21 Minutes of Business Advice For 2025

0:00If you spend any time apologizing to employees, fuck you. That's so bold, Garrett. But I wanna make a point. I'm gonna explain what I mean and I went for bold. Attention is the number one asset. It's the best leaders in the world take the pressure and stops with them and they convert it underneath them. The worst leaders in the world feel pressure and pass that shit down. And a lot of you do that, real talk. And you're like, oh, I'm sorry, I was stressed, I lost. You go into pop. If you spend any time apologizing to employees, fuck you. That's so bold, Garrett. But I wanna make a point. Listen, if you're excusing behavior where you're yelling and screaming at people with an apology, you are not as good as you think you are.

0:41I don't care how much money you're making. And I highly challenge this group of winners to get stronger and be an actual leader and when you have pressure coming to you, aka losing, losing an employee, losing an account, losing a pitch, and I challenge you to have it stop with you and convert it to self-reflection and compassion and empathy. Do you thank your team massively for the efforts of trying to win a pitch when you lose it or only when you win it? Fear is a short-term motivator. I want to open up to questions from the audience. That was great. That was fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Are there questions from the audience?

1:25We got microphones. There's one right over there. Oh, I'll get this in the back and then we'll get her. How are you, my friend? Give me your name. O 'Brien. O 'Brien? Yeah. Like last name? Except it's my first name. Epic. We call him O.B. I like that. O 'Brien, it's a real pleasure, brother. How are you? Hey, good, good. Thank you for coming. I'm curious the answer to this, but I think it'd also be helpful for a lot of people in the room. Back to your LinkedIn comment about how your advertising business is running all of your sales through LinkedIn. I think conversations I've had with people, there's a struggle to connect what we do from a relationship building standpoint in the real world with the marketing efforts that go on on LinkedIn.

2:10And I would just be curious how you think about converting real world relationships from an online platform in the marketing. I love it. I think you should use LinkedIn as a gateway drug to play golf with people, to have wine dinner with people. I think to your point, O 'Brien, I don't think people realize all I want LinkedIn for is the attention. But what you put in the creative will be the variable of your success. So when they make a post from the master account, if you then put, hey, first eight people that email me, I've got a steak dinner for you to talk about this in depth or any other business things, here's the RSVP way, you've now taken digital and used it as a gateway drug to do physical.

2:54So all I want to do is create the arbitrage of getting attention to convert into however you convert. I don't get$20 million fee scopes just from the LinkedIn. I get the attention of saying something smart and then they hit me up. And I'm not talking about using LinkedIn the way you might have tried in the past, which is spamming people and sending them messages. I'm talking about putting out meaningful content in the feed because LinkedIn is now a content platform that happens to have recruiting on it. And so that's how, right? right? You use the content to spark the conversation to then do the golf, to do the steak dinner, to do the whatever you want to do.

3:35Like always willing to do a 15 minute zoom for free to talk about this a little deeper if this can help you even if it doesn't. I go right at it. I have unlimited things where I'm like I'm not here to be transactional but I'm not Mother Teresa. I'll spend 15 minutes with you and go deeper into what I just talked about there. I understand that you may not hire me because of that because you're already in another partnership but I'm going to leave a very strong deposit as a human being in our 15 minutes on Zoom or a 30 minute coffee at Starbucks that hopefully in three years or from word of mouth leads to something.

4:06So I think there's a way to be transparent but also be incredibly intellectually generous. That's great. Question over there. Is it on? Hi. Hi Gary. I'm such a big fan of yours. Thank you. What's your name? So if we get a picture later I would love that. I'm in. What's your name? I'm Jessica Bass. This is my first producer event here.

4:31Your content around attention-grabbing has really inspired me to step outside of my comfort zone and post myself more on LinkedIn, so thank you for that. But my question is really around Gen Zers. You talk a lot about them being lazy and just kind of poke myths and some of those stereotypes of Gen Zers. And real quick, because I just want to make sure this lands, I actually don't think there are any, like I know unlimited lazy boomers and Gen Xers. Unlimited. I think they have way more options than we have grasped. Go ahead. For sure, for sure. And that's my question because that's our future, right?

