look back at this talk, all my content during this era. Why am I producing so much content during this era? Why am I flying around the entire world over and over speaking to this subject? It's because I know what I'm talking about right now is gonna go away. And I I think we can all agree I'm not hedging up here right now. I'm desperately trying to force this down your fucking mouth, right? You heard it, and I believe that 95% of you will not do anything about it. You'll do enough to make it feel like you did something, and you will regret not going all in. How many people here play poker?

Good.

I don't. But if you do, when you have the best hand, it's a good idea to go all in. I absolutely know I will be the greatest entrepreneur of this era because I'm gonna win on the two fronts that people are gonna judge by. I'll make enough money so that I'm in the conversation, and I will fuckin' inspire and help more entrepreneurs than the rest of the field combined. I'm talkin' all of 'em. Because what Elon Musk does in his actions to inspire is incredible. It's incredible. And Steve Jobs and this, but what I'm doing is different. And I know it. The end. And by the way, it's 'cause I want it more. It's not that I'm better or, I just want that. That's the part I want. It's what this whole thing is. That's why the documentary, like people don't even understand what I'm actually doing. I'm leaving so much, like from a business man's standpoint, I'm leaving so much money on the table. Right.

But money's not the goal.

No. You know what's funny for me? Money stopped being the goal at $100,000. I couldn't believe I made $100,000 a year. I was like, that was it. And since then nothing's been the same. Doesn't feel the same. Not a million, not 10 million. Doesn't feel the same. $100,000. The number one mistake that people are making in life today and it's and it's just so unbelievably obvious, is they're living life in the middle. You know, 99.9% of the people that watch or listen to this content are living in the middle. They're hedging and making excuses and justifying why they are not 100% happy. It's because, like every other person out there besides a few select people, They are living in this middle ground, and I just say, fuck the middle. And when I think about how you win in business, in entrepreneurship, but most of all in life, it's by understanding the macro and micro opportunities and executions. If you really understand how to break through, how to be in that zone, how to really, really, really win the game, it comes down to a strategy that looks like this. Are you balancing your ego with your humility? Are you balancing your ego with your humility? Do you equally think that you're the greatest of all time and you can do it, and that also you're a piece of shit and nobody cares when you're gone? I really see that there's so few people that take advantage of what's out there. Because a lot of people here hear that stuff and think it's more like The Secret. Like you just sit and you dream it into existence. It's got a very interesting stigma. Listen, I, for example, as you know, don't love positioning myself as a motivational speaker. Even the content you just saw. But no question, the mindset is the operating system of our lives, and I'm an absolute believer I'm a big believer in cutting out negativity, going on the offense, like positive thinking, like what's the alternative, like practicality. I'm a big believer in that stuff. But action is really the biggest thing, huh? And I do believe that the right mindset leads to the right actions. So yes, I do think you have, listen, to me it's about getting poison out of the system. Right? I mean, look, you know how many people lose in your situation? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Because that's what they decide to think about. Right. You didn't. Right. The end. Right. It's binary. Right. And so, you know, one of the things I do often is the people around me that are thinking about negativity, I'm like, what's the alternative? There's so much negative, there's like, this scares the shit out of people. Right. You're positive, they're running around with their legs and complaining, right? Right. So I'm with you, I couldn't agree more. Just for the fine things in life, life for the bottles and the models and the private planes, I think you're gonna lose. And it definitely is not my definition of an entrepreneur. My definition of an entrepreneur is somebody who can't live without doing their thing and trying to create. Literally suffocate it. For me, I think that that's what's amazing about anything, which is there's many different definitions. For you, you know, go out, work your face off, win, and reward yourself with something is exactly right. For me, the reward is pouring more of the dollars and energy into the company, not buying stuff for myself. It's one and the same. It's one and the same. I don't judge, you know, I talk a lot about like, stop posting cash and Lamborghinis and private jets, not because I don't think one deserves it after they work work hard, it's that so many of the people on Instagram that are posting that are fronting. 100%. I mean, they're like literally driving to a private plane pad, taking the photo, and then driving home. They're full of shit. Mm-hmm. And so, to me, I think it's amazing if somebody wants to buy an Armani suit or a $5,000 pair of belt or a diamond ring for $100,000. I don't, but that doesn't mean that's right or wrong. What I'm doing with that same $100,000 instead of a ring is I'm hiring 2 more people because I'm trying to buy the jewelry company, not a piece of the jewelry. I think reputation is based on truth, and so in today's world where there's nowhere to hide, instead of hiring a PR person in 1994 and getting the right articles, I think it's just delivering. Crush it for your employees, crush it for your clients, and fundamentally give without expectation. Go give a keynote at a college with no expectation. Answer those 10 emails of people reaching out to you that have nothing to offer you and just give because they actually may have a ton to offer you. What I love is that reputation is becoming a more transparent game and so the only way to build a reputation is to do the right things. So overdeliver for the ones that have something or the ones that don't have something. Way too many entrepreneurs are way too calculated about what's in it for me. If you can reverse that and think about what's in it for them, you'll find out that a lot of