Social Media Changed Everything. Are You Still in Denial? | GaryVee Keynote

0:00Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Gary V audio experience. In today's episode, we're sharing a keynote that Gary gave back in 2022 for NARAP. In this one, you'll hear Gary talk about the urgency of adapting to emerging tech, how content is still the most underrated business strategy, and the importance of kindness, empathy, and emotional intelligence. I hope you all enjoy this one. The number one variable of growing your business in this room that is practical, achievable, doable, is how serious you take making content on the internet. It's that simple. no matter what anybody in this room says to me of why no, because they've never started and they have an ideology or because they've made 45 posts on Instagram and haven't sold anything yet, no matter what your excuse is, I promise you social media is not broken in that story.

0:53You're the one that's broken. There is ungodly amounts of homes being sold. There's ungodly amounts of B2B commercial real estate transactions happening by people that know how to make content on LinkedIn and run an ad and see it. But it's about doing it right. When people hear me say, you should be doing LinkedIn. How many people here are in the commercial side or are thinking from a B2B standpoint more than a B2C standpoint? Raise your hands. Raise it high. Don't be scared. It's okay. I don't know what the fuck you're doing, sir. Are you in both? but you know jazz hands pretty hands

1:38it was funny last week someone's like Gary you've been talking about LinkedIn and he showed me the posts and he's like it's not working and in the post I'm talking about making content in the feed of LinkedIn knowing who you're trying to reach running ads against the employees of those organizations for content in the feed. And then I ask him what he's doing and he's spamming people by paying 100 bucks a month for a script that just emails people on LinkedIn. That little story is something I think about every day. The ROI, I like to say, of a basketball is billions of dollars for LeBron James.

2:26It's zero for me. How one plays with the tools is the variable of success. And so we can get into the mindset. I do believe that the far majority of what is the opportunity in this room or the limitation sits in two very simple categories. One's uncomfortably black and white and one is remarkably gray. the black and white is what I just started with until you start making dozens of videos, pictures and written articles a week you will continue to leave an extraordinary amount of money on the table and somebody sitting next to you is gonna do it and take your market share and I don't care if you've been the queen of that city for 30 years and work on your reputation slowly but surely you will lose because that's what always happens in business.

3:25If that wasn't the case, IBM would still be winning. I love this industry and I love OGs because my dad's an OG. Shit, I started so young, I'm an OG. I love OG life and it is absolutely building on reputation. But I love when an agent says to me, dear, you don't get it. I dominate this town for the last 30 years. I'm like, dear, you don't get it. you don't get it much bigger companies than you have gone out of business with fucking audacity and it is audacity and this is very clear if you're sitting in the crowd and you're not doing this work it's only two things and they're both interesting one is audacity you've lost your ambition which is okay I don't think of that as a bad thing I don't think it's a bad thing that You're not as hungry.

4:17Maybe you've scratched your itch. Maybe you do want to do other parts in your life. But don't lie to yourself and understand yourself on where you are in your journey. The question is very simple though. Who's going to actually put in the 30 hours of work starting today to actually know how to do pictures and videos and written words on these platforms and who's not? And it becomes a very simple game. It's a black and white prescriptive game. Either you're good at it or you're not. No different than basketball. The other part is very different. It's gray. I think people are incredibly confused when it comes to business.

5:01I think people think that money motivates people. And of course it does. Until it doesn't. Right? I think people think that fear is a good way to go about things. And it works, we see it all the time. Until it doesn't. I think it is time for the leaders in here trying to motivate their team. Do you know how many emails I get every day or direct messages that look like this? Gary, love your content. Real quick.

5:39how do I get these fucking millennials to work and it pisses me off every time it pisses me off because the leader only has one move the leader that is shitting on their team has one move, the way they grew up. Things change. The audacity to think that everybody should be motivated by the same thing that you're motivated by is ludicrous. You can't ask somebody who's from different circumstances than you to want the same things you want. And so when I see that email, they think I'm gonna love it because I'm the work hard guy and all. They think, but what they're walking into is a buzzsaw. and occasionally I'm in the mood to write back, hey Sally, let me ask you, have you even had a conversation with them of what they do like?