5:07The people doing the work back at the office are Gen Zers. We want to keep them, keep them happy. We're also trying to create a return to work culture that inspires them and teaches them about our culture and also opportunities within our organization. How do we balance the two and keep them happy and also keep them at our firm? Purple, right? To your point, the entitlement is absurd. I had a leader talking with somebody in our office. We're bringing plenty of people back too. Everyone's going through the same thing. So the kid says, hey, brother, I'd love to come to the office, but I got a problem.

5:39I live 40 minutes away and I have to bring all my stuff. Stuff? This is real, by the way. The kid goes, yeah. I have to bring my laptop. And then there's a pause. This is no bullshit. Stick with me. He goes, end the charger.

6:01So I'm with you. I'm aware of where we're at. I believe it's a game of numbers. To answer how I'm solving it for my organization and all my startup and all the boards I'm on and all the companies I'm involved in, I'm just telling them, fine, you know, you gotta kiss a bunch of frogs to find a prince. Like, I don't know. like if you sense entitlement and laziness in the interview or the conversation or if they ask ridiculous questions, don't hire them. Like to me, I love merit. Like merit. But I think the mistake we're making is we're labeling them. That's like labeling all women. It's crazy what we're doing with this generation.

6:36We all know that labeling in groups is terrible. And by the way, Gen Z is contributing heavily. They've got all sorts of feelings of everybody older. like the greatest way to be happy is number three in the world. The greatest way. By the way, if you're not 100 % happy as you sit here today, I've got the medicine for you and it's free. It's called number three. The second you realize that you are fully in control of your life is the second you get happier. When you think the president has an impact on your success, that means you're a loser.

7:17All right, we got one right there, and then Paige, and then go to Ryan. Hi, Michelle. Michelle. Just because you just hit on accountability, can you talk a little bit about what you view and how you define accountability versus responsibility? Because I think accountability is a little bit of a scary word for people, and I think maybe for some of those in this room, as I'm a newbie, so I'll go out on a limb and say that. But I've heard you talk about accountability, and I like your honesty behind it. and the challenge behind it. Can you just share your thoughts? Well, with the way you asked the question, my belief is that if we all agree that something is my responsibility and it does not go well, then I need to be 100 % accountable.

7:56Like, the amount of leaders and CEOs and leaders I talk to that will tell me the reason this year went bad was, well, their head of sales was just shit the bed, or my CFO, like they just keep talking, and literally I wait, I eat it, I rope a dope, little Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, and then I go in for my move. I'm like, you hired them. You are allowed to fire them. I have good news. 100 % of the problems in your business are your fault.

8:32Like it's true, and in this framework, the energy in this kind of framework of a business, if you spend one minute crying about what they're doing in corporate, that's a minute you're not spending on the shit that you do control. I just will never understand it. I sit on some non-pro, I sit on, excuse me, I sit on the board of Bojangles, right? Franchisor, franchisee. And all these, they're like, you know, some franchisee came up to me because they know I'm on the board and they just start shitting on the brand and they're like, he's like, Gary, you have to understand, entrepreneur to entrepreneur, this is a real problem.

9:08I looked him dead in the face and said, bro, you're not an entrepreneur.

9:14If you sit in a framework where you rely on a corporate entity to be a partner, you're not a full-bred entrepreneur. And you must face that. That is the truth. I said to him, right to his face, I said, if you're an entrepreneur, you would start, instead of having a franchisee of Bojangles, you would start Schmo-Shangles. And this goes back to self-awareness, period. Period, so what do I think about accountability? I think it stuns me with all the shit that's going on in my life, how happy I am. And when I deconstructed that over 25 years, number three is the game. It gets really good. It's why everyone's so unhappy right now.

9:54They actually believe all the propaganda in media and social media that everybody but themselves is in charge. You don't like the school? Take your kid out. You don't like America? Fucking move.

10:12Thank you. Thank you, Paige. Hey, Gary. Hi. I'm Vogelsing. Nice to meet you. Such a pleasure. Thank you for being here. Thank you. I have a question around succession planning. Oh. You and your brother, you lead the firm. I'm sure you think about this. Yes. You've got kids. All of us have kids. We have a lot of happy nepotism here. So I'm just curious how the 12 and a half fit in with that. Well, number three is a big one. We just touched on it. Like, you know, my kids, you know, I think all of us who've garnered success, especially if we didn't start with anything, have feelings towards this.

