If You’re Losing Patience With Your Business, Watch This

0:00What just happened between the three of us is the single reason that Gary V the character exists. way too long, guys looked up to guys on dumb shit trying to do quick cash and fucking Mercedes and flex. I'm here to fucking squash that because there's plenty of people with good intent who've been miscommunicated to take shortcuts and do bullshit shit. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. What's incredibly clear to me at this point in my career is that from a business standpoint and clearly from a life standpoint, I think we grossly underestimate perspective. I really genuinely believe that life is exactly as you see it.

0:40I believe that there are inherently people who are cynical and because of that, they're just going to believe things are not good or stacked against them. And I think there are people who are optimistic. I think there are people who are practical and delusional and all those things that I think many of you have heard about. But there are a couple things that really stood out for me during this last 18 months. And it really is interesting that when I thought about what do I want to talk about tonight, what can actually bring some value, what's something that somebody can build off of, I really think it's time we start talking about curiosity a little bit more.

1:16So I've become incredibly passionate about curiosity. I think that in self-reflection mode, so much of what works for me, there's many things that are part of the equation, there's many ingredients that get me there, but curiosity is not something I saw or really even understood as part of the equation. And I think, when I think of the collective in this room, something that is very obvious to me is, in our current society, we start to demonize curiosity pretty quickly. We get a couple of years of it as a kid, but then just subconsciously, it's not some crazy agenda, but subconsciously, we start going into places that overvalue how it's been done.

2:01The black and white, the system. So much of what I've always felt as an entrepreneur was a vulnerability of a school system is not the cliche stuff that you might see in my content, but just by nature, all of us spending the majority of our youth in a system that grades us every 90 days and we pander to a subjective reality within that really sets us up to eliminate our creativity and our curiosity, makes us subconsciously conform to the short term, and inherently makes us lack patience. The other thing I'm spending a lot of time on is how much we struggle with our relationship in time and with time.

2:43We get sold so many things like life is short, which I think all of us at this point know. Depending on the context that you look at a statement or a situation, it changes the altercation, but so many of the rules in society of when you're supposed to have your life figured out, get married, accomplish, is predicated on a world where people live to 45 years old. It's just the reality of it. So much of what we're affected by is how our grandparents were affected by their parents and grandparents, and those fuckers were dying at 40. Of course you should have your life figured out at 30 when you're dead at 47.

3:22But we haven't adjusted. You know, 1880 may seem a long time ago, but it's stunningly not. And when life expectancy is in the late 30s and early 40s and now we're 75, 85, 90, 95, I just think that there's so much confusion in the system and I just think that we need to have different conversations. Let me give you an example. A different conversation that we need in the business world, that's where I'll keep it, but it's clearly a societal statement, is I'm genuinely struggling why anybody should not be kind. I've watched in the business world for the last 20 years people justify being cruel to the people that they're a manager of or their admins because they're stressed.

4:14I'm sorry I scolded you, you don't get it. the client had me in a bad day. We have completely accepted bad behavior off of bullshit.

4:31I'm really passionate about this. If you're a leader by nature, your job is to stop pressure at your level, not deploy more of it underneath you. I think that we need to just do better. I think that people in business are confused. I think that the way that business is branded is misbranded. I think people think that if you're kind, you get walked over. And I think that is absolutely asinine. I think that a lot of people who claim they're being walked all over are actually just trying to manipulate situations and it didn't work out the way they wanted to, so they use I got walked all over as an excuse.

5:10I'm kind as fuck, none of you are walking over me. in the short term and we are short term structured. And I think that I'm passionate at this point in my life to really start talking about the nuances that are very clear to me. That sustainable things are grounded in very good virtues and that we have to start recognizing that soft skills will continue to dominate and gain momentum because hard skills are starting to be commoditized. and as technology eats up things that people can do with AI and many other technology advances, robots, they'll kill us in the end. We'll probably all be gone, but the robots will win.

5:53Your children will probably get killed by robots. Kidding, but maybe not. But I think for all of us, as we navigate these next two, three, four, five decades, I think it's incredibly important to take a step back and really recognize how much is changing. All these changes, whether it's blockchain or a mature social media or all the other technology things are fundamentally changing the world. The railroad system really changed shit, right? Airplanes really changed things. Like the television really changed things. I believe that all of us are incapable, including myself, to really wrap our heads around what a mature internet with an emerging blockchain means to society.

