In short
Gary Vaynerchuk argues that optimism must be paired with practicality (doing the work) and that the internet/app era makes it “unstoppable” to build happiness and business through consistent content, self-awareness, and ignoring others’ opinions.
Guest backgrounds
No guests are interviewed in the transcript. It’s a keynote by Gary Vee, followed by audience Q&A.
Key claims
- Happiness requires two things: “here” (doing the work/knowing what to do) plus optimism as fuel; optimism without work is “delusion.”
- Most people fail because they chase likes/affirmation, post for themselves, and live based on others’ judgments.
- Money/time excuses are gone: starting content (including podcasts) costs zero.
- Content wins via being better, not first; content must be either entertainment or information.
- Self-awareness and giving without expectation are “bricks of happiness.”
Notable examples
- Childhood: sold lemonade and baseball cards; later worked in a liquor store at $2/hour, learning to watch people.
- Early platform wins: among first YouTube shows (wine, 2006), early Twitter growth, early investor in Path.
- Twitter example: searched “wine” and replied 7–8 hours/day for four years before major recognition.
- Q&A: advises a branding agency founder to be a generalist first; tells investors to weigh idea vs operator (capability) 51/49; says best financial move is never spending more than you have and taking risks you can afford (e.g., investing in early Facebook stock without borrowing).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Journey to Happiness and Opportunity
0:56 to 1:15
GaryVee shares his personal upbringing and views on happiness and opportunity.
“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”
The Journey to Happiness and Opportunity
1:23 to 7:20
GaryVee shares his personal upbringing and views on happiness and opportunity.
“and I'm heading to the airport at 4 p.m.”
Optimism as a Fuel for Practicality
7:21 to 12:45
Discussion on the importance of optimism, practical work, and living authentically.
“I had a tremendous mother who loved me very, very much, so I felt good.”
Seizing Opportunities in the Digital Age
12:46 to 14:00
Encouragement to leverage digital tools for success and personal growth.
“Every person here knows what they want to do.”
Maximizing Opportunities with Social Media
14:00 to 23:17
Learn how to leverage social media platforms for personal and business growth.
“like here, WhatsApp and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Spotify like there's so much opportunity and you don't even have to leave your home.”
Maximizing Opportunities with Social Media
23:20 to 24:37
Learn how to leverage social media platforms for personal and business growth.
“It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month.”
The Importance of Content Creation
24:47 to 28:01
Understand the significance of producing valuable content across various platforms.
“Humans love efficiency and audio saves time.”
The Power of Engagement
28:01 to 30:06
Learn the importance of thoughtful engagement on social media to grow your audience.
“the problem is I need you to look inside yourself and tell me why you're not doing it.”
Eliminating Excuses
30:07 to 31:39
Understand how the internet removes traditional barriers to success.
“by the internet because you can lay in bed and do it at 11 p.m.”
Patience and Long-Term Commitment
31:40 to 35:30
Discover the value of patience and commitment in achieving personal goals.
“For seven to eight hours a day, for four years, I would go to Twitter search, search wine terms, jump into them, and give information for four years before anybody gave a fuck who I was.”
Show all 20 chapters
Self-Awareness as a Key to Success
35:31 to 38:10
Explore the importance of self-awareness in personal and professional life.
“who they don't even know leaving a comment that they're ugly.”
Living Without Fear of Judgment
38:11 to 41:19
Learn how to overcome the fear of judgment to pursue your true passions.
“When I knew that I was an entrepreneur in the 80s, I got Ds and Fs in school, and that was not acceptable in the 80s and 90s in America.”
The Wisdom of Distinct Perspectives
41:20 to 42:00
Understand the value of unique perspectives and experiences in shaping success.
“There are people here that work more on upgrading their phones than upgrading their minds.”
The Fear of Regret and Parental Expectations
42:00 to 45:59
Gary discusses the importance of pursuing personal passion over parental expectations to avoid lifelong regret.
“There's a very big secret that parents never tell you.”
Embracing the Opportunities of Today
46:00 to 50:34
Gary emphasizes the unprecedented opportunities available today for personal and professional growth.
“You know exactly what you would do if you could do it every minute of your life.”
Living Life to the Fullest
50:35 to 52:38
Gary encourages listeners to take advantage of their unique life circumstances and avoid future regrets by pursuing their interests.
“You live in a place where this country lives its life here and the cost for you to enter it and do something for yourself and your family, zero.”
Audience Q&A Session
53:10 to 56:01
Gary addresses audience questions, providing insights on business and personal development.
“we have a few questions from the audience member that we have chosen from our social media I've heard of social media so without further ado our first question comes from Alexander is Alexander here?”
Investor Insights from Gary
56:01 to 58:32
Gary shares key factors he considers when investing in businesses.
“All right, the next question comes from Mehdi Astarina.”
Financial Wisdom and Risk Management
58:33 to 1:00:48
Gary discusses the best financial decision he's made and the importance of risk management.
“Our last question comes from Ben Arthur.”
Audience Interaction and Motivation
1:00:49 to 1:02:32
Gary engages with the audience, emphasizing the importance of taking action and living fully.
“If you have a question, raise your hand up.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Please understand how lucky, that's the only word I have for it, how lucky you are that you get to live during this era. Right now, anything that comes out of your mouth that is complaining makes your grandfather want to punch you in the fucking face.
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0:55You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+.