6:44Are you just making assumptions? We need to have a very big conversation in the business world about how much kindness, compassion, empathy are the superpowers of business. People don't think so. when I talk about kindness and I talk about it a lot my favorite email is like title all caps Gary you're wrong I'm like here we go I open it up you don't get it Gary you talk about kindness I'm always kind and everybody takes advantage of me and walks all over me and I reply hey Rick

7:28maybe you're manipulating the situation because you want somebody to walk all over you a little bit because you're actually subconsciously trying to create leverage. Because let me promise you one thing about actual kindness if you're confused by the definition. Actual kindness means giving without expectation.

7:54And I believe in business, what is very clear to me is people think kindness and they use kindness but what it really is is a slight version of manipulation. You're doing something with thinking something else is gonna happen. You're referring because you think you're gonna, and it's all good. It's nice to maybe think but don't confuse that with kindness. That's called strategy. Don't say you're kind. Say you're throwing out reels and trying to hope it returns. Own what it actually is. So I think we're going through a really interesting transformation. I think that the world historically changes when communication changes.

8:37When the books were written in the world, this is a long time ago, we're going into some history lessons, because the churches wrote 70 % of all the books when the printing press was invented is the reason why religion is such a force in our society. Right? The reason things change is when the medium changes. Books came along, things changed. Radio came along, things changed. Television came along, things changed. This internet thing is now at scale. And now we are at a mature state where things have changed. And we all feel it in culture and politics. Things are different because the medium has changed.

9:19And we have a new medium in the blockchain that is building while the internet is getting into its maturity. But what some of the people in this room may not realize is that the blockchain and NFT is gonna take over all contracts. Anybody sitting in the middle will not make any money for sitting in the middle. There's no reason for a processing fee. These are non-custodial situations. There's no need for a bank fee. There's no need for a processing fee. Things are changing, my friends. and whether you like it or not, it will change. I was at a conference like this many years ago and I had just invested in Uber and it was the Taxi and Limo National Convention.

10:11So I'm giving my talk and I finally throw it out there and as you can imagine, the room wasn't thrilled with me but it was a discussion and all I saw, all I saw was question after question, statement after statement that was why it wasn't gonna work and all of the answers were regulation. Gary, this is not gonna work because we're gonna pay the politicians off. Similar to how I hear car dealerships and car people talk about Tesla or direct to consumer. I promise you, when technology is coming along, hoping for regulation is always going to be a bad strategy. My favorite is everybody who hates big government, because they're an entrepreneur, but then when something comes along and fucks you up, you love the government, don't ya?

11:13So when the blockchain comes and starts taking out fees, you better shut your fucking mouth in this room. and notice how few claps just happened. Why do I bring that up right now? Not to razz, not to scare, because I want you to do the 50 hours of homework so you can innovate. What blows my mind is people's inability to put in the work in the face of information. All of you know that this blockchain thing is brewing. You've definitely heard about Bitcoin at this point. You've probably maybe heard of Ethereum. It's happening. and it's gonna affect this industry soonest. This is the book industry for the internet.

11:53The blockchain is contracts. Please understand that. Please, it's a very important thing. Please spend 15 hours Googling Ethereum and smart contracts. Get educated, not to play defense, but to play offense. You do 15 to 30 hours of homework, you might just change your career. you might shift slightly in what you're doing now to something else it's a remarkable time and one thing I know about an immigrant centric reality is it's not scared to put in the work

12:32but before you're done clapping

12:37and I really know this statement it likes to pick which work it wants to do people don't like change and change is the only guarantee and this industry is in the face of massive change what the blockchain eventually will do is change the face of what brokerages leverage is in the ecosystem right now is the time to build your personal brand on the internet and I mean right now how you do that can be totally different You don't need to be over the top or cursed like me. You need to be you. I'm me, you be you. But what you need to do is start producing content to educate people on who you are. If you're uncomfortable with the way you look and you don't want to be on video, then do audio and do a podcast.