10:51I think about accountability. Look, I'll give you a really good answer to this. When all those really wealthy people started saying things 10 years ago that they were giving 99 % to charity, right? Gates, and I was like, that's crazy, because I come from immigrant family where like everything's passed on. I promise you, I don't think that's crazy anymore. you know what do I think about succession plan? I think it's about parenting. I'm thrilled to talk about it in the macro. I have no interest in telling anyone here what to do. That's their business, their money, their prerogative. But what I will tell you is you want your kids to be hungry?

11:23Don't feed them. Like you know like people I'm on the board of Charity Water. We build wells in Africa. One of the things that's incredibly passionate to me as something that I just when I got educated about it I just couldn't understand. And you wanna talk about gratitude, number one? 730 million people on earth right now do not have access to clean water within a day. Water, the shit that is on your table. That really shook me. You know, you wanna talk about real, like, you know, we think about all this, you know, right? Water. So it's amazing. When I got involved with Scott Harris, you should all look up charity water.

12:02It's pretty profound if you wanna learn a little bit about it. Anyway, it was a billion people only 10 years ago. I'm really proud of the work. I put a lot of time and effort into it and I'm a well member which means we pay, our donations pay for the staff. It means if you give a dollar it all goes to the work, not the bullshit that we see with these non-profits. Anyway, enough of that commercial. My friends hit me up all the time. Hey Gary, you're a well member on Charity Water. Can I send my kid to Africa with you for a week to be on the ground? I'm like, you can and you should. but if you think your private school, private jet riding 17 year old is gonna go to Africa for a week and somehow profoundly change into another human being, you're out of your goddamn mind.

12:47My friends, none of us can fake environment. You can't fake environment. What we can do is teach our kids that it's not their money and they should be kind to people. What we can do is stop giving them money. That's your choices. but a succession planning, I think a million dollars, one million dollars inherited is an obnoxious amount of money. And so I've stopped thinking about that a long time ago because I think about all the kids that are growing up right now that grew up the way I am that would kill my kids in any level of competition in merit-based business. And that doesn't bother me. I don't want my kids to be entrepreneurs.

13:25I don't want my kids to be even business winners. I want them to be kind. And I want them to like what they do the way I like what I do. My favorite part about being an entrepreneur is I love the game, not the things the game allows me to buy. Last question, Ryan. What if I answer it fast? Can I sneak one more in? What's that? Or do you want to get me the hell out of here? Yeah, this is the last one. How much time have we got? I'm just having too much fun. Maybe five more minutes. Okay, go ahead. Ryan here. Ryan. A question to you. So I started consuming your content at the beginning of the pandemic.

14:00you gave a speech sort of like this, but talking about the power of branding, marketing, which a common theme. So something you said a minute ago is if you get one person in this room to take away something that's worth your time being here. So to the 98 % of people, I think that you said about LinkedIn will under post on LinkedIn. So what are some tactics? You talk a lot about tactics in your content. So what are some tactics to the 98 % here, or maybe the one that would be good? I've started a lot more LinkedIn since listening to that and learned a ton over time. And what do you, you know, so I'm not saying it since you're their contemporary.

14:35In that learning over this time, what's an observation, what's an aha, what's a thing you went into it not thinking was real, but you were inspired to go down the path, which I'm trying to do for everyone? Give me one or two things that have stood out. I would think authenticity. If you are yourself and you're not trying to be somebody different, I think that's huge. Let me jump on that one. Friends, as you think about what you're gonna post, you could post about loving golf and loving wine. You don't need to post directly about this job. Getting people in common interest is a huge way to do business.

15:05You know this. Why'd you join all the country clubs and the PTA and all this stuff? So step one, mixing your content. It doesn't have to be literal information about the product and service. If you love Zelda, you will be blown away how much money you can make by talking about Zelda. Especially if it's a repost and you somehow were clever to what they posted and you posted on top of it and made some sort of reference to like Mike Tyson's punch out, that snicker from the person that can't believe you brought up Glass Joe from 1989 might be the reason they do business with you. It's profound how humans actually work.