1:22I just flew 24 hours, took a quick shower, plan on delivering this keynote, couple of meetings, and I'm heading to the airport at 4 p.m. So a very quick trip, unfortunately this time, but I'm very excited about it and there's a whole lot I want to cover. So let me create some context for some of the people in the room who don't know as much about me and then I'll go into the reason why I genuinely believe as we all sit here today together that because of this device that many of you are holding, we are living in the most opportunistic time ever to put yourself into a place of happiness and happiness comes in all forms and I think a lot of business and entrepreneurship, but I definitely want to articulate today a framework that speaks to how do you get happy because of how much opportunity there actually is.
2:22Let me take a step back. I was born in the Soviet Union in 1975, a little ways ago. I came to America when I was three years old. It was a very challenging upbringing in the first couple years. you know, six family members in a studio apartment. We struggled, we had to learn a new language. We started from the bottom, no question. As you can imagine, my parents are very much my heroes. My mom stayed home and raised the kids. My dad worked every day, many, many, many hours a day. First as a stock boy, putting bottles on the shelf in a liquor store in New Jersey for only$2 an hour. So, very humble beginnings, where the Vaynerchuks come from, but entrepreneurship was definitely foundational in the happiness that we were able to create over that period of time.
3:20My dad worked quite a bit eventually, he became the manager of that liquor store, and that's when we moved to New Jersey, outside of New York City, and that's where I mainly grew up, and that is where my entrepreneurial career began. I always wanted to work. You know, it came natural to me. It's what I wanted to do. When the summer days happened and all the kids wanted to play, I wanted to go wash people's cars. I wanted to sell lemonade. I wanted to do business. It was always in me. It's what made me happy. When I was five, six, seven years old, I convinced all my friends to stand behind booths from the lemonade that I made and I would make signs and try to think about how to market.
4:05Long before the internet, I cared about one core thing, which was the attention of the person that I was trying to reach and how I could get them excited to buy my thing. Eventually, after Lemonade, I started my first kind of real business. In America, in the 80s, baseball cards, sports cards that people could trade became very, very big, and I rode that wave. I got very involved, I loved sports, and I loved even more buying packs of cards, getting good cards, and reselling them. And that's really where I learned much, I mean, to think that sitting here today and having so many people clap for you on the complete other side of the world, and so much of that was what I learned in the malls and conventions in New Jersey selling these cards, it's remarkable.
5:04I'm very humbled. I very much appreciate the warm welcome when I came out here. And I'm setting up this framework because I think, you know, as I was getting ready for this conference and I looked at so much of the chatter about the conference and obviously the phenomenal Instagram account of our hosts and kind of just looked, the thing that I've become fascinated about and the thing that I want to talk about today is really two things. literally right before I came out here with the organizers, they're like, talk about the how. And I asked them, I said, the how here or the how here?
5:44What's interesting to me, now that I've been a little older and had my career, and I'll go back to it in a minute to frame it up, but as I'm segueing, what's interesting to me is every wonderful person that I'm looking at right now, for them to get what they want, happiness, forget about money for a minute, happiness, for them to get what they want, it actually is only one of two things, here or here. And here represents doing the work, knowing what to do. My whole career as I got more known on the internet, I did not want to be a motivational speaker and I spent many years not talking about this.
6:25I mainly talked about this. But after a while, what started happening was I started reading enough comments, because I read all my comments, and I just started realizing so much of why people can't get there has to do with this, that I started talking about it more over the last four or five years. But I think they both matter. You could be the most optimistic, happy person up here, but if you don't put in the work and if you don't know what work to put in, it's not gonna happen. Optimism is very close to delusion. However, I believe that optimism is the fuel to practicality, right? If you don't believe you're doing it for a reason or it's exciting, you're not gonna wanna put in the hours of the work and so that's who I've always been.
7:18I've always been ambitious and happy. I was very fortunate. I had a tremendous mother who loved me very, very much, so I felt good. However, she did not create entitlement. When I lost or when I was doing bad, she told me. She didn't make a fake environment, which is a huge factor. And to be honest, my biggest concern about the last 20 years of parenting, too much fake environments, too much entitlement, which is why so many people struggle when they go into the real world, because the real world doesn't care. The real world is not your mama anymore. And so I think about those things. Fast forward, I was very good at selling baseball cards.
7:59When you're making three or$4 ,000 a weekend when you're 14 years old, you've got it. I was good, fine. But then my dad eventually bought a liquor store and he dragged me into the liquor store when I was 14. I started making two bucks an hour, bagging ice. This was huge for me. If I didn't have that transition, all the money I was making as a young kid, it came so easy because I was naturally talented. I think not having that struggle of losing all that because my dad forced me to work in the store and making$20 a day, that really helped me. And I learned a lot in that liquor store. Most of all, what I learned was to watch people.
8:37Today, after this talk, I will go to the airport and on my flight, I will literally read most of the comments on Twitter, on Instagram, your DMs. I will read them and I'll read them to understand was there anything I said in this hour that stood out, that didn't hit, that did hit. I learned that watching people and more importantly understanding people and most importantly being empathetic to people was the best way to build a real business, to build something meaningful. The biggest problem, I'll tell you right now, one of the biggest reasons most people in this room, if they decide to start an entrepreneurial venture, a side hustle, whether you try to sell something in your home on Facebook Marketplace, which oh by the way, I'm gonna bring up later, my biggest belief that the quickest way for many people here to start is to sell stuff on Facebook Marketplace, but I'll talk about that later.