things are in it for you. I'm a big believer that it's no different than swimming or riding a bike, two things that didn't come natural to me. I started swimming and riding a bike late in my life. You know, like, I think, I don't think I started swimming until I was 9 because I feared them. But the answer was literally to just jump in the pool to start swimming, to just like skin your knee, right? To take in a little water. You know, I just think you do it. Like, I just, like, I think the best thing that could happen to you is if you hear this advice, there's a networking event in town, you go, you put on your nice little VaynerMedia Henley name tag, you walk up, you see somebody, you're inspired by my 5 minutes with Gary, you go up and and you go, "Hi," to John, and John looks at you and says, "Get the fuck out of my face." I actually think that would be the best thing that could ever happen to you. I think the best thing that can happen to somebody when they fear something is for them to taste the thing they feared aggressively and immediately when they try something. I think that it just eliminates, like, you'll literally be there, and whether you go crying in the bathroom or just like, becoming silent or walking out of there or walking and getting a cheeseburger for 5 seconds and coming back, I think the great thing that would happen to you is that you'd be like, okay, well that happened, now what? Like once people understand and taste the thing they fear, it becomes a hell of a lot less scary. You're so confident, so sure of yourself, but when you were just starting— Your mom? My mom. What'd she do for you? When I was 9 years old and opened the door for an elderly woman at a McDonald's, she reacted as if I won the Nobel Peace Prize. Good mom. What my mom did was super smart. She overreacted on everything that I was doing that was a good human trait, and she held me accountable for things that didn't matter, like grades. My mom built huge self-esteem in me, and I feel like the biggest reason I am who I am today to everybody is 'cause I feel so guilty and so grateful for what she did for me that I wanna do it for everybody else, which is, guess what? You suck at a ton of shit. Good, so does everybody else. You're also probably pretty fucking rad at something. Try as many things as possible until you figure out what you're rad at and you like, and go fucking do that for the rest of your life, and stop giving a fuck about everybody else. One theme that I really, people are like, yo, how do I build my self-awareness? How do I build my optimism? How do I change my mindset? It's the people around you. If your best friend is Debbie Downer, you're not gonna be as optimistic as you can be. If the people from your town that you hang out with have no ambition, you're going absolutely nowhere. If you listen to your dad every day about how the government sucks, you're not gonna love your life, you've got to audit your inner circle. Podcast friends, listen to me. Listen very carefully to this mashup and these thoughts because this underlining tone of who you surround yourself with absolutely fundamentally changes who you are. Period, end of story. When I hung out with Silicon Valley in 2005 to 2010, I was a different dude. When I hang out in the agency land right now, I'm a different dude. When I'm, like, when I was in college, at Mount Ida, different dude. Like, you're a different person. And I'm telling you right now, this morning podcast, or this podcast, 'cause I know some of you listen to it at late, this podcast, if I can get one of you, one person listening to this, to dump one loser person in their circle and add one, whoever's that smiley, happiest fuckin' person at work that you don't talk to that much, that's at the cubicle around the way, or that awesome, like that, you know how everybody has like, you have a friend friend, but their friend, like went to college with them, you don't really know them, but like the 3 times you see them a year, they're positive as shit, and like they're fucking doing things, surround yourself with those people. Seek out your friend's friend who brings positive vibes and make them part of your world, and cut out your homie from college that thinks the world sucks. Watch what that addition and subtraction does to your life. How are you? I'm good, how are you? What's your name? Alicia. Alicia, how you doing? I'm good. Good. Okay, so me, my— I want to become, um, an author. Okay. Just like you. Amazing. And I have been writing, it's my passion. And I have— I had applied to this writing, um, YC team, and I spilled my heart out. It was just me. Yes. They declined me. Yeah. So it's like, it's like It's like, they— Yeah, I get it. It's like, that's me. Yeah. It's like, they're not accepting me. Fuck them. But it's like, should I— No, but honestly guys, first of all, they didn't decline you. One random fucking person that read your shit declined you. Fuck them. But it's like, imagine if I changed some stuff up. If I changed me, they would've probably took me. You're wrong. You're wrong. Listen to my face. I'm telling you right to your face, you're wrong. You're valuing somebody else's opinion too much. You're wrong. I'm just telling you, this is not a debate. Wrong. Do you understand? You're letting one random person, do you understand how many people would have hired me? None. Who's got Instagram in here? Cool, go to it right now. Please do me a huge fucking favor. Go to Instagram, go to GaryVee, that's my account. Go 10, 11 posts back, you'll see my report card. I was ranked 243rd out of 254 in my class. 243 out of 254 in my class. You know why? Because I knew it was For me, it might not be for you. This is about self-awareness. You have to know who the fuck you are. But for me, it was bullshit 'cause I didn't need it. 'Cause I wasn't, I didn't give a fuck about Saturn, how many rings Saturn had. Listen to me, you can't let something be valuable more than you. You're pandering to them. Let them come to you. Take that same essay and post that shit on Instagram with a photo and see what happens. See what happens. Let the market decide, not some One middle management person that read your shit. Good. Of course it's true. And when you're young and 13 and 15 and 9, you think you gotta change shit up because you don't know how it's played. That's why I'm here to tell you exactly how it's played. One fucking person read your story, my dear, and fuck that person.

How do you balance clouds and the dirt, and which do you focus on more and why?