13:33If you're not sure that you can handle the camera, then write on LinkedIn or Facebook. If you feel more comfortable being the hostess what the most is start a Facebook group regionally within your area. One of the greatest arbitrages in this industry right now is starting a Facebook group for the local area where you sell around the town, not around selling homes, bringing people in, building community, and then just happening to be the person that's hosting that group and picking up the business. These are the black and white tactics available to you. How you build your team and how much empathy you have for the consumer on the other side is the other variable.

14:15But the opportunity is staggering. It is staggering. The speed in which people are changing what they consume, which then dictates what they think, which then dictates how they buy, is at a level we've never seen before. I come here, fly across the country and fly back for one reason, to put so much pressure on this room to do the homework. To do the homework. I mean it.

14:48The opportunity is so real. You are literally one. One. Because I'm on the receiving end of these messages. You're one viral TikTok video away from selling 13 homes because of it. And you don't go in there and start doing the latest dance. You're trying to sell homes. You're more than welcome to shake your ass, fine, but. But it's a lot more interesting to talk about what you want to talk about, but making it contextual to the room. People say no so much. Excuse me, TikTok's fastest growing demo is 38 to 55 year olds. You can still think it's 12 year olds. It hasn't been 12 year olds for two years.

15:36that's the game of no versus the game of yes that's the game of staying curious the biggest biggest vulnerability to people in business today trying to sell to human beings is their unbelievable calmness and interest in saying the word no and their visceral reaction to the idea of maybe the innovation that we're living through is big The opportunity's even bigger. But this requires homework. Before you decide that content on social media can't sell for you, did you really do the 20 hours of homework and the 50 hours of you doing it? It doesn't count when you have your niece do six posts for you.

16:28This world is reading about push-ups instead of doing them. I wish, actually that's not even, that's actually not even true. I wish this was a game of people reading about push-ups and not doing it. We're not even reading about push-ups. We're dismissing push-ups before we even read about them. I ask you and implore you here today, my friends, to open up your heart to curiosity, to open up your eyes to the reality of what's happening in our society and how people are making their decisions, and to shed your preconceived notions and start putting in the work. For a lot of us, me included, it was easy to put in the hard labor.

17:13Right? It was easy to put in the work. It's much more challenging to figure out the new technologies. The problem is the world doesn't care about you and me. The world's gonna do what the world does. And the way people are gonna make buying decisions are gonna be based on the people they see here. Period. End of story. It may feel good for you to see your picture on a billboard. You might like it.

17:44But now you're servicing your ego instead of your wallet. I think we should go into Q &A. I'd like to get into some detailed stuff. Please, please.

18:02Thank you so much, Gary. You're welcome. Greatly appreciate it. And I'd like to first say on behalf of NAREP and everybody in the crowd, thank you so much for being here. I think it's safe to say that in your 20 minutes, you dropped quite a few great bombs that I think could help the group. So let's get to some Q &A. Please. You know, you talked a lot about some of the pressure to do the homework. things of that nature. What are some innovations that you think that can help with the homework for these folks? This talk. This talk that I wanted to give today is that you don't need an innovation.

18:48You don't need a robot. This is not about AR. This is not about an algorithm. This is a very simple business conversation. If you want to sell things, it's a good idea to make it easier for people to buy from you. And so the innovation is the mindset. The innovation is going home now and deciding what you just saw in this talk and saying, is he right or is he wrong? And if you find yourself saying, he's right, but I don't want to, I really mean this. that's okay, but then you have to be honest with yourself of where you are in your career, whether that means maybe doing something else because you don't have fire for it, or being content, which is a beautiful thing if you're content, but you have to be aware that this is all happening around you.

19:42I don't have to tell this room how much innovation is going on in this space. You've got the biggest technology companies in the world interested in your money.

19:53some of you are worried about Bob because he's got four billboards Amazon's much scarier than fucking Bob and so I don't come here to be crass I apologize I haven't been on stage in a while I had some cursing I wanted to get out of it this crew the immigrants this crowd can handle it I know I don't come here to razz I hope you understand all my energy so far is pure love. I'm just worried. I'm worried. I know what's happening. I know what the big tech companies are doing. I know what's happening with blockchain. I know what's happening with the 20-year-olds that everybody makes fun of who are picking up incredible market share from a lot of you because they're actually being seen on social.