9:31Whether it's that, whether you're finally ready to start your podcast on Spotify, whether you're gonna build your Instagram profile or meme page because you want brand dollars, whatever you're up to in this room, the reality is that if you have to put in so much work but so much of what comes out of people's mouth or what they post is selfish, not selfless. It's what you want. You want them to buy it. You want them to like your post. You want them to follow you. The biggest reason I have the luxury of standing here today is from the wine business to the content I made on YouTube when it first came out, to everything I've done over the last eight to nine years in my books, in all my free content, I've always thought, how do I bring more value to you than I get in return?
10:29It's very simple. Karma or doing the right thing always works. The problem is most people are impatient. The reason most people are impatient, especially in cultures like mine, Eastern European, in cultures like here, there's too many people in here that are trying to get successful too fast because they want to prove it to their parents. And in that impatience is a very important point. My friends, the number one thing I fear, period, is that people live their lives based on other people's opinions. The number one thing that I have seen as I've gotten older that has been very obvious to me is that most of the people here today do many of the things they do because of one to five people's opinions in their lives, whether their parents, their spouse, their older sibling, their neighbor.
11:31Living your life predicated on the judgment of somebody else is the great weakness of the human being. The biggest reason, do you know how many people are here today just to get affirmation from me to go and do something? I mean it, I mean it, and it's fascinating to me and I'm empathetic, I understand, and I want to talk about it a lot because no matter how I tell you how to leave 500 comments on Instagram posts, or what time to post your posts, or why you should start a Spotify podcast tomorrow, or how you actually list an item on Facebook Marketplace. No matter what I tell you, if you post the first day, and the person that you're worried about has a bad opinion of it, it's already game over.
12:27And so I flew all the way here, 24 hours to put pressure on what is the most obvious conversation which is are you prepared to finally get quiet in your head and not allow the opinions of others to dictate your behaviors. Every person here knows what they want to do. If you're here today, there's something running through your mind that you want to do. There is no reason for you to be here today unless there's something running through your mind that you want to do. How many people here are over 40 years old? Raise your hands. Raise them high. Raise high. Don't be scared. Raise high.
13:12Jesus Christ, this is a young crowd.
13:22For the very small percentage of us here that are over 40, thanks brother there's like eight of us bro for like the 11 of us look this is a lot of fun for the 11 of us we lived life before this we were grown we were grown ups already before the internet came I was 18 years old I'd lived my life at least the childhood part of my life without the internet the biggest thing that excites me especially in a mature internet market like here, WhatsApp and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Spotify like there's so much opportunity and you don't even have to leave your home. There was no building your life you know after hours when I was growing up.
14:19When you had a job and you had to take care of something you didn't then start another job because it was late but now this allows it. The biggest thing that I want to get across in this little moment of this speech is everybody in here is taking this for granted. Your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your great-great-grandparents, they didn't have this. If you aren't succeeding or attacking your success with this in your hand, then what are you doing? Every single person here has the opportunity to create a profile and a presence online, whether it's yourself or your business or your idea, and the cost is zero.
15:06I love when people get mad when Facebook or Instagram's organic reach goes down. I keep reminding them it's free.
15:18How many people here are on Instagram? Raise your hand. Jesus.
15:28Over the next year or two, Instagram's reach is gonna go down because more ads are gonna go in. So as you can imagine, I'm so passionate to get you to post three or four times a day, not once a day, yet everybody over thinks their posts so much because they're so scared not to get as many likes as they did last time. It's true. It's 100 % true. The amount of people here who want to post something but retake it 53 times or change the filter or things of that nature or my favorite move, you post it but in the first 83 seconds, you don't get enough likes and you remove it.
16:18It's a fascinating thing for me to watch because what it speaks to is, in my opinion, people being confused about the game. I view the game macro. I watch most people play micro. You're not in the business of getting likes on Instagram, yet you're pandering to the machine of that. You're in the business of creating awareness for whatever you want. You want people to know what you want them to know, whatever that may be. Business, raise money for a charity, sell something, become a personal brand. You know, whatever it might be, whatever it might be, that's what you want, yet people get so caught up in the semantics.
17:00Listen, what I can tell you from my career is this repeats over and over and over again. In 2006, I started one of the first YouTube shows, period. It was the longest show on YouTube when I launched it. YouTube wasn't even a year old. I sat in front of a camera and I drank wine for 30 minutes and a lot of people watched it. A year later, Twitter came out and I was one of the first people to move on that. I invested because I got smarter at that point, but I also was one of the first people to amass a million followers on that platform. Before I did YouTube and Twitter, a year or two earlier in America and many other parts of the world, MySpace had won and dominated and there were people that won on that platform.
17:46If you pay attention to what happened on MySpace, if you pay attention to what happened on YouTube, if you pay attention to what happened on Twitter and then Facebook and then Vine and on and on and on, it's all the same game. In the beginning, if you move quickly, you can get more attention. Most people get frustrated that they aren't first and then they don't go all in because they think they missed it. However, winning on these platforms is a game of being better, not first. Being better comes in two ways. This is where it gets very important, my friends. Being better on putting out content only comes out in two ways.