So to define to everybody how I define clouds and dirt, clouds Clouds to me is like the why, the strategy, the macro, the big thinking, the big picture, the operating system of like how you do things. And then the dirt is having the humility to go to these meetings, to actually, I post all my Instagram photos, the doing, the humility. Ego, humility, strategy, execution, clouds and dirt. The way I balance it is they're both important at all times. I can swing back and forth to them. Them, I can literally go from a meeting where, like, the call I had on the way out to our first meeting here today with Purell was with VaynerMedia's C-suite about a restructuring of how we handle all our business. Super meta. And then literally hung up and I posted something on Instagram and wrote all the copy as we were walking into our last meeting. To me, I balance them by doing whichever one is needed at the time. And so I don't think about it as balancing. Balancing it. I think about it as time allocation, like what should I be doing with my time? And I think that, you know, you made a joke of like we did a shoot for a client and we debated on the phone for 10 minutes where the fuck should be located for that. I think that's being in the middle, right? I think pandering to the way companies do things, we just had a meeting where they're like, oh, that was provocative. Us as the Gallery Media Group, hold and all the other things we do. Us doing what every other publishing company does is not a good idea. That's the middle. That's not gonna get you to the next place. And so for me, I'm just in the mindset of, you know, either doing humble, dirty work, like the reason I am the best strategist in social media out there, I really believe this, is because I do both. I both sit at the top of a media company that really does it at scale for the biggest companies in the world, but at the same token, there's very few humans that put out 140 pieces of content by hand a week and reads the comments. I mean, I literally just replied to Kyle in my comments, and I'm gonna show you 'cause I don't think you guys believe me when I do these fucking rants. I literally just replied to Kyle one second before Babin's like, let's do this video. Literally what I was doing one second before then was replying to, literally hearted Kyle's comment of, "I'm digging the recent pics and quotes, man." Right? Many, many people watching here would argue that my time at this point in my career of reading Kyle's comment not Harding it in that minute was a bad use of my time. I think the dirt is the reason why I come up with such good clouds. Being in the trenches drives my strategy. I live in reality and practicality, not in thesis or ideology or reading headlines or reading about people doing marketing. So I don't balance it. I just do whatever is needed at that second. Macro, you know, it's back to macro, micro. Micro speed. I'm just always doing something. Right, Bobby? Like, that is the big breakthrough everybody on the team says. Like, there's just every second is, and so the reason I can do something every second is, and I don't watch a YouTube video or stand by the water cooler and talk about the Rockets game for 10 minutes, is 'cause I always value the dirt, and so in that half a second The second that I had right now in the transition of the call that I just had about a macro VaynerX strategy, right? The second transition I had before I started doing a macro thing like the vlog was Harding fucking Kyle's two cents on my last Instagram post, clouds and dirt. I was really an unusual Eastern European immigrant that came during that time. Every one of my friends, every one of my parents' All my best friend's kids were straight A students, 'cause education was the way out. If you go to Instagram, literally right now, and look at my account, GaryVee, 2 posts ago, I posted my high school report card, 'cause nobody believes me. But I was a straight D and F student. Somewhere around 4th grade, I realized that Saturn was not going to impact my life, and I didn't care about it. So, self-awareness is a son of a bitch, you know, and honestly, besides health, for everybody in this room, I wish you self-awareness, 'cause once you understand who you are, you can do a lot of damage. All of us suck at a lot of stuff, all of us are good at a lot of stuff, the game is to figure that out. I, through good parenting, through circumstance, through who knows really what, got very self-aware. To wear very early in my life. And listen, at 13, you know, listen, it was tough for my friends' parents to say I was a loser because I got Ds and Fs. It wasn't fun for my teachers to say that I wasn't going to amount to anything. Here was my biggest problem. I was 13 years old, I was making $3,000 a weekend selling baseball cards, I had $47,000 in cash under my bed, and I wasn't selling weed. I thought I was amazing. You're asking asking a different question. You're asking when's the time to jump in the pool? When's the time to kiss the boy? When's the time, you know, to get married? You know, you're talking about like when's the time to take the training wheels off the bike? You know? When's the time to fucking live your life? That's probably why I make content. The answer is I don't know. Nobody knows. There's no right answer. There's that moment in time. This is why I produce content every day. You might be watching my content every day and it might be this conversation with us in the vlog that is, you know, it's very meta. This might have been the one. This might have been the one. On this day because of a conversation you had last night because of the weather outside because of a news headline because of the patterns of how the 4 Instagram posts came in your feed. It might just be the time you finally do what the fuck you're supposed to do. And I think a lot of people think of it as like quit your job and go do your journey, right? Things you're thinking about, others. I think of it a little bit different. Sometimes it's— Practicality. That's exactly right. Sometimes it's like, mm, I've been doing this nightlife and t-shirt thing for 7 years. Why don't I go work for something smart Why don't I stop for a year, reset? Why don't I go travel? Why don't I sell my home that I don't use 90% of, take that money, get an apartment, and then do something with that money? So to me, it's not just like the fancy sizzle of like, now jump into the rest of your life. It's also like audit, understand what you need, break up with that person, marry that person. You want to start your career? Go back to corporate for an hour, AKA a year or two, to reset. You know? Just do. It's the indecisiveness that is the poison. Because you can always undo. [Speaker:GARY] The biggest thing about doing is the undoing that people don't see. I'm always like, okay, good, and then like, If you fail, go back. But people don't want the scarlet letter. They don't want the judgment. This is why you have to tune everything out. Because if you can go and judge, start your t-shirt brand or your pin brand or your video blog and it fails, if you just think you can go back to it, well that sounds cool. But if you feel like, oh, but then everybody's gonna clown on me and say, like then you're, if your pessimistic mom's gonna be like, see, I told you you could never do it. If you can't get over that, then you're stuck. And I think there's an enormous amount of confusion in the system for 28-year-olds about where they are in life. I think the— Yeah, that's my biggest problem. I've been watching a lot of you and watching a lot of your videos and a lot of things that you do and all kinds of other stuff and it's helped me kind of come out and realize, you know, my time is when I ever find it. I got my own clock. 