20:44They may not know the fucking business yet. and you love making fun of them for that, I got bad news for you. That, they'll figure out. Yeah, no, that's...

21:01You may need to take a pause on that one. People make fun of things until they don't. Everybody made fun of the Kardashians until they didn't. Everybody made fun of Tesla until they didn't. And what I'm worried about is this room's too successful. That's a great point. Success is the beginning of the end. And what success leads to is judgment of what's coming up. So you sit around and you're like, oh, look what she's doing on Twitter. But she doesn't even know. That part's the commodity. The commodity is how to do it. They'll learn that. what's not the commodity is the ability to get in front of people.

21:49If it was a commodity, all of you would have a million followers.

21:55So, I mean, we're talking about success here. And we're talking a lot about the, you know, the evolution of business that you've been talking about. How do they evolve in times of success? Because how it creates complacency. You know, this is why I love the immigrant story so much. I always say that no rich kid can beat an immigrant because it's really, really, really hard to be hungry when you're always fed. Right?

22:32The problem in the arena, it's not a problem. It's actually the greatest American dream story. The problem is when the hungry kid is eventually fed, sometimes that hunger also goes away, most of the time. That's fine. That's actually beautiful. My problem is this. It's a very narrow part of this story I'm telling. My problem is when you become a hypocrite. Right? When what you did got you there, now you're there, and you're looking down on people who are just doing something that you did to get there.

23:13How do you keep yourself so humble? By not paying attention to what anybody else is doing. So for me, humility comes easy for a couple reasons. One, I won the DNA crapshoot. It's just a natural trait. Two, it's true. I'm just, you know, it's just, I've never had a moment in my life where I've thought I was better than somebody else in my life, ever. And I've done a lot of shit.

23:52I just like playing my game. Even when you were saying to buy the New York Jets, I was smirking. Even my New York Jets thing is not fully understood. I love trying to buy the Jets. The sport. The sport. I'm curious on how good am I. I don't need it. It is not my validation. I don't need to flex it. I'm just so into trying. So, you know, the other thing is I believe that the world is abundant. Even if you're in a neighborhood going elbow to elbow to somebody else and you're the two top sellers in a neighborhood, you could extend your neighborhood. You could. You know, people start focusing so much on or and I'm obsessed with and.

24:48Right? And so it's very easy for me to be happy because I don't think anybody's taking anything out of my mouth. I'm obsessed with accountability. every single thing that is wrong in my life is 100 % my fault. And, you know, those are the ways I see the world. Good parenting, good circumstances. What are some of those, you know, you've spoken candidly about your parents and the meticulous upbringing. What are some of the things they taught you that now even get you to sit here and give back in such a fashion? my, I think gratitude is the reason I give back. I think the single reason I want to put out all the content and do things like, I'm very compensated for a speech like this, but no longer does that make financial sense to me in my business world.

25:47It's just amazing to be here with all of you. I love it.

25:55Why? Why? Because I know how I communicate. I know that I come here with an agenda and that agenda is to suffocate one person in this room's bullshit with the hope that it's exactly what they needed to go do something so that in four years they could send me an email and say, I was in San Diego in 2021 and I thought I was hot shit but then you fucking got me and then I got my shit together. Then I got my shit together and now my family's so much better. And that feeling for me is better than even when I'm winning. So my selfishness is my selflessness. It's fun for me. I'm already good. You know, it's very easy to give when you're fulfilled.

26:41Sure. Right? And so for me, what happened? A, my family heritage was crazy fucked up. My mom lost her mom at five. My dad lost his dad at 16. We lived in the Soviet Union. A lot of people don't know this. I didn't realize how many people don't know this. You weren't allowed to leave the country. The country was a prison from 1918 to 1990. A prison. You weren't allowed to leave. Leave. Everybody spent time in jail because the government owned everything. Cuba and Venezuela are a fucking vacation compared to the Soviet Union in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. So, you know, here I am. We left in 78. I'm three years, I'm growing up in America, and this is gonna really hit for this room.