18:29Either entertainment, right, or information. If you are putting out content on these websites and trying to grow, and you want to succeed and build an audience, you either do information, you know what you're talking about, whether it's painting nails, business, wine, sneakers, hair care, I don't care what it is. You either know or you entertain. Entertainment comes in a lot of ways. This is playing out on Instagram. Entertainment comes in being funny. Entertainment comes in being musical. Entertainment and escapism comes in being attractive, being a model. It all plays. If you're lucky enough to have both, it gets really crazy.
19:16But if you do not do one or the other, you lose. If you go look at your Instagram account right now and look at the last 10 posts, my question to you is very simple. Did you post those posts for your audience so they could be entertained or informed? Or did you post it for yourself for your own self-esteem or insecurities? Let me save you time. You posted it for yourself.
19:49The biggest takeaway that you could have from here, in my opinion, is a couple things. Number one, you are very fortunate to live in a country with disproportionate advances on these platforms. When I look at the data of how much attention is on this device and those six platforms in this country and the size of this country, it is staggering. This is one of the best places in the world to produce content for YouTube, Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. It's one of the best places in the world.
20:24See, you did it again. You clapped for yourself. Oh, actually, fun fact. Actually, back to this amazing place and the internet and apps. I don't know if a lot of you know this, but I was actually one of the first five investors in Path, which was a huge app here for a long period of time before it shut down a year ago. So because I was an early investor in Path and because this became the biggest market for Path four or five years ago, I spent a lot of time paying attention to this market from far away. And what I can tell you is this, the beauty of the people that live here and there's so much, you know, it's funny, there's so much amazingness, you know, in the world that I see, How many people here consume my content?
21:08Raise your hands. Thank you. So, thank you. So, if you do, you have a good sense of me. You can imagine why I love Indonesia so much. All the love and optimism and warmth plays out here. But the biggest thing that I'm passionate about is getting people to be less insecure and care less about what people think, especially their parents, plays out here too. And so for me, it's a really interesting market to look at what trends and how people do things and what they respond to and who they follow and why. And so what I can tell you is, if you are capable, if you are capable to be strong enough internally to start posting on these platforms more truth, more your truth, you, your truth, you will see a remarkable return on that investment in this market.
22:04Now, let's talk about content. Because no matter what you're doing in this room, you're gonna have to produce it to achieve what you want. The problem is, there's a lot of ways to produce content. One of the biggest issues that I'm excited to address here is in a world where Instagram does extremely well, or YouTube, people think pictures and videos are the only way to go. I'm here to tell you that two of the places I'm most excited about are the written word and audio. Hey everybody, I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show but follow the podcast.
22:43It'll make my mom super happy. If you are not comfortable taking tons of pictures and videos, you immediately have to make a decision here today. Are you a good writer? And if you are, I have a lot of good news for you. I'll go to that minute. Or two, if you like to talk, however you're uncomfortable with video, I couldn't be, back to your clapping, more passionate about the last six months in Indonesia, the consumption of podcasting in this country is exploding. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling? Smart move. Another smart move? getting help from one of state farms 19 000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling just another way to save with the personal price plan prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state i get so many headaches every month it could be chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month each lasting four hours or more Botox, Autobotulinum Toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine.
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24:47I highly recommend if you have something to say about some category, I highly recommend getting very serious about podcasts because I believe that audio over the next decade is going to be one of the biggest ways we consume because we don't like wasting time. Humans love efficiency and audio saves time. Audio is exploding and will continue to explode and I highly recommend you look at it seriously. Another thing that's interesting to me is actually a little tidbit I don't share very often, but I always say watch what I do, not what I say. When I looked at the hashtag or the comments for this conference, I looked at a bunch of accounts.
25:30The number one mistake I believe people are doing on Instagram right now is not leaving enough written copy. If you look at my posts, When I post a picture or video on Instagram, I write a lot of copy. I don't do that for my health. I don't like wasting three minutes. I do it because it matters. So, I know a lot of you are trying to build your Instagram. One of the best tidbits I can give you is please start adding two, three, four, five, six, seven sentences to your post, add context, add clarity, add a little story. you will see substantial returns. Speaking of written, how many people here are on LinkedIn?
26:14Raise your hands. Quite a few. If you're paying attention to me, you might have noticed, literally, I've talked about LinkedIn more in the last four months than I have in the last seven years. LinkedIn's content, business, it's business, and even if you're a fitness influencer, there's a way to do business content. Write an article, six things, a traveling business woman and man can do when they're in a hotel room. So you can always make your content fit. LinkedIn organic reach on content is very high. Very high. I highly recommend everybody here get serious about their LinkedIn. I know a lot of you haven't signed in in three years, four years.
26:57The LinkedIn that many of us grew up with was just to get a job. It is now about business content. And I believe whether, again, you sell rugs or sneakers or wine, there's a way to write content for LinkedIn. Remember, the mindset of the person on LinkedIn is business, so you have to consider that. It's different than Instagram, right? LinkedIn is your office. Instagram is the club, you know? So you have to act differently. You have to act differently, but I'm telling you right now, LinkedIn and Spotify podcasts for a lot of this room that hasn't been making is a very big opportunity. Posting three, four times a day on Instagram is a very big opportunity.