100, bro, honestly, no joke, I feel like you're closer to 2.8 years old than the way you think about 28. Like, you've got 60 years of execution in front of you. That's like 2 full lives more of execution and the problem with 28 is 28's a fucking tricky thing. 28's tricky. 28 is too many people up because I'm telling you that looking at 30, like, wait a minute, it's like, oh, shit, 30's here. Shouldn't I quote unquote have my life together? You know, and then at 28 you got, you know, 5 to 50% of your friends that you went to high school or college with that are like, you know, getting married, having, you know, getting somewhere in their life, da da da. Don't let anybody else Don't let this fucking clock dictate your game. Dude, honestly, brother, I'll shoot it fucking straight to you. I'm 42 years old and I swear on everything I've got, I feel like I'm just starting and everything that people think I am and what I've accomplished and all that is in my own head 'cause I'm like, I haven't even fucking started. So imagine what I think about you at 28. My entire career, what allows me to be here today, what allows me to dream and be audacious about owning a professional football team is very simple. I chase underpriced attention. I chase properly priced attention, and I completely punt overpriced attention. Simple. I know that everybody in this room does things for 8 to 10 hours a day, every day of the day, of the week, the month, the year, on things that no no longer bring as much value as it did 6, 9, 14 years ago that helped you get to this point. I know that there's somebody in this room that if they started a B2B podcast, I know that if somebody in this room who had never thought about producing content or media, if they started a podcast, which they don't even have the beginnings of a thought of how to do that right now, But the good news is you literally go to Google and you type in, "How do I start a podcast?" I know that if somebody here started a podcast for this industry and put out an episode every week and interviewed a thought leader in this industry, that even though only 700 to 1,500 people would listen to it because it's obviously very niche in its content, that it would be the differentiator of growing their business. That it would lead to lead gen, that there are people that they're trying to chase to get the account that in turn a year later would be chasing them to be a guest on the show, which then would inevitably lead to them getting the business. My friends, please understand over the next period of time as I talk to you about some of these nuances that I am not a technologist. That had I not been in business, that I wouldn't want to have necessarily an Instagram or Snapchat LinkedIn account. It doesn't come natural to me. It's not necessarily what I want. What I want is to sell stuff. What I want is to run a successful business. What I want is to win. And to me, if you sit in this room and you do not realize how extreme the internet technology revolution actually is, you become vulnerable. You're not gonna change evolution and technology. You just need to figure out how to ride it so it doesn't kill you. And by the way, I mean this, I'm collecting the energy of the room thinking about what we talk about here. I mean this, I don't think it's bad. If you're not capable or willing to up your game, put in the work, hustle, you should lose. It's how you won. But everybody fights hard for 30 years and then wants to hold on. Athletes, you know what I hate about business that I love about athletes? When you're the best athlete in the world, you get the results. When you get to 36 and a younger lion comes along, you lose. In business, we have this weird that we're supposed to be rewarded at the end. Fuck you. I mean it. Fuck you. Take this internet serious for the last 20 years. Why the fuck should you be rewarded? Pay the fuck attention to who's giving you the advice because when you listen to outside voices, you're always going to regret it. My question's very simple. Would you rather appease the inconvenience right now in the short term or do you wanna sit around as a 78-year-old and fucking regret how you lived your life? That's the basic question. Are you willing to take the short-term lack of pain by conforming to the fucking system? Or do you actually want to do something with your life? Because this internet thing, the fact that there's 3 fucking cameras in this room right now, the fact that a million people almost on Instagram follow you, like, this is available. There is so much fucking abundance. If you're trying to reach the decision maker at a retail organization, that guy or gal is also the same person that I want to reach to sell a bottle of wine or a book to, and that space in his and her Facebook feed is only one space. So that is supply and demand. I used to buy that space 4 years ago for a dollar for every 1,000 impressions. Now it's 7. The longer you think this world doesn't exist and you fearmonger it, the longer you don't put money in, the longer I can extract all the value. I've lived this game. I'm not a hero because I took it from $3 to $50 million, $60 million, my dad's business. I actually am a schmuck. I should have spent more on Google. I had it figured out. Every time you typed in Cabernet Merlot, Silver Oak, Caymus, Napa, Bordeaux, I was showing up first because nobody realized it was good real estate. And it was only costing me 5 or 10 cents a click and I was making between between $7 and $80 in profit for something that was costing me $3 to get you through the funnel on the average of 60 people coming and 1 converting. I was stupid. I'm being serious with you. I stand here and have passion about LinkedIn and Facebook marketing in a B2B environment today out of regret for what I did from 2002 to 2005 because I should have spent more. It was basic math, but I just didn't understand Because I was young in my career and it just, I don't even know how to explain it to you. When it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true, right? I'm an immigrant, I was cynical, I just didn't, plus I also thought it was important to do direct mail and local commercials and magazine ads. I was doing it all, but in hindsight it was the great mistake of my career. The great mistake of my career was not spending more money on Google, and I promise you the great mistake of your accelerated growth for the 80% that just raised their hand is not taking advertising on LinkedIn and Facebook seriously because you don't think your person is on it. The biggest reason I think people are struggling with social media, literally people are pandering to a like on an Instagram post, not on necessarily what they're trying to do. So I think first and foremost, at a macro, you need to understand, are you actually building your business to sell it? Because then you may care about, you know, the EBITDA and how much profit you're making. And so that advice is important. VaynerMedia, it's gonna do $170 million and I'm not gonna make a penny. Like, I'm trying to pour it all back in. Literally, we may make zero profit this year, and it's because I don't want to sell it tomorrow and I don't need the dividends from the profits in a year to change my lifestyle. So I mean this, it's really important. You have to know what you're doing. If someone wasn't raised in that