How to Succeed in the Workforce After Graduation | GaryVee 2024 NYU Commencement Speech

0:00I know a lot of you are graduating college, high school. This is the greatest commencement speech ever given by a human being according to my mother. I gave it very recently, a year ago at NYU. I hope you listen to it, I hope you like it, I hope it brings you value, and most of all, I hope you pass it on to a youngster that needs to hear it. Lot of transition in the air. Seems like everybody's moving on. Congratulations to you two. And all of you are about to move on, and I think the thing that I want to most talk about is all the misconceptions and the things that aren't true about the business landscape that people talk about.

0:38And more importantly, how deeply excited I am for all of you. See, the biggest lie that the world says is there is so much more positivity and opportunity and hope out there than is being sold to us on a daily basis. I thought a lot about what I wanted to talk about here today and ironically, it all came together in the back room when I got to speak to so many of the esteemed guests here. We talked about a bunch of different things, misconceptions, misunderstandings, and there are many. But the first thing that I want to make sure all of you understand is that no matter what I, they, they say, the best part about the world and business is it plays out.

1:26What I mean by that is, it's like a game. There's gonna be a score. Regardless of what you think right now as you sit here, and how you're gonna do it, I think all of you are smart enough to know that there's gonna be twists and turns. We talked back there about, you can't control your timing. Right, one of the esteemed gentlemen here said, they're going into such a tough job market, right? Unless some of them are locked in, They're going into such a tough job market. And I said to him, good. And let me tell you why I said good, that way. The fundamental thing in the world that leads to actual pure happiness and success is adversity.

2:12The number one thing most of you in this audience right here need is a punch to the face. the parents like that

2:25let me explain punch to the face because i don't want to get pulled off too early here i mean not physically though that's not bad either someone should take a punch once in their life but i mean actual adversity i have incredible empathy for the covid factor and many of the other things But what all of you are about to find out is the game, the real business game, it doesn't care about your feelings. It's just the game. And so to me, that excites me. Because I know so many of you in here are about to find out if you're actually ready for this and excited about it. And I believe that many of you will be.

3:06But you're going to have to lean into things that we were not taught properly. All the incredible education you got here and all the great wisdom that you got back there is going to be tested now, but you're about to find out a lot of things are strange and not exactly. For example, you had the fortunate or unfortunate, depending on how one sees the world, to be growing up in an era that thought eighth place trophies was a good idea. I am on the side of it was not a good idea. It was incredibly well intended by all of them because they love you, and you were super cute at six. The problem is, very early on, you were taught that losing is bad.

3:47It's so bad that when you lose, even if your team lost 14 to 2 in soccer, we're going to give you a trophy. We were teaching you early on that be scared of losing. It's bad. some of the parents back there actually while you were going through grammar school and middle school and high school went to school to fight the teachers to get your grade up let's not clap it up for the ones that did that right in reality my friends especially as you go into this chapter please fall in love with losing. Losing is good. Losing is fun. Losing is why I love the Jets.

4:44But in that joke, and I appreciate the reaction, especially as the garden is on fire right now,

4:52and it feels very much like the year that I graduated high school in 1994 around here, There's a really interesting story in my sports fandom that I think you can take something away from. I grew up in the 80s, and in 1982, I picked my teams, and I was born in the Soviet Union, so there was no lineage. I kind of randomly picked it in Edison, New Jersey when I moved there, and I picked the Yankees, the Jets, the Knicks, and the Rangers. The Rangers were the first to finally deliver in my senior year and win a Stanley Cup in this place in 1994. The Yankees followed up two years later and gave me my first World Series in 1996.

5:28That was fun. But here's the more interesting part of the story. The day after the Rangers and the Yankees won their championships, I stopped watching them. This is why I'm such a big Jets and Knicks fan. To me, the losing is the fun. The adversity is the fun. I can't even explain to you how much I believe in all of you because you haven't been affected. You're going in pure. You're going in audacious. Some of you think what you've done for the last four years has anything to do with what you're about to do. Bad news, it doesn't. Or good news, it doesn't. It depends how you're wired. What I'm worried about is as much as I actually believe in you, the question is do you believe in yourself?

6:14Many of you have played a game, especially for the last eight years, that has come unbelievably natural to you. You have figured out the system to get the grades and the things needed to get to the game. The problem is that changes dramatically and is the other side of the pillow as you start tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, tomorrow when I was in your seats was the best day of my life. I was an atrocious student. My mom is super pumped that I'm standing here right now. she had dreams of me ever getting into something like this they were not meant to be but what they were meant to be was for me to be speaking to a group like this see the reality thank you for that

7:04my friends the reality is is that all of you are unbelievably capable of winning this game but from the cliches of like adversity and grit and all that, it's super true. And here is the one thing that I want to make sure you leave with from this talk and I'll leave with a couple other falsities and then we'll keep this thing moving. The number one thing I want you to leave with is the value of this.

