Listen to this if You're Graduating in May

0:00I would tell you this piece of advice. If you are 22 years old, the amount of people that settle for the first paying job versus living with 19 friends on the floor and eating 99 cent meals blows my mind in lieu of trying to get your dream job versus what you settled for. Please, from 22 to 24, don't settle. You know, go for your dream job, pound for it, and if you can't get into VaynerMedia, then go for the second best or third best or fourth best on your list. please start with the moon and go backwards. The amount of you that start at a hilltop and just settle there is an enormous mistake. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience.

0:43Natalie asks, if you were a college graduate today and didn't have your family business, how would you handle the job market? Natalie, thank you so much. Big shout out to everybody who was out in LA. That was a really phenomenal night for me as well. A lot of people came out, I appreciate it. Well, first of all, I wouldn't attack the job market because even at the age of nine or 10, long before I even realized my parents had a liquor store, kind of, you know, as my dad managed that store and was buying into a business, I was already slinging, as you heard in episode 118, you know, blue curtains and alarm clocks and clearly you've heard the stories of lemonade and baseball cards.

1:22There is no attacking the job market for my DNA because I would try to start a business. Especially right now, I would completely take advantage of the fact that there's an enormous amount of dumb money trying to become investors in startups. Meaning, unlike the generation where I became an angel investor in 2009, 2008, 2010, 11, right now, every dentist, every real estate agent, every trust fund baby in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, anybody who had a good career on Wall Street is now an investor looking for their Mark Zuckerberg. I would take advantage of that I would network I assume if I was in college I would ask professors I would ask friends and family I would just ask I think when you're at the bottom asking is quite important and so I would ask for at-bats try to network I would use the incredible tool that is known as Twitter and I would be replying to people that I aspire to get in touch with I don't you know it's funny to me to see the people that give up after asking to meet with me for a few minutes after three or four no's.

2:26And I know that I'm inducing now a ton of Twitter chatter to meet with me and I hope you saw the video I made for myself, the advice I've given myself. D-Rock, give him a two second clip. And so I need to get my shit together so I apologize I'm letting you down but the truth is I need to heed to this advice I'm giving myself. You know, so I won't see you but I would have saw you six months ago and Cuban or Jack Welsh or Zucks or Elon Musk score, you just never know when they'll actually sit down with you. And then there's a million people that maybe you don't know who've been successful, who've got leverage, who've got money.

3:01And so I would attack the reality of the marketplace. And the reality of the marketplace right this second is tons of cash, looking for young people with ideas. I think it's a broken bubble. I think that gets exposed. I think 99 % of people are not going to deliver on that investment. I think I'd be one of the 1 % that would deliver on that investment. So I'd be looking for while in college and like I did in college, instead of looking to hook up and do keg stands, I'd be looking for business partners and business opportunities. I think for anybody else that is not wired like me, which I think is a far majority of this show's audience, I would tell you this piece of advice.

3:38If you were 22 years old, if you were the amount of people that settle for the first paying job versus living with 19 friends on the floor and eating 99 cent meals blows my mind in lieu of trying to get your dream job versus what you settled for. Please, from 22 to 24, don't settle. You know, go for your dream job. Pound for it. And if you can't get into VaynerMedia, then go for the second best or third best or fourth best on your list. Please start with the moon and go backwards. The amount of you that start at a hilltop and just settle there is an enormous mistake. Hey everybody, I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now.

4:20Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. Because 22 to 24 is when you should live really, really humble, ghetto, dirt. That's it. That's the time. To settle in in the middle only lends itself to so much upside. So aspire for as high as you possibly can and be patient. It sucks not having a job in September when all your friends do, or your friends that were juniors the year before are going back to school, and you're like, the pressure's on, and maybe your parents don't like that you don't have a job.

4:56But that's exactly when you should be buying random stuff at Goodwill and selling it on eBay to pay your$80 worth of rent because you have 94 roommates in a studio. That's it. Get dirty. Because, and I know I paused there, because getting dirty is the price to having what you want. The dramatic misunderstanding that amazing things come with a price. A lot of people talk about rich kids. I really negatively look at rich kids. I look negatively at my kids because they're about to be rich kids. That's just real. But you know what comes with the price of being a rich kid? People completely, you basically lost in the game of winners.

5:41You basically, from day one, you were born into money, you actually aren't good. You were handed it. You suck. That's it. You've lost. That's the price that comes along with it. And take it from somebody who cried every day because his dad had a small family business and I was petrified because I knew I had the talent that everybody would say that things were handed to me. Cried every day with my mom on the phone. I'm not coming into the family business even though I can help it, even though I want to. I don't because then everybody's gonna say that it was handed to me, in the scheme of things, I was an idiot, didn't realize how small it was to the world, but everything's got a price.

6:18Everything's got a price. You're beautiful? Life is much better when you're beautiful. That's what we all say. I agree with that. But more realistically, you get completely disrespected. You get disrespected. You can't be smart. You can't be good. You're just too beautiful. I'm serious. I'm really tired of people thinking everybody's got it better. Everybody has advantages. You know what the advantages of are being ghetto and on welfare and being nothing and having nothing, being a child of a homeless parent? You know what the advantage is? You're angry. You've got a ridiculous chip on your shoulder.