15:42Keep going. Authenticity. Also, a repost of what somebody's done is not necessarily content. Well, I would say a repost, correct. A repost without you adding your two cents is less effective. Notice how earlier I used the analogy of DJ? I think a lot of us know what happened in the last 20 years with EDM and DJs. We're like, you're like, wait a minute. Like, did they even do anything? And yet they're super famous? That's what you can do. You can do, you can take a very good post on what you believe is well from someone else, not even in this ecosystem, or from the corporation. You could repost it with a quote and add a sentence to it.

16:22Now you're a DJ. You're like Avicii out here. 100%, I would say the last thing is what we all make money on is insurance. Don't necessarily talk about insurance. Yeah, I think that's right. As I referenced earlier, fishing, all this stuff. I think it's a mix. There was another book I wrote called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. And it talked about the individual posts can be jabs. You're not setting up, the reason most people in insurance, when I analyze it, both on the brand or on the individual level, don't succeed, is every one of your posts is a sales pitch. and they smell it and they're not interested.

16:56When you start mixing it and you start talking about Zelda and golf or this is a big one, make pretend that you retired from this and you've now started an insurance media business. You're now the Bloomberg or CNBC of insurance and you're not talking as a human who's trying to sell something but you're talking a level up about the space or the opportunities or this new tax law. You're talking about information that's education that becomes a gateway. That's a good framework to think through. I'd say one last thing. Don't give up after like two posts. Yeah, I mean that goes back to seven. Tenacity.

17:33Like this is what always blows me away. People that got in this room you put in the work. And then you go into this new arena and you're like four posts in and you're like I suck. Fuck that Gary guy. The first thousand posts I made meant nothing. so like I'd like to think that this room understands what a good day's work putting in the work learning really means and how that can actually impact the outcome and so yeah I mean look I really think the content thing is very misunderstood like very people they have all sorts of feelings about social media that it's bad kids I get it but I really hate making headline reading opinions your business strategy

18:22Let me sneak one in. I'm the worst, I know. One more. Somebody. He told me, he's like, Saeed, I gotta get out of here at 355. I know, but we're over. We're gonna roll here. Anybody? Got a quick question? Right here, Christina. All right. You saw the board. Yes. You saw the board here with all of you. I did, which fired me up. I wanted, you know how crazy I am, Christina? I saw the board, I'm like, like literally my DNA, I'm like, I need to get to the top of that fucking board. Like, I'm like, should I retire and join this company to get on top of the, these boards fuck me up, but go ahead. Alright, two questions.

18:55How do you get to the top of that board using all 12 and a half? By knowing which two or three to use in every circumstance, both on the customers you're trying to get and on the employees that work for you. Second, and I'm just gonna use myself as an example. Let's say we have somebody on the board, or a group of people on the board, what have you, like someone in your company, maybe you've got a great salesman, you know, he's top of the game and he's, there's some toxicity around. Yeah, uh-huh. Do you risk that? So it's interesting. In my company, yes, because everyone's an actual employee of the corporation.

19:37This is a little bit of a different framework, right? Like, this is not a corporation and you're all employees, you have your own shit. My answer to that is a little bit different. My answer to if you look at that board and you're like, damn, I wanna get there but I don't wanna compromise or act like that. That goes to a thing that me and my father thought about for 20 years. When I started working for my dad at 22 years old, I told him I will spend zero minutes on our competition. He thought that was the craziest shit he ever heard. He was obsessed with what every liquor store in New Jersey did and what they got.

20:10Did they get a better deal on this vodka? He just spent all his energy on everyone else. I said, Dad, the only people I'm going to pay attention to is first our employees, second our customers, and way down here, number 29, I'll have a sense of what the competition's doing because you never want to be delusional and audacious. But when I tell you very few seconds will be spent on them because what they do has no impact, I promise you, if I started in this company tomorrow, had no contacts on that board. Within a half decade, I'd be the first person on this board, I promise you, because nothing and no one on that list is stopping you from doing what you need to do.

20:54Agreed, thank you. Awesome, let's give Gary... Thank you. Thank you.