environment with that self-belief, how does one develop that for themselves. Surrounding themselves by people that do it for them or consuming content that does it for them. Penetrating people's skulls and reframing their game. Their mom told them they were a loser, I'm telling them they're a winner. I think I can out-market their mom. Their mom had a big head start and a whole lot of like emotional, like physiological advantages, but guess what? Give me 18 months of your time, give me 2 hours a day, I'll make you realize your mom and go do your thing. That's what I'm up to. I made content every day for 9 years before it started really happening. Okay. It's not sexy, it's just basic, but it works. And you've got the skill, you've got craft, and there's a lot of people that have craft, so you have to chip of your accelerated growth for the 80% that just raised their hand is not taking advertising on LinkedIn and Facebook seriously because you don't think your person is on it. The biggest reason I think people are struggling with social media, literally people are pandering to a like on an Instagram post, not on necessarily what they're trying to do. So I think first and foremost at a macro, you need to understand are you actually building your business to sell it because then you may care about, you know, the EBITDA and how much profit you're making. And so that advice is important. VaynerMedia I lived with 7 family members in a studio apartment in Queens. So it was super humble, and obviously my parents are very much my heroes. One, because my mom is the greatest parent of all time, and two, because my dad worked his face off. And even though I slept under the same roof literally every day of my life with my dad in the first 14 years of my life, I literally never saw him because he left at 7 AM or 6 AM and he came home at 10 PM and he worked 7 days a week. How many people here are immigrants or children of immigrants? Raise your hands. Awesome. So this group that just raised their hands, they know that immigrants in America have absolutely figured out one of the core secrets, which is, you know, work your face off and don't buy dumb shit. And so that's kind of what my family did for 7 or 8 years. You know, my dad wasn't making that much money, but a funny thing happens when you buy nothing but food at the lowest possible price and save, save, save, save. And very quickly, only 6 years after coming to America with $100, my dad was able to buy a small liquor store in New Jersey. We moved to New Jersey. That is where my entrepreneurial career began. When I was 6, I had a 5-lemonade-stand franchise. I manipulated my friends into standing behind the lemonade all day, and that is when I became obsessed with attention. And this is really interesting, as you can see up here, I day trade attention, culture, and build businesses. At 6 years old, I would spend my summer days literally walking up and down the streets of New Jersey, sitting down on the curb, watching cars drive by, so that I could figure out which tree or post was better for me to put a sign that said, "Lemonade a quarter." That is DNA. That's like somebody singing, that's like somebody throwing a pitch really, like, that is just pure DNA. I didn't read a Seth Godin book or go to Harvard Business School to figure out that attention was the number one asset. The one thing that combines every person here, from the cameramen back there who are producing, to the industry that is in this room, to me, to Mickey, to anybody else that's sneaked in, the one thing that fundamentally connects all of us is before you tell me how great your product and service is, you need my attention so that I listen. I am obsessed with attention. I am obsessed with this device because it has the attention. I am unemotional if it's ruining the kids and they don't know how to engage, or that you were sad that people go out to dinner and don't talk to each other. Technology does not care about your feelings. And so I, as a human, may have some opinions about parenthood and society and privacy as a human, but as a businessman, I am unemotional and not romantic. All I do is follow where the attention is, and I figure out how to storytell in there to create create the action that I desire. Say a couple things. Number 1, you have to find a way to genuinely appreciate yourself for your strengths and your shortcomings. Some people are just stunningly attractive. Some people— there's about 32 guys tonight here in Dallas that are about to get drafted that were remarkably athletic. You know, I wasn't either one of those two, and like That's okay, but I know how to sell stuff, and I'm a good guy. To me, what I would say to people is the judgment you're placing on yourself was created through either a combination of DNA or the way that you were brought up, and you need to spend time with optimistic, positive people that aren't judging you to break out of that framework. Glass half full. is a terrible way, you know, excuse me, glass half empty is a terrible way to live life. Like looking at everything and being pessimistic is the worst thing that can happen to you. And you should do everything in your power, whether that is going and seeing somebody, whether that is changing your friends, whether that is abruptly getting up and moving to Peru for the rest of your fucking life, whatever you have to do to get out of a place where you go negative is something And you have to figure out whether you have to, listen, I'm not a doctor, but whether you have to get medicated. Whether you have to like, my biggest thing is who do you spend time with and who do you consume? And this is my biggest point to everybody. This is why I don't allow complaining or dwelling for people that want to fuck with me because no matter what, I'm gonna point to somebody who had the same exact situation. Oh what, you had a crackhead father and your mom fucking sexually abused you and you got stabbed? Cool, let me show you this kid who actually had that exact same thing and he won. Like what we're talking about right now is the reason I win. I'm not worried about the little details. This is all macro, blueprint, strategy, mental strategy. No matter what we say right now, Pete, I'm gonna show you somebody who grew up with the same exact situation and had different outcomes. And so for me, everybody who's dwelling on their shortcoming, the bottom line is no matter where you start, Everybody has paths to winning and losing. For me, the best move is to take control of your shit. No matter how fucked up you are right now, get rid of loser friends and family, introduce yourself to positivity and winners, and watch how it plays out. Looking for short-term highs. You know, when the game itself and the process and gratitude is the mix of your gasoline, you'll run run forever. When it's about getting a watch or buying a new home or getting a new pair of Yeezys, you're finished. And so I see a lot of people looking for quick highs. I want to get that girl, I want to get that guy, I want to get that plane, I want to get that, you know, car. That is just not sustainable. When you're like, I cannot believe I'm alive, thank you so much, and oh my God, I can't wait to wake up and fight and grind and try to win. I love the game. You're unstoppable. Right. I just never run out of energy 'cause those two things never run out. The game's forever and gratitude's forever. Trying to figure out how to get this for everybody 'cause it is the, I think it's the ultimate. I lived in my own head. Nobody had say. When I tell you