27:41All this content that I want you to write is a very big opportunity. Content is how you will make your happiness happen. Putting out content is how you will make your happiness, whether that's build a big business, whether that's get a dream job, a collaboration. Content, talking, content is how you'll make your happiness happen. the problem is I need you to look inside yourself and tell me why you're not doing it. To me, what I've learned in the last five or seven years, I can sit here for half an hour and give you every detail. I can tell you right now that if you go into your explore page on Instagram and click on every one of those videos and then go leave a comment on that post, a thoughtful comment, watch the video or picture, not just hey or an emoji, look at it, and spend two minutes and leave a comment that if you do that 30, 40, 60, 100 times a day, if you're hungry, if you're ambitious, if you want something, if you do that, I know that will work.
Read the full transcript
28:42It will work, you will grow, you will get more attention. You will get more attention to your business, to yourself. My question is, why won't you do it? My question is, why won't you do it? Will you not leave a comment because you're nervous to leave a comment on somebody who's famous's page? Will you not leave a comment because you think somebody's gonna judge your comment? Will you not leave a comment because you don't wanna spend an hour leaving comments? Why? For me, everything is about reverse engineering. What do you want to happen? Like what? What do you want to happen and then understanding in 2019 that written words, audio and video on seven platforms can get you there is remarkable.
29:27it's just remarkable it's so crazy to me I'm sitting here listening as I'm talking and I'm literally blown away that I believe it I mean it I'm shocked that we are now living at a time where the internet is at scale the apps that dominate the culture are free you could literally walk out of here right now and start the process of changing the course of your life if you want, and literally the only thing left now, because the excuse of money and time is over. That's amazing. The fact that money and time have been subsidized by the internet because you can lay in bed and do it at 11 p.m. if you want, and the cost is zero.
30:16You don't have to buy a store and open it, like, zero. It eliminates all your excuses and now the question is why not? Why are you not? And so I'm very passionate of getting this room today to start thinking about what they want to be doing and how and where and why. I'm breaking it down into audio, written word, videos and pictures. You know what the five or six platforms are. Now it just becomes the match to get it started and more importantly and the biggest thing that I fear will the group have enough patience to see the results? I was on Twitter from 2007 to 2011 and I replied to every single person that tweeted at me and in the beginning, because nobody knew who I was, I went to Twitter search and I searched the word wine and other wine terms, found people talking about it, jumped into the conversation and left good information.
31:23I did that for seven to eight hours a day for four years before anybody gave a fuck about who I was.
31:35Let me say that slowly one more time. For seven to eight hours a day, for four years, I would go to Twitter search, search wine terms, jump into them, and give information for four years before anybody gave a fuck who I was. Now I get DMs from people saying, in three weeks I'll get a DM from somebody here saying, Gary, saw you in Jakarta, it was awesome. I started doing stuff, I'm not getting any traction. I reply, that's nice, Mario, you've been doing it for three fucking weeks.
32:22the level of pay, let me take a real step back. If you're sitting in this chair and you want to do something that makes you happy and makes you money, let's just say that. I have no idea what people want in here, but fine. How many people happy money? Raise your hands if you want happy money. Raise it, don't be scared. Great. Let me ask you a question. If you have the audacity to be happy and have money, Which, by the way, the amount of people that have lots of money and are very happy is very small. It just is. If you want to be happy and have money, don't you think it should take a long time and it should be hard?
33:06Right? That, to me, has been the most interesting thing. In this world that everything's so fast, and this world where one or two people look like Mark Zuckerberg, or travel, where you can point to one or two people. I don't know if you heard, there's 7.7 billion of us. But because you can point to one or two people that got it fast and a lot, all of a sudden everybody thinks it should be fast and a lot. At 34 years old, after working for 12 years, helping build my family business, I left my family business and I had no money. 34, no money. How many people here are younger than 34? Raise your hands.
33:47DRock, where are you? Hold on, keep them up. DRock, where are you? Yo, right here, come here, look at this. Put the lights on, hands up. Look at this, every hand here, stand up, actually, if you raised your hand, stand up.
34:08Every person here standing is under 34 years old. When I left Wine Library day to day at 34 years old, I had nothing. When I started VaynerMedia, we started it in Buddy Media's conference room because I didn't have dollars to spend on rent. Imagine how early I think you are in your life. You can sit. Thank you.
34:34If you can keep the lights on, I like it. Thank you. Beautiful, thank you. My friends, it's early. It's early for 100 % of the people in the room. It's ridiculously early for 95 % of this room. This internet thing, it's big. It's real big. We haven't even started. Please understand how lucky, that's the only word I have for it, how lucky you are that you get to live during this era. Right now, anything that comes out of your mouth that is complaining makes your grandfather wanna punch you in the fucking face. You understand? Do you understand how much better you have it than every generation before you?
35:21This is such a ridiculously special time and literally the far majority of this room is not gonna take advantage of it because of the insecurity of worrying about somebody who they don't even know leaving a comment that they're ugly. Are you literally not gonna take advantage of the actual ability to be happy and successful because somebody comes on your account and says you're stupid. But this is what's playing out. This is what's happening. I mean, look at different cultures. On the way here, do you know that one of the biggest things that was DM'd here is that there's a lot of people coming here by themselves and they wanted advice how to say hello to somebody that they didn't know?
36:06What are you scared of? They're gonna bite you? We are living in a very fascinating time. A very fascinating time. It reminds me of when new countries are born and people buy up real estate. The attention, the attention of this room is real estate. You're trying to get it. Everybody's living on these things. It's gonna happen more, not less. You can judge it, that's fine, but that's what's gonna happen. And so if you are not producing words and videos and sounds for these seven platforms, you almost don't exist. Now, what you say, though, matters very much. And let me give you a couple advice points from somebody who's really won.