6:36and my intuition is that what it's definitely causing is a very big opportunity for soft skills and other things that we haven't talked about in entrepreneurship. In my brain and in my company, I call it the honey empire. I believe you get more out of honey than vinegar, but let there be no confusion. I'm trying to build an empire, which is not a soft word. People struggle with contradictions. I'm incredibly ambitious and tenacious. I'm incredibly fast day by day, but I'm incredibly patient. I think people struggle with patience and ambition, even though it's exactly what you see if you study things that have been built that are meaningful.

7:20And so I think nuances, context really matters and we've lost that. We've become an incredibly hot take, headline reading society, clearly politically, everybody understands that. That's the easiest thing to read. it goes beyond that. Gary, what's up? I'm freaking out. This is crazy for me guys. I mean, we have Gary Vee in the house. He's nuts. Lots of questions for Gary tonight, starting with this video question from Service Credit Union. Hi, Gary. What is the most notable disadvantage a micro or small business would have in today's market? More importantly, what is a key attribute a a business owner should have in overcoming it?

8:04Can I get him to play it again? What's the biggest vulnerability that I'm... What is the most notable disadvantage of a micro slash small business in today's market and what is the key attribute slash trait a business owner should have to overcome it? And this is coming from Michael. Michael, I think the biggest vulnerability that a small or medium sized business has is their perspective that their size is their vulnerability. It fascinates me how much people love to think about why they're not growing. And no question, this is the luxury of getting so much content sent to me in text, email, DMs.

8:42Everybody goes to, this person got more fundraising. This is a bigger company. They opened a location in my area. There's a very specific reason why David and Goliath is a story that still plays out in our society. The biggest mistake and the biggest opportunity for a smaller business is to be David. Right? The problem with small businesses is they inherently want to be Goliath, they want to be bigger, but they don't have that resource. The problem with Goliath is they're slow and audacious. It's actually very easy to build, compete with big companies today because of the size and scale of the internet.

9:20We see it so much. if Goliath always was gonna continue to win, well IBM would still be the biggest company. Microsoft would have never let Google happen. Google would have never let Facebook happen. I think you need, when you're small, you need to lean into scaling unscalable behaviors. For small businesses and small business owners, where do they get the confidence to grow their business in what might be a very saturated market? What's the alternative? You decided to have a fucking business. Seriously though, right? Like, the confidence comes from the audacity of thinking that you can build a life for yourself where you pay for yourself and nobody else is doing it for you.

10:00You already made that decision. The alternative is go get a job and shut down your company. Like, you know, it's, people love capitalism and entrepreneurship when it's working for them. Right. The second it's not, they don't like it. I mean, I'm so tired of all my friends that are capitalists. I'm a capitalist, which means I'm willing to go to zero and if I lose, I lost. But everyone's such a great entrepreneur and then somebody bigger comes along and takes market share and they're crying about some shit. Everybody hates when the government's involved until they need the government. Stop being soft.

10:35Love it. Stop being soft, everyone. Myself included. No, but it's a very, I want to stay on this. It's a very important point. This is what you signed up for. If you don't have the confidence, you can build it through historical staying alive. Do you know how many people here clap up if you've had your own business for more than five years?

10:57The level of admiration I have for everybody who just clapped, it's hard. Your confidence should come from the fact that you're part of a small group of people that decided to take on the risk to begin with. Anybody who just clapped and has been doing it for five years, that's remarkable. But don't be audacious. If somebody big comes along, they're better than you then. That's what you're saying. Don't cry about it. Don't try to change the rules because it's not working for you. My favorite version of it is you were small, you got bigger and hurt other people, but now somebody else came along and is bigger than you and you're crying about it.

11:31Right, you weren't crying when you were taking other people's money. So don't cry when I'll take yours. I love it. All right, this is from Mark Sky on Twitter. My girlfriend and I are quitting our careers to take on an ambitious 20 ,000 kilometer bike ride and paddle from home in Canada to a summit as a charity adventure that lasts 18 months. What is the best way to gain exposure?

11:54Um... The best way to gain exposure is to do the most obvious thing to everybody in this room, anybody could sit in this seat and answer this, which is to document the entire journey. The question is, are you good enough at it? Everybody knows the answer. You start a vlog and you put it on YouTube, you chop up all the pieces of content you put on TikTok talking to Instagram and Twitter, but are they compelling? Do they know how to post that content? Will they reply to all the comments? People's lack of patience with building exposure is why most people don't have any. It took me two years of Wine Library TV before anybody gave a shit.

12:34I did it five days a week for two years.

12:42Now Gary, in one of your podcasts, You said something super commendable, that you actually had a position in your company for someone to read the comments, reply to people, and from there you guys create this assessment as to what your content should be. Can we talk a little bit about the importance of replying to comments and acknowledging people in social media? Like, in the prior session, to your point, we have a very prominent role at VaynerMedia called PCS, post-creative strategist. these individuals jobs are to read every comment from every post of a brand. And then use their psychology, anthropology, skills to make observations from the comments by reading the qualitative data and then form an insight that makes the next piece of content.