7:34This, this, this is the single most important business and life move that you can ever do, ever. Because what that represents, my friends, is the ability to listen to no one except yourself. Most of you, especially in the world that you grew up in, meaning social media and all this stuff, but kids, and many will tell you here, all the parents up there before social also lived a life where they overvalued the opinions of others. They overvalued the opinions of their parents, of their classmates, of their siblings, of the people that they admired. If I could give you a summer project, it would be to go to a retirement home and spend time with individuals that are in their 80s or 90s that are not your grandparents.

8:25I believe that if you actually spend five to 10 hours there, you will extract a very incredible insight. You will see what regret or not regret looks like. The only thing you want to embark in on your next 100 years of living, modern medicine, it's crazy. The only thing you need to focus on on your next 100 years of living is that when you're a buck 20, you don't say, I wish I. I wish I is scary. Please learn how to tune out the noise. They're gonna love you some days, they're gonna hate you some days. but you have to know yourself and you have to start with being kind and empathetic and loving with yourself because if you're unable to do that you will do it for nobody else.

9:27A couple other things as I wrap up that we talked about. I know a lot of you have consumed my content and have heard about me or seen me. I know people talk about my hustle, my grind and all this. I sleep a shitload. Seven, eight, nine hours a day. Please, my friends, don't get it twisted. It's not about how little you sleep. It's what you do when you're awake.

9:56I got you. Yeah, I got it. Probably my most, Boy, do I hate this thing. This sentence must be eliminated from society. Nice guys finish last. The concept that being a nice human being will make you lose is one of the scariest and messed up statements in our society. Class of 2024, Stern School of Business, please help me eradicate this obnoxiousness.

10:43I grew up in the gutters of Queens, New York. Big shout out to Queens. And I've worked really, really hard for the last 40 years to get to a place where I've sat in the most high elevated rooms in the world. and let me promise you one thing. There are two ways to get to the top. Extreme insecurity and extreme confidence. Many of you over-focus on the people that got to the top by extreme insecurity. Let me give you a little secret about the billionaires that I get to spend time with that have gotten there through extreme insecurity. They're sad, they don't like it, and their life sucks.

11:33Please, do not let insecurity be refueled to the top because it's not sustainable. The people that get there through purity of actual confidence stay there the longest. Thank you.

11:58I wanna tell you one other thing about insecurity. Many of you are very clever. You're smart, you're crafty, you've got skills. Let me tell you a dirty secret about the business world. If you have gift of gab and charisma and capacity to maneuver, there's something they don't tell you. You're gonna be able to fool 99 % of the losing players. You're gonna trick 99%, But the 1 % that runs the game can see you and knows you're not a winning player. Please cut it out, fake it till you make it is a very vulnerable framework. My friends, this is going to be the most fun if you're actually a business person.

12:45You've been reading about it. That's like reading about push-ups.

12:52Sorry.

12:56You are entering the game. I genuinely believe that you are actually very fortunate in your timing. I believe that you've been able to watch the people that are three, four, five years ahead of you and you can see some of the missteps that that crew made. You've got it better. You've seen it. You can navigate around that. But you need to lean into self-awareness. Don't worry about being something that you wish you were. Focus on who you actually are. double down on strengths

13:34be nice because I promise you when you aren't nice and that person eventually gets leverage they will find you and enjoy it because the last thing I'll leave you with and thank you so much this has been one of the great honors of my life I am successful because I am detached from my success. I don't give a crap about Gary Vee or my followers. I don't give a crap about the money I've made in my career. I'm humbled by the admiration and it feels amazing, but I can live very, very quietly without all of it. I love my career. It is the great hobby of my life. I work 12 or 15 hours a day because when I work, it feels like I'm golfing or sailing or laying on a beach and relaxing.

14:21It is the great joy I got lucky. But when I tell you none of my self-esteem or how I affirm who I am is based on my bank account or my following count, there isn't anything that I've said that is more true than that. I judge myself based on how people that actually know me, how they feel about me. And if you focus on that versus the stress that you're about to put on yourself to make it, especially at a time where it's actually logically practical for you to be 22 and actually go and do ridiculous high risk behavior for the next years of your life based on what you actually like and then if it doesn't work at 30 you could go get the job that you are lined up for and still be a kid.

15:11I promise you if you enjoy it and if you like yourself it will be good and I promise you If you don't, regardless of how much money you put in the bank, it will be bad. Class of 2024, I fucking love you. Congratulations. Thank you everyone for listening to this episode of the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Be sure to tune in on Sunday for an all new micro Vee. We will see you soon.