36:53The number one thing you have to always do is talk about what you know. I watch people try to talk about stuff they don't know every single day because it's hot. Whether it's cannabis or sports betting or blockchain or social media, people start talking about things they don't know anything about because they're trying to grab. They think they're going to get a fast score. Everybody wants a fast score. Do you know how many people have emailed me crying about buying Bitcoin at 10 ,000 a coin? Because it was going to be 100 ,000 in a year. People are looking for fast scores. You know how many people here spent$800 on a course because it was going to happen fast?
37:33Fast is bad. Fast is bad. Fast if you have talent and the right intent is amazing. Fast if you want cash immediately. So, please, please, please understand the world you're living in, take it into context, understand how remarkable this era is. Next, this is the most important word, you have to deploy self-awareness. my friends, self-awareness is the most important word. If you don't know who you are, you have no shot. But do not be embarrassed of who you are. When I knew that I was an entrepreneur in the 80s, I got Ds and Fs in school, and that was not acceptable in the 80s and 90s in America.
38:21If you were a bad student in America in the 80s and 90s, you were a loser. My friend's parents looked at me, looked at me as I was a loser. But I knew who I was. I was self-aware. I knew that I was an entrepreneur. I wanted to go and sell things on the weekend. I wanted to study the prices of wine and baseball cards instead of studying for school. I knew who I was. Playing video games seemed like a waste of time 20 years ago. Now there are people who make$50 million a year playing video games. If there is something you know and you like and you're passionate about, but it's not cool right now or important, do not deviate away from your thing.
39:04Triple down on your thing. The other thing is be self-aware. How many people here are an entrepreneur or want to be? Raise your hands. I'm just curious. It's a lot of hands. The reality is most of you can't be successful. I mean that. I'm not saying it to Raz. It's rare to be a successful entrepreneur. It's hard. It's a real talent. We don't think it's a talent now because it's so easy to say you're one. One of the most important things about being self-aware is knowing do you have the stomach to be an entrepreneur? Putting entrepreneur in your Instagram account, easy. Living the life of an entrepreneur where nobody else is on the line except you, hard, lonely, scary, difficult.
39:52If you do it because it's cool or you think it's right or you're not self-aware, it leads to depression and loss of money. If you deploy self-awareness and realize you're a number two, a number three, a number four, you find an entrepreneur and you win. Self-awareness. You have to understand who you are. Without it, you are massively vulnerable in society. And the fact that we now live in a world where you're more than welcome to be what you are, so much more. Maybe not in your family because your parents want you to be a doctor and a lawyer and an engineer. but in the world, yes. And so I highly recommend self-awareness.
40:33It is easily, in my opinion, I believe that self-awareness and the ability to actually give without expectation are the two bricks of happiness. And it's been a big factor for me which has allowed me to go fast. When you're stable, you can go fast because you're not worried about judgment. I've been able to do a lot of things because I'm not scared to lose. Because if I lose, it's my loss. If I lose money or time, it's my loss, not yours. I don't care what you say in the comments. That lack of fear is what gives an entrepreneur an advantage. That lack of fear is what lets somebody live life in happiness.
41:18We have to start having more important conversations of the operating system of your life. There are people here that work more on upgrading their phones than upgrading their minds. I mean it. I mean it. I am desperate. Listen, to come here all this way to talk about tactics is a waste of time. To come all this way and have one person in here gain actual courage to do something is super worth it. And for me, it's a very simple game. Let me give a very big secret to all the kids here who are living their lives for their parents or based on their parents' judgment. There's a very big secret that parents never tell you.
42:08If you go the other direction of where they want you to go and you become really successful, they are really proud and make pretend they never pushed you in the other direction.
42:32The number one thing I fear and the number one thing I learned, and this is very interesting to me, I'm going to tell you a story I don't tell a lot. When I was a little kid in Edison, New Jersey, when grandparents came over, I would go play with the grandparents a lot, a lot. Maybe it was because I lost three of my four grandparents as a kid, but even as I get goosebumps right here on stage, it's because I think I've always been filled with a lot of wisdom and old soul. It's just DNA. It's nothing I did. It's just been in me. But I was always gravitating towards old people my whole life. I mean really old.
43:06You know, I'm seven, eight years old. I see an 80-year-old. I run over, sit next to them, and talk. My whole life, I loved it. My whole life. and the number one thing I learned in the first 20 years of my life spending more time with old people than most kids is the biggest thing I fear is regret. Regret is scary. Resentment is very scary. The biggest reason I push kids to do what they want versus what their parents want is because I'd rather them and their parents have five or six or seven years of bad than 80. Because it gets very ugly when you're 60 and they're 80 and you lived your life based on what they wanted and now you resent them, it gets real ugly real fast.
43:57I would rather you have the pain for the next five or six years of fighting and then have one of two things happen which I think both are amazing. Number one, you were right. You were right and you are an amazing fashion designer, not an engineer and you built a real company and your parents are going to be very, very proud. Or you were wrong. You suck at fashion design. Nobody liked it. But at least for yourself, you never have to live the rest of your life asking yourself what if. You win both ways. You live in a culture, I know, I watch. You live in a culture with a lot of expectations. You live in a culture where parents treat their kids as a property that indicates who they are.