nobody fucking had say, still to this day, nobody has say. Nobody has say. Very early on, there was only one voice in my head. My game, my own. It's so scary to me how singular my own voice is. It doesn't mean that I don't listen to feedback. It doesn't mean that I'm delusional and I think I can get away with bad shit and it's all okay. I could say something right now in this podcast. Everybody on Earth says I'm a piece of shit, and in my own mind I'm like, we'll see. It's very strange how I live life. It's way more extreme than you think. It's way more extreme than I think. I'm just like kind of like going through it right now. I'm like, what the fuck? This is crazy. Like, it just means that I am incapable of valuing anybody else's opinion, including my mom's, my wife's, and my children's opinion about me over my own. If you realized how much of the actions you do is to show your mom or your dad your dad or your sibling or your spouse or somebody, show somebody else that you made it or you did it. It is remarkably scary how many people are dictated by somebody else's opinion. I'm secretly worried that I'm gonna get to a place where I'm not gonna care anything about business and it's the love of my life. But I can like feel it already, I'm like, oof, you know, 55 to 75 is gonna be scary. Some run. When you actually believe in the value you're providing, selling, promoting, giving for free, when you believe, it all clicks. The reason people don't do is because they don't believe. They either are insecure and structured that way, or they deep down know they're doing it for the money. How many people, like, did people do things for me with expectation? A ton. And most of the times I'll say no, because I don't even want to do that. But once in a while I say yes, mainly to stick it to them and teach them a life lesson, which is don't come at me and be like, I want to do this awesome thing for you, and then kind of hover around and always have this weird relationship with me where they expect something, like we did something here. Like, if you told me upfront that the reason you bought 10,000 books and did this thing was because what you really wanted was my fucking face on your website co-signing your fucking business, well then you should've told me. 'Cause then we could've had a transaction. A lot of your advice is geared to like college grads. Yep. But I'm old, I'm 40. What would you, like, what would your advice be For someone who's 40 but starting out where most of your audience is starting out when they're 20 or 30? Well, it's interesting. No joke, I don't know if you saw this, I literally posted a video today to 47-year-olds. I did not see that yet. So, to me, everybody's going through different things, you know. I, to your point, in the last 12 to 18 months, I found myself producing a lot more content to youth than I have in the past, which was usually to more 40-year-old business people. Look, I think the biggest thing with 40 to 50 is that it's now you've lived life and you're still young as fuck. And you're like, now what, right? You have like an entire second life to live and it's a very interesting time in people's lives where they have to be really retrospective of like how self-aware are they. But honestly, I think 40's young, man. I really, really do. And so I would say a lot of the advice I give to 20-year-olds 20-year-olds maps pretty well to 40-year-olds, which is, you know, take some risks. You've tasted some stuff. You know, happiness is the ROI, and so, you know, figure out what makes you happy. Is it the pursuit of money, or is it actual money? Do materials make you happy? If materials make you happy, is that really just insecurity and you need to have, you know, a BMW to make yourself feel good? Like, what's making you tick? But I would say the biggest thing that I would tell any 40-year-old is you've got 50 years to live. Please get the I'm finished or I fucked up, like eliminate dwelling 'cause you're just starting. I really believe that, by the way. This is not some motivational rah-rah shit. I just think it's true. I just think you've got 40 adult years to live. That's 20 more than you've lived. There's just so much opportunity. I'm Johanna and I just launched a social media a platform for connecting companies with social media influencers. Okay. Like Tinder self-direct, and I thought I had kind of a unicorn. And now when kind of exploring the world, I say, okay, there's a lot out there. Oh, everybody's doing it. But we're kind of late here in this part of the world. Yep. So here I captured the market really well in a short time. That's awesome. But I wonder how my dreams about internationalization and getting global and making it scalable trouble making it bigger. What advice would you give to me for that? Well, a couple things. First of all, how big is it in the market that you're winning in? The biggest thing that, you know, unless you're doing $7, $10, $12 million in the Nordics, you should not be thinking about Eastern, Western Europe, US. Too many people, like every word out of your mouth is the shit I was just talking, like scalable what? We're just all caught up in building billion-dollar, it's so stupid. Like, how big is your company? How much, are you doing over a million euros? No, we launched it, we are pre-revenue. We just launched it. Until you make money, you shouldn't be worried about global. No. So you say local markets, go that way? VaynerMedia did $75 million in revenue profitably before I thought about even going to London. Okay. Everybody's caught, listen, I'm telling you, all of you, you're caught up in fucking propaganda. You're not thinking about it smartly. You make no money and you're sitting here worried about winning globally and you haven't even started winning locally. You understand? Yeah, I'm just thinking like is partnership the way to go to somebody that are already there? No, the way to go is to not think about it at all. What I tell people to do is get the leverage. You know, let them go to your Instagram and see 10,000 people there in an active community. Let them hear that you're selling out every time you have a new thing. Then they're gonna come to you. The thing I do extremely well, all the fancy people, every fancy person you've ever seen me with? Anyone. Tony, The Rock, anyone. Anyone. I've never reached out to them. Let everything come to you. All of them. I've hit that kind of quiet crescendo moment where like, it just, I'm so in tune with like putting out content, putting it out there, letting you guys consume it, reading your feedback in this viral loop and just feels like I'm in that zone and every day I wish for you guys out there anywhere in the world to find that same zone. And so look for that thing, find that thing, and for me, this community is that thing, and I wanna thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much. Have the best, best rest of the weekend. Have the best summer. Flip, start things, produce content, but most of all, listen. You know, the audacity that everybody wants likes and comments and subscribers, but doesn't wanna then do for them what they want in return. Selfishness of like, give me vanity metrics and social and content and digital, yet the key is if you listened and cared about those individuals as much as what you wanted from them in likes and subscribers, everything would be different. Please do not take things for granted, and most of all, do not take your community for granted, 'cause it is the foundation of your opportunity in this digital world. The reason I say the