6:54You want to stick it to everybody. All of them. Use what you've got. Use what you've got. That was good. That was another four. You weren't sure? We're ready. No, that's it. We can move on. There's an article that's been making around saying that the only millennials who are being vaguely financially successful are the only reason any millennials are making any money is because their parents were able to pay off their college loans. Yeah. Basically. Yeah, I mean, because the college loans are bringing everyone down. Yeah, I mean, this college loan, I mean, college is the racket. It is the singular racket.

7:34These are businesses that are, I was just walking with James Orsini he said went to a college this week I don't want to blow up his daughter's spot but like wow you know what his line was? It was like Disneyland. Of course it was like Disneyland James. They made it look like Disneyland so you buy it. Like the racket. The racket college loans that you can't even declare bankruptcy to get out of. That gives you a piece of paper that does not map to anything that's going on in the real world. Zero. Zero reality other than the jobs, lawyers, doctors. I know the cliche shit, but I'm talking business and you're not watching this for lawyer shit.

8:12So business just does not map. Like if I could spur some excitement right now is if you are watching this and you are collecting debt to go to college to be a business person, quit right now. Send this email to mom. Sorry mom, fuck off. I don't want you to wrap your self-esteem into little Johnny's life so you can tell your fucking friends that he goes to Dartmouth. He's gonna lose. Get him the out. 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.

8:55We talked about a bunch of different things. Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and there are many. But the first thing that I wanna 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. What 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. One of the esteemed gentlemen here said, they're going into such a tough job market.

9:41Unless 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. The number one thing most of you in this audience right here need is a punch to the face. The parents like that.

10:16Let 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, but you're gonna have to lean into things that we were not taught properly.

11:01All 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. It'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.

11:47We 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.

12:35But in that joke, and I appreciate the reaction, especially as the garden is on fire right now,

12:43and 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.

13:19That 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?

14:05Many 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

14:55my 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.

15:25This, 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.

16:16I 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.

17:17A 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.

17:47I 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.

18:34I 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.

19:24Please, 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.

19:49I 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.

20:35You've been reading about it. That's like reading about push-ups.

20:43Sorry.

20:47You 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.

21:25Be 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.

22:12It 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 I 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.

23:15I'm scared. I'm super scared. I'm scared because I know exactly what happens this month every year. It's that time of year again when college students turn their tassels and start a new chapter in their lives. I'm scared. I'm scared because I know that there are so many of you that graduate this month and have no idea What you want to do? I'm stuck. I'm in a rut because because I just finished on me And that's okay most people don't you should not be stressed about that I'm actually not scared about that. You're five seconds out. I know the end I feel like I did so well in school I was like, okay so how do I translate that You don't, but you don't think you can't not No, I just don't know how to get Right, you've got to get out of that rhythm You've got to get into real life rhythm But you're a kid You're a kid Don't beat yourself up If it's not coming easy yet You have to decompose from that old environment Everybody's judging themselves Way too early What I would do is gather as many experiences as possible You know?

24:29You're not lost in life. You're just early in the process. You know what I mean? You're lost by other people's standards, not by your actual, if you actually took it practically, you haven't even started. Too many people view post-university as like, oh, this is now real and I'm lost. They don't put it in the context of being alive for 100 years and realizing they're only 20 % of the way done. I'm scared that you don't realize that you're entering the greatest five year window of your life. If you are 22 years old and graduating from college, if you're 22 years old and not graduating from college, if you are 22 years old, you are entering, first of all, some of the greatest years of your life, A, but B, this, this is the moment.

25:15Watch this video twice. If mama's watching this, send this to your daughter, Sally, right now, because you have to understand, This next five year window is when you don't go practical and safe. You've got to try stuff. The biggest reason you don't know what you want to do is you haven't tasted enough things. And the biggest reason you're not tasting enough things is you're worried about finding it too fast. How old are you? You can literally do nothing for the next eight years and be a child. But you don't think that. Because when you're 22, you don't think 31 is young. But it is. this is not the time to get the job mom wanted you to this is not the time to try to maximize as much money so you can buy a fat whip you need to stop giving about what anybody else has and realize that if you put your head down and just work for the next 10 years no glamour no new car suitcase jewelry trip event no Coachella no new sneakers like work you will have it.

26:22And every time you care about one of the things I just mentioned, it will slow down your process of having it. You got your head up, that's right. That's why it's interesting. You've got your head up and you're trying to score at 22.

26:36Slowing you down and everybody else. Dude, you wrap your head around not giving about any advancement to your 29, but then every day trying to get better, you win. Just close your eyes until you're 29. The number one reason I push patience is because patience will give you the air cover to take risk. You've got plenty of time to do it all. And like, yeah, it's gonna take a lot of hard work to do the insanity you want, but that's what I would tell myself. Like, that you will not believe how young you will feel at 40. This is the time to realize that you have a five-year window, and it's three for some, it's eight for others, but this is a five-year window for you to attack the life that you want to win, not because it's the secret or because the world's so zen, because it's hard there.