44:51So does most of the world. This is not a Southeast Asia thing. This is not a Indonesia thing. This is a world thing. Parents are insecure too. And they like their kids closing their gap. we have to start talking about this. Because now that it costs zero to start a Spotify podcast, now that you can do that at 9 p.m., now there's nothing left. In 1974, not having money and time was an excuse. In 2019, it is not. And so the only thing left is this. Not this, this. and so I come here today begging, not pleading, not asking, begging you to look yourself in the mirror tonight and ask yourself if you're happy and people always say, I don't know what my passion is.
45:56I don't know what I would do. Yes, you do. You do. You just don't think it would work. You think it's too small. You think it's too silly. You think people would judge you. You know. You're just scared to say it. You know exactly what you would do if you could do it every minute of your life. You may not right now, as I'm saying this, you're like, no, I don't. Gary, I don't. It's because you haven't even allowed yourself to look.
46:25This is the time to build businesses and profiles and content around what you enjoy. This is the time. This is the time. and waiting one more day makes no sense to me. So whether you use the momentum of the energy we created today or something else, please don't get older and regret. Please don't watch this exact video on whatever YouTube is in 35 years. You want to hear something weird? Everybody in here right now is actually watching this right now in 35 years. everybody here right now is actually gonna watch this exact talk on video on the internet in 35 years and I'm gonna ask you did you fuck up or no?
47:18I mean it. I mean it because what I'm interested in is did you understand what I was saying here today and do something about it or do you do what so many people do? Do you know what I watch every day? I watch people see a video clip of mine on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook or what have you, leave a comment that that was the clip that changed their life, right? It feels very nice. Oh my God, this just changed my life. I'm gonna do it. But I'm weird. You know what I do? I follow them.
47:53And sometimes, especially on trips like this when I'm in the air for 24 fucking hours, I will go and look and see six months, nine months, a year later if they did anything about it. And 99 % don't. There's a lot of people in this room right now that said this is it, I'm going to.
48:18I see you. And then in two and a half weeks all the energy is gonna be gone. and I spend every day thinking about that. How do I, one of the biggest reasons I produce so much content is I used to speak a lot but then there wasn't as much content so I thought okay maybe if I put out content eight times a day it can get them going. I've come to learn and I very much believe this I was gifted and parented very well that allowed me to actually not care about other people's opinions. I respect them. I never think I'm always right. This is not about thinking you're right. This is not about me being delusional or audacious.
49:03This is me understanding that if you judge me, you don't have all the context. You don't know me. So how do I know you? I don't. Even the person closest to you, a spouse, a parent, they don't know. Nobody knows. So why would you take somebody else's opinion over your own? Please my friends, don't live a life that gets you to 80, 90, 100 years old where you're sitting there and saying, I wish I did, I wonder if I did. Nobody at 90 years old, go find your oldest relative and go take them out to lunch and ask them just like this, talk to me about life. They will not talk to you about what they did.
49:46They will talk to you about what they did not do. They will talk to you about what they wish they did. Don't wish. They had an excuse, your grandparents, your great grandparents. It wasn't practical. You couldn't do what we can do. This didn't exist. Oh. This did not exist. Please, take advantage. Please, take advantage of this existing. This is the greatest era to be alive. It is. There's plenty going on in the world, plenty going on in my country, plenty going on in the world. But when you look at the macro data, this is the greatest time to be alive and you happen to be living in a great place for my thesis.
50:40You live in a place where this country lives its life here and the cost for you to enter it and do something for yourself and your family, zero. Zero dollars. I do not want to hear that you don't have money. I don't want to hear that somebody else is further along because nobody else's life matters. This is an inside game. Inside. Start making content. Start talking to the world about what you either like or you know. Do it every day. close your eyes for five years. Not how are you doing in five days. Not how you're doing in five months. Five years. I come back here in five years or I see you in an airport in five years and you say every day I made five pieces of content and I went nowhere, I would say two things.
51:33Number one, I'm proud of you. That was a long time. Number two, you clearly suck because if you're putting out things for five years and nobody gives a shit, your stuff sucks.
51:49Please, please, I hope Jakarta you heard me today. Everything on the platforms you know. You know which ones people use, you use them, your friends use them, you don't need that information. What you do need to do is take a step back and don't think that video and pictures are the only way. I do think audio and written word for a lot of people here matters. By the amount of hands that went up for entrepreneurship, I think a lot of people here have to look themselves in the mirror and ask who they really are. Are you self-aware about your skills? But leaning into what you're interested in and producing content has never been more practical.
52:28And I implore you, I implore you to take advantage of this very special time because you have one life, you might as well live it. Thank you.
52:43Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Q &A? I know we're going to do some Q &A. Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for Gary Vee. Thank you. Gary Vee? Yes, sir. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. It was really good. Thank you. We have a Q &A after this. so if you can just sit down to my right we have a few questions from the audience member that we have chosen from our social media I've heard of social media so without further ado our first question comes from Alexander is Alexander here? hello what up Alexander? I'm good thank you so much let's clap it up for Alexander
53:42Thank you for the pants that you give me that make me wake up. I run a small branding agency. You have one? Yes. Okay. That help fashion brand designer local to get them the better logo, better brand identity and better campaign. Understood. What I want to ask is, should I learn all the skill, I mean be a generalist so I can see the bigger picture, or I focus on one skill that make me a specialist or expert? No, I'll tell you why. You're too young and how will you know, if you decide right now to be an expert just on Instagram organic creative. Let's say that. How do you know that you're not the most talented strategist around Spotify growth of podcast?