13:34The amount of people that hit me up every day is hundreds, thousands of people who are sad that they're not growing. And then occasionally, I used to do it all the time, now I do it occasionally, I will go look at their account. 90 % of those people don't even reply to the 15 people that leave a comment. If you're in this audience and you're sad that your profile is not growing on the business side or the personal side, and you are not replying to every comment you get from the content you are putting out, you are audacious. Thank you. I love this next question from Michael on Twitter. He asks, what are the key principles to happiness and success in life?

14:18I believe it's simplicity. I really do. I think for the people that know me in my life, I'm really simple. You know, I really enjoy my career. I love this. Like, you couldn't even imagine how humbled I am by people's interest in what I talk about, but I think the key to happiness is being content while being ambitious. And I think being content comes from gratitude. I'm so grateful for what I have, and I've always been that way, that all this special stuff that has been happening doesn't mean enough to me. This is not where my self-worth comes in. The Gary V crap and the claps and the followers, like it's incredible, but it's not what I aspire to.

15:04It's not how I see my value. And I think the only way to be happy is to have a quiet mind. And I think a quiet mind comes from a balance of very deep humility and true perspective of understanding that, like you just genuinely understand that you don't mean shit in the scheme of things, but you aspire in your behavior to mean something. And I think it's a very interesting balance and I think it works incredibly well. I just wish people, people are just impossibly addicted to outside affirmation, to acceptance. And I wish people lived in their own cocoon and just did the things that made them happy.

15:47So many people would aspire to make so much less money if they didn't care about what other people think and would be dramatically happier, dramatically happier. And I wish that on society. Now, what do you do when, yeah, this is a good one. They're all good ones. It's a tough conversation because in the business world, so many people think that scoring is based on how big your net worth is or how much money you make. And it's really unfortunate because I think true-bred entrepreneurship almost doesn't give a shit about all the collateral that comes along with it. It's art. You just love doing it.

16:21And we've got to find our balance. Much like the chat I had up front, as I spend the next half decade refining what I talked to you about up there and what I'm talking about right now is we have to change the definition of success. We have to. It cannot be the flex. We cannot put expensive watches and cars and bank accounts on a pedestal. We must get away from that. But that doesn't mean we demonize it either. We have to make it about the process of the game. We've gotta find our way, because right now we're over here. We've got to find this. Now, Gary, tell me, when life hits, when the storm of life hits, because we've all been there, no matter who you are, how do you remain in that state and that space of gratitude and balance?

17:05Very easily. When your entire life is only predicated on the health and well-being of a small group of people you love more than breathing, nothing scares you. I love it. I mean, the first couple months of COVID, Vayner was a very weird spot. I don't build it for profit, so we didn't have profit. You know, I build it for growth. We were very weird, in the US, the way they subsidize businesses, we were in the middle. We weren't small enough and we weren't big enough. So we got nothing. All of our clients are humongous. And all of them right away said, we're gonna slow down the way we pay you. You know, it was a very big challenge.

17:44And I just remember having the greatest moment with myself when it was super scary week one, saying, oh my god, everything I've been telling them is true. If this company goes out of business, I'll be beyond okay. I love that. I have a question because what you said prior to what you just said really hit home for me because in my previous role, in my previous job, I actually attached my worth and my identity to income, my job, my work, my schedule, social media because I worked so hard to get it. I fell in kind of that loophole, then life hit me with a very big wake-up call. and I was stuck with this super uncomfortable feeling of my internal changing and if I didn't change my external, it just wasn't working and I became a very unhappy person.

18:30So just in case there's anyone in the crowd and the fans in the audience, anyone listening online who can relate, what would be your advice to them to have that courage to start redefining success in their life? That they can. You know, like everybody's so obsessed on what they've done and said. Like the greatest gift in the world is the ability to be comfortable in changing your mind. I love it. Actually, I have a very different thing to say right now. We need to start hanging out with 90 year olds more. I mean this. You wanna do something that will bring you an incredible amount of value, but also bring someone else an incredible amount of value?

19:15Go donate your time to a retirement home for one week. You will learn a lesson real fast. That 99 % of the stuff that all of you are right now thinking about means jack shit. This is a game of perspective. I don't understand how we don't understand that. We, you must shift perspective into simplicity which then makes the ability to do what we all do so much more palpable because there's no weight on it, because it doesn't matter as much, which then inherently makes it more enjoyable. Of course you're gonna burn out if your entire self-worth isn't how good your business is doing. Of course you're gonna burn out.