thing that if there's anybody that ever looked like you that made it, there's no excuse is 'cause I believe it. You know, it's really hard, you're in an argument and your friend tells you, that's great, Gary, but both my parents were alcoholics and that really fucked me up, right? Now you're on the defense, that's a good first punch by them. I'm like, cool, we don't need to use me. If anybody has ever been successful that had two alcoholic parents, which by the way, I know of three, Well then, now what's your excuse, Karen? We are just so interested in blaming everybody else and excuses because we don't want to take on responsibility. And somewhere a long time ago, I went completely— I only take— I— do you know I think everything is my fault? Like, all of it. Like, I think it's weirdly cloudy outside right now and not nice out. My fault. Like, his scar, my fault. Like, I just default into my fault, and everybody tries to do everything else the other way. And let me tell you how good life becomes when you take on responsibility. It gets real good. Some of you, and there's a lot of you that follow me, you know why I keep bringing up the last scene of 8 Mile, the Eminem movie? How many people have seen that movie? Great. The last scene, they go into the battle, he makes fun of himself the whole time because it leaves the other person with nothing. The leverage is in being accountable of everything. The leverage is exposing your weaknesses. I proudly talk about passing on Uber twice, being a D and F student, you know, I proudly talk about my shortcomings, right? I can't wait for more bad things to happen. We are in a remarkable time. For all the things you may be worried about, left, right, up, down, there has never been a better time to be alive in the human race than right now. Medicine, life expectancy, poverty, every issue we have, better. You know, the best people to talk about what's going on in America are 90-year-olds. They shit on everybody. They're like, she thinks it's bad? Ah, fuck! This woman made me laugh so hard. This like 92-year-old woman stopped me in the street. She's like, keep doing what you're doing. I'm like, thank you. I mean, she looked like a $190. I was like, thank you. I talked to her for a second. She's like, and by the way, these women— and she's wrong, but it was still funny. I'm obsessed with practicality. People think I'm a disruptor or, you know, nostradamus predictor, right? I'm practical. Facebook and Instagram ads are grossly underpriced. If you go home tonight and Google how to run Instagram story ads, and learn how to do that and then make a video or picture and run Instagram story ads for whatever you're trying to do in life. Become the mayor here, sell some peanuts, kombucha, get people to sign up for your fucking track team. I don't care what. I don't know where the fucking comes from. I don't even think you can sign people up for a track team. Anyway, nonetheless. An Instagram story ad will work better than anything else you can do if you care about people 15 to 55, 15 to 45. If you care about people 30 to 75, Facebook works better than anything. Like, all your dreams, whatever that may be, simple dreams like making $400 more a month so you can save it and take your family to Walt Disney this year. All your dreams. Like, the amount of people that are affected by making $200 more a month is staggering. The fact that I know that if you literally stop listening to me right now, took out your phone, went to Craigslist, went to the for sale section, clicked on the free section within the for sale section, took your fucking car, got up, left in the middle of my keynote and picked up 8 things, went home, took one picture on your fucking phone, not like old days, phone, you take the discount and computer, no, not that, which is, oh by the way, the old days, you know, 11 years ago. No, just take a picture of the fucking thing and post it on Facebook Marketplace and post it for $20 to $80 that literally in the next 48 hours you would have $200 more. I'm obsessed with practicality. Everything I talk about feels so real, it just might take 11 years. And a lot of people don't have 11 years. They don't have 11 years 'cause they're not willing to put in the work to be happy for the rest of their life. They'd rather complain. They'd rather blame somebody else. What are the qualities that you think make for a true and a successful entrepreneur? What's important? She or he has to love the game. For me, a purebred entrepreneur, she or he loves choose the journey, not the stuff. You know, one of the things I struggle with in the current state of entrepreneurship is a lot of people want the vacations, the watches, you know, even the context of this, you guys have such incredible imagery, I think it's remarkable, who doesn't want fine things in life? But I think that if you're in the game just for the fine things in life, for the bottles and the models and the private planes, I think you're gonna lose. And it definitely is not my definition of an entrepreneur. My definition of an entrepreneur is somebody who can't live without doing their thing and trying to create. Literally suffocate it. People quit all the time 'cause they're doing it for the money. I think the bigger question is, what do you want the money for? Is it blocking an insecurity? Is it to get the girl? Is it 'cause you're trying to amass as much as you can 'cause you actually don't like working and you wanna live a— The reason so many people fail in life and business is their model is, let me get the money so that I can enjoy and relax. They think of it as like hoarding it and then eating it all over time so I have retirement and all this stuff. It's such a bad way to think because then you're feeling the pressure of like massing so that you can then enjoy. I think the bigger question is like, what are you up to? Like, why are you doing it? Like, what's up? I just think a lot of people people are trying to achieve success.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. You've gotta break out of that pattern. You gotta not listen to him and make money in however way you want. Listen, otherwise you're stuck. If you want to help your mom, sometimes the best way to help your mom is to get out and then come back and get her out. —I get it, so honestly, honestly, and I respect that, listen to me, life is long. You're in a tough spot right now, but my mom didn't have her mom or dad at 14. Life is long. It sucks right now. When you're 14, it feels like it's your life forever. It's not your life forever, bro. You understand? Surround yourself with as much positivity to get you through this chapter. I have no fucking friends. I get it, bro. Bro, you gotta be patient. It's early. I know, it's just fucking forever, bro. I can't take it. I get it, but you have to understand there's no alternative. There's only two choices here. You stay under that roof and eat shit for 4 more years, 3 more years, 2 more years, or you bounce now. Plenty of fucking people bounced at 14. It's not common in the UK, but people do it. Or you don't. Life's about a very simple You either do it or you don't. If you're gonna under that roof, you need to put your ear pods in and listen to positivity 24/7 to get you through that. You understand? When your surroundings are, your inside's gotta be positive. The fact that you're even here means you're halfway home. I wish you well, man. Hit me up anytime. DM me, alright? Alright? You listening? Listen to me. Listen to me, when shit's around you, you have to make it positive in your head. I