54:43Until you become a generalist, do you even know which thing to become an expert in?
54:52That left him speechless. I see. That's a lot. But you understand, Alexander? Yes, I got it, I got it. Like, you're fucking a kid. No, that's good. You don't know yet what you're best at. Like, why are you picking your expertise if you haven't seen everything else? You should go in, it's like food. I love when people are like, Gary, I like eating exotic food. So sometimes I'm in a meeting and I'll order oysters or sea urchin or whatever I order. And my dinner person will be like, well, I don't eat, I don't like oysters. I'm like, well, have you ever had an oyster? No. And that's how I think about this.
55:35You need to understand ads and media and ads and creative and Spotify and Instagram and LinkedIn. You have to taste everything. You may think Instagram's delicious until you actually taste LinkedIn. You need to be a generalist first. Then you can tell me what you're an expert in. Thank you. You're welcome.
55:58Should we go to the next question? Please. All right, the next question comes from Mehdi Astarina. Is she here? There she is. Okay, awesome. Hi, Gary. How are you? I'm fine. Thanks for the opportunity.
56:17I'm Mehdi. Okay, so me and my spouse have a photography and videography agency. and both of our parents don't do business at all. They work from eight to five, so they kind of not believing in us. Right. And then after two or three years, we started to think that we may need an investor. After two or three years, you what? We might need an investor. Investor, okay. So I want to know from you because you have already invested in many things. as an investor, what is the most crucial thing you see in the business you're going to invest in? What makes you invest in them? So for me when I look at investing, there's only two things I care about.
57:04One, do I generally believe in the idea or the concept? And then two, and more importantly, do I believe in her or him and they're capable to drive it? I've lost a lot of money as an investor in the last 10 years, 15 years, when I loved the idea so much and I could figure out what I would do with it, but the person running the business wasn't capable. And I learned from that. So now it's 51%, 51 % you, 49 % the idea or the concept. That's what I look for. But I think more importantly, because I want you to be successful, you need to find what startups here need to do or businesses here, you have to find investors who are most likely to invest in you.
57:58I see so many people wanting to get money from the cool VC or a bank and they're never gonna get it. You need to find the investor that's gonna invest in you and a lot of times that's somebody that did what you did before and they understand it. So as a startup, look for investors that are most likely to invest in you. Don't be ideological about where the money's coming from. As long as you're getting the money, you know. Make sense? Okay, thank you. You're welcome. All right. Our last question comes from Ben Arthur. Is Ben Arthur in the building? There he is. Hi, Gary. What up, Ben? Good. I'm a fan, man.
58:45I'm a fan too, Ben. So I'm gonna ask what is the best, the best financial decision that have made you and shaped you today? The best financial decision I ever made was never spending more money than I had.
59:12Go figure. And what I mean by that, Ben, and I appreciate the reaction because that means it's a very smart crowd. I am fascinated that people buy things they can't afford to impress people they don't like.
59:31Thanks, man. Yeah, man. Like, from a practical standpoint, right? Back to your question. I think being aggressive is important. When I met Mark Zuckerberg for a drink many years ago, it took me two seconds, and I mean two seconds, and I knew he was gonna win. And so when I went home and had an opportunity a year later to buy stock from his parents, right, I spent, I took 90 % of the money that I had saved in a bank and I invested it, right? And that was a great decision, obviously, for me. But I didn't take 200%. I didn't go borrow money, things of that nature. I took a risk, but it was a risk I could afford.
1:00:15Here's why. If I was wrong and it went to zero, all that would have meant was I couldn't eat as fancy or maybe go as fancy on a vacation. But it didn't mean I was going out of business. And too many people here take big risks that they can't afford without thinking about about what happens when you go to zero. I'm very aggressive and I do a lot, but I never take myself below zero. I'm willing to go to zero because I'm not fancy. I don't need stuff. But I'm never willing to go below zero. Keep that in mind. Thanks man. We have time for one more question. Yeah. So this is open to everyone. If you have a question, raise your hand up.
1:00:59Here, get in! Who's got the mic? It's your mic. Yeah okay, that crazy fucker.
1:01:12He's all hyped.
1:01:18What's your name? Let's start with that.
1:01:24I have two questions. I have very you're my adult and I was in college back in when I was in school at University of Indonesia faculty of law and I really want to take a photo with you may I What he said in here, I didn't hear I couldn't hear it You want to say one more time may I take photo with you. Oh photo. Yeah, let's go
1:02:09Thank you. You're welcome, everyone. You're welcome. Everybody, give a round of applause for Gary V. I love you. Listen. Go do it. please don't let this energy go away one fucking life live it please live it go work thank you hey everybody if you enjoyed this podcast please go back and look at the prior episodes they're loaded i appreciate your attention and uh thanks for being part of this journey see you later
From the publisher
In today's episode of the GaryVee Audio Experience, we revisit the Forward Keynote that I gave in Jakarta, Indonesia back in March 2019. Remember to ALWAYS stay patient; Oh and hit me up to let me know what you thought 😉
Enjoy! Let me know what you thought.