19:59A funny thing happens, you don't burn out from games. When you make your career a game, things change very quickly. Love that. I'm gonna start the clap on that one. Alright, next we have a video question from a Facebook winner, Matt Poober. Gary Vee, it's Matt with Tuber Toeing here in Edmonton. Absolutely love what you do. The focus big time on the humility aspect. We're five years stronger on 20 to 30 % year over year. We got 20 Albertans working with us and just rocking it. Our question for you is how do we get from the small business to the medium sized business? We got managers and we're helping them succeed, but how do we let go?

20:35How do we grow that to the next level? What's tough about video questions is you want to ask, there's the next question there. It's like, again, I talk about these thematics a lot and I will repeat them to my death. The best way to go from a small business to a medium business is by deploying patience and doing what you did to get to become a small business. Of course there's strategies. I've been very consistent about this. For 15 years I put out a very simple message that has been uncomfortably historically true. If you understand where the customer's attention is and you know how to make pictures, videos, and written words for those platforms, you will grow.

21:14For that gentleman's business, if he got great at LinkedIn ads, his top line revenue would grow. The question is, how is he judging himself? By the way, what is even a small or medium business? Like what are the rules of all this shit? Is five million small? Is 50 million medium? Like what is this shit? I'm sure there's some answer to it if you Google it, but everybody's answer's different. Right? Like what? Like it's these constant games of making these things for us. You know what that is? That's fucking the 90 day school grade shit. The fuck are you trying to do for tomorrow? What is that? He's gonna make his own subjective call if he's a medium business or a small business.

21:53We're playing dumb fucking games out here. Oh my gosh. I love it. I love it. Gary, you speak a lot. What's a medium sized business? Honest to God, I'm with you. Who effing knows? But really, is it 50? Somebody help, what's a medium sized business? Five minutes. 20. No, no, revenue, not people. Five million bucks, somebody just said. That's a medium sized business. That's small as shit to me. That's a bullshit business. Perspective. But this is important to understand. I'm not right, I'm not cool, I'm not special, it just doesn't work for my brain. For somebody else, a million's insane, that's insane.

22:39Do you know how hard it is to build a million dollar business? And oh by the way, what about the fact that you change over time? What about 23, a five million dollar business is a medium sized business, but then you're 36 and it's not, or it goes down. Like we just, we play in these semantics that don't mean anything except make us anxious. You speak to patience a lot, and I'm very curious to hear this answer because I am not patient at all, and I'm one of these people where I have this grand idea, and if there isn't this outcome that I'm looking for within the week, I immediately think that I'm failing, and I'm doing a miserable job, and no one cares.

23:18So if there's anyone out there who's like me, what advice would you give them in being patient with their business? Do you remember in sixth grade when you had a zit, and you were scared shitless to go to school? No, but everybody else had zits too. That's my answer to that question. I love that.

23:37This is where humility is a fucking superpower. You may see bravado on stage. My happiness is grounded in humility. You know what humility looks like in this scenario? If you don't think you're important, it's almost like your results don't matter. Who are you disappointing? Yourself? Those are voices that were put inside of you by somebody else. But what if you're a perfectionist? Like, what if you expect 12 out of 10 every day? If you're a perfectionist, you're insecure. Well, that's a good, it hit me right between the eyes with that one. Well, if you're getting a shitload of views and not a lot of conversions, it doesn't sound like it's a platform issue, it sounds like your offering isn't good.

24:23No, no, it's not, by the way, by the way, this is why business is so funny to me. That's a good thing. That wasn't a bad thing, that wasn't a razz, that's a, okay, because listen to how the question was asked. I'm not on the right platform, you're getting plenty of attention. You're not converting, which means you have to understand that what you're offering isn't landing, and this is where curiosity and humility to take a step back and say, how do I tweak this? Right, because you might be an inch away, brother, you might literally have to drop the price by 10 bucks, add a day, change a word, and everything flows.

24:55but what people often do is they go to the front to fix when the back is the issue. It's never this, everyone here is obsessed with the sink, it's the fucking well. You know what's so crazy, now I'm gonna get up? This is, what you just did about I see his true intent, but when you were squirming with everything I said? No, in a good way, in a good way, I know. It's the, what just happened between the three of us is the single reason that Gary Vee the character exists. Way too long, guys looked up to guys on dumb shit trying to do quick cash and fucking Mercedes and flex. I'm here to fucking squash that because there's plenty of people with good intent who've been miscommunicated to to take shortcuts and do bullshit shit.