know it feels like it's fucking forever and it's gonna take forever and when you're 14, 4 more years sounds like fucking forever, but you have no choice. You either bounce or you stay. And if you stay, which is more likely, which is fine, you gotta put positivity in your ears. Do you understand? I promise you, you have no other alternatives, otherwise you just dwell and you go down a spiral that you don't want to go down. You understand? This whole notion of like you can do anything and all this stuff, let me just tell you, it's stupid hard. Reality is most of you are just averagely talented. Right? Like you're not gonna over-index in anything too crazy. Here's the good news. This is not about how much money you make or how talented you are. This is about being happy. Everybody here, regardless of how talented they are in making money or art or what have you, that they're super into. You love Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Your whole life could be about Michelangelo. It could. And here's what really fucks with me. In this internet age, you could have a podcast around Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You could buy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle memorabilia on Craigslist and Facebook and Etsy and then flip it on a different platform because you're so fucking knowledgeable because that's the pizza-eating Leonardo, that I'm just fascinated about what happens when you go all in on your passion, you're committed to it, and you use the infrastructure of this. You living your life for 80 years as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle expert— this is getting funnier to me by the second— making $83K a year in ads on your podcast, The Flip, some miraculous reason somebody paid paid you $2,000 to go to a Bush League Comic-Con thing. That person making $62,000 a year being the fucking EMT expert versus them making $77,000 a year being an admin in a company where they hate their life 9 to 5, that delta is something I will go to the grave on because it is what I want to articulate to everybody, the unbelievable achievable level of practicality to do shit around stuff you like and here's the big part. How many people under 40? Let me just start with this group. If you just really took what I'm talking about, became an expert at Facebook and Instagram, really understood, the fact that you could take a leap for 2 years, move back in home, move in together, cut your expenses, I don't give a shit. The fact that you can do that for 2 or 3 years and if it doesn't work out, you can go back To getting a job? That's nuts. I don't think you get to judge what somebody does with the fruits of their labor. Yeah. For me, I think that that's what's amazing about anything, which is there's many different definitions. For you, you know, go out, work your face off, win, and reward yourself with something. What you're saying is exactly right. For me, the reward is pouring more of the dollars and energy into the company, not buying stuff for myself. It's one and the same. To me, I think it's amazing if somebody wants to buy an Armani suit or a $5,000 pair of belt or a diamond ring for $100,000. I don't, but that doesn't mean that's right or wrong. What I'm doing with that same $100,000 instead of a ring is I'm hiring 2 more people because I'm trying to buy the jewelry company, not a piece of the jewelry. The biggest vulnerability everybody has here is they're worried about somebody else's judgment. The reason there's no moment of clarity is you don't want to jump. You don't want to jump because you're worried if you lose what people are gonna say, starting with your parents, your friends, your contemporaries. My ability to not truly, truly care about other people's opinions has been the foundation of my happiness. I respect people's opinions. I just don't care about their judgment of me. I have flip-flopped about project management at VaynerMedia like so many times, and I don't worry if somebody here is like, "Make a decision," or like, "You're stupid," or like, "What the fuck?" or, "Why are we always changing?" Like, go work at Grey Advertising. The reason I will never achieve my goals is my goals are to play The reason people achieve their goals is because their goals was a number of money. If your goal is an amount of money, you've lost. So the reason it's empty is what? You wanted to be a millionaire, so what happens next? You're gonna make $10 million a year? Like what, $100 million? Like, it's the wrong goals. My biggest goals is to be the most impactful the most impactful entrepreneur of this generation by bringing the most value to all the entrepreneurs. That's gonna take me my whole life. Thank you. So you need to change your goal from something that's selfish to something that's selfless because then it will take you the rest of your life. You should really go to a retirement home one day and volunteer and just talk to them. It will make you want to do shit every minute of your life because when you're 90 and you're not mobile and you're tired and it's over, You can't do it, you can't do it. You can't build that company you wanted. You can't spend that time with your kid. It's regret. And it drives them crazy. How old are you? I'm 27. You got fucking time. It's a balance of regret and patience. Like you can go hard for 3 years, do nothing right, wake up and be young as fuck. The amount of people who are watching this right now, maybe even in this room, that are sad, men and women, that they didn't go for it, and didn't make the move and didn't try, that regret is a hell of a lot longer and more painful and more drawn out than the instant rejection of going for it. It's just the way it is. Like, even if you think of random dumb stuff like not asking out that person in high school or stuff, this stuff lingers. It's the stuff that you don't do that bothers you. And so for the purebred entrepreneurs in here that haven't decided to make that leap, or take that at-bat, I implore you to do so right away because this window closes too. Evan, thank you so much for having a couple seconds and being able to tell the Believe Nation a little bit about Empathy Wines. It means a lot to me that you would take this valuable real estate and time on your channel to give me some love. It means a lot. It's just good karma points and so you're just, you're awesome. Thank you. Believe Nation, if you're into wine at all, go to empathywines.com. EmpathyWines.com. My whole career's work was poured into producing a wine that rivaled $40 to $60 wine for $20 a bottle. I'm just super excited about this subscription-based wine business. You can order 3, 6, or 12 bottles in subscription form. Rosé, white, red. If you search on Instagram or Twitter, you will be blown away. People are literally like, "I don't even like GaryVee, but the wine's good." Super proud of the effort. Thanks, Evan, for the time. Wishing you guys all happy and healthy.

Because you made it this far in the video, I want to celebrate you. Most people start and don't finish. Most people never actually follow through. Most people say they want something, but they don't ever do the work to actually get it. But you are different. You are special. Believe Nation, you made it here all the way to the end, and I love you. So as a special celebration, if you put a #believe down in the comments below on this video, I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome. If you want another amazing Gary Vaynerchuk video, check it out right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there.