These 5 Traits Are The Secret To Success In Business & Life l VeeCon 2024 Keynote

0:00Podcast nation, before I get you into today's podcast, big announcement. as you probably heard at this point because I had John from Stan on the show. I'm an investor advisor to an incredible startup called Stan, Stan.store. I'm sending you right now to garyvee.com, garyvee.com slash Stan. Go check this out. We've done a Gary V. Stan store challenge which actually has a weekly call with me. This is built for everyone who's been affected, honestly, by my overall content. The tech stack, all these features and the minimal costs per month that Stand Store has built is really the tool that was needed for this world that I envisioned when I wrote Crush It, when I wrote Crushing It, and this overall thing I'm thinking a lot about lately, which is the individual empire, right?

0:48This creator entrepreneur slash entrepreneur creator economy that I think is gonna eat up the oxygen, very honestly, the thing that so many of you want in your life and the reason so many of you are not there yet is you've got the strategy for me. you've got the ambition within yourself but you don't have the tools for you to fully maximize it and I believe you can find that at Stan store Stan dot store but specifically I want you to sign up for it through my challenge because I want to get access with you and plus there's a bunch of cool things so if you want to go see those cool things go to GaryVee.com slash Stan S-T-A-N now to the podcast This is the Gary Vee audio experience One thing that absolutely was obvious to me and has been one of the core strengths of my life is how much adaptability I have.

1:39It is no question one of the foundational elements of my professional career. One of the things that I remember very early in my career was I thought and continue to believe that changing your mind is huge. My dad took a very interesting take on making decisions. he actually, in my mind, blended two things. He's so incredibly honorable and loyal that he sometimes confused that in one man's point of view of meaning that you say something or you do something and then you do it for life. A kid told me in line that he doesn't want to quit this job that's killing him because he wants to be loyal to his employees, his coworkers.

2:25That's unbelievably admirable, but it's also something that he will regret his whole life in his 80s and 90s. Adaptability is the single core strength that can lead to happiness because it means that you're not scared. All I heard for three days in one size or shape or angle was fear. all I heard for three days was fear different versions of it in different packages and the reason that most of you are not adaptable is because you're scared of the outcome this is very important it's as important as me telling my friend Glenn to shut up because Victoria's trying to listen and you're bugging the shit out of her that's me being adaptable in the middle of the keynote you see what I did that's adaptability.

3:24I'm really focused, but I'm worried about Victoria right now. And so I adapted in real time. And so I'm telling you, the adaptability that so many of you lack, the inability to change your mind or change, is completely almost always predicated on your fear of the judgment of people around you on your adjustment. So many of you, because of the way Web3 has navigated over the last three years made outlandishly humongous statements to your friend network and your relatives three years ago. For almost all of you, that has not panned out. People were early and people forget. People remember what they want to remember.

4:12This is a long process to build anything. Anything meaningful takes tons of time. Adaptability is the drug that can get you through it when you're going through your ups and downs. Adaptability is an incredibly big word. It matters a lot, but it's very hard to be adaptable if you are grounded in fear. My question is, what are you so scared of? One of the reasons I talk so much about swimming and bike riding and having your first kiss is because it's a connective thing that all of us went through. Some were more scared of it than others. But once you got over the hump, you weren't scared. So many of you asked me how.

4:56Whatever it was, you said how. And I said, in the great words of Allen Iverson, practice. The way you get shit done is by actually doing it. The amount of time spent in this collective room at this conference of contemplating a decision was staggering. When what you're trying to achieve was met with just the action of just fucking doing it. The problem is you're crippled to do it because you fear the ramifications emotionally. That is something I'm desperately trying to unlock and I hope that many more of you can achieve. Please fall in love with adaptability. Let's give it up for adaptability.

5:50Next slide. Let's hear it for the courageous cockafuckin' two.

6:01Anybody here own a courageous cockatoo? Make some noise. That little group right there knows it's been three long fucking years. We haven't heard a peep about this fucking character. And yet, if you ask me the character that most needs to have shine at the end of VCon 3, it's this. The courage to jump is a really interesting thing for me to think about. It's the cousin to what I was just talking about with fear. I remember going to Jamaica with my friend Joe Minikawa, who I'm looking at right now. Much to the chagrin of my mother, if she ever knew this, I remember us standing on top of a cliff in Jamaica and we needed to jump because that's what the fuck we were doing.

6:55I just remember standing over it and being fascinated by how scary that jump looked. But as I literally jumped off, landed, came back up, the thing I was most fascinated by was what the fuck went through my head in the moment that triggered me from fuck this, I'm gonna talk myself out of this like always, to I'm gonna jump, right? And it was based on courage. But what you say to yourself when you jump in real life or metaphorically is a very fascinating thing. The thing I say with humility is there's a sheer lack of collective courage at the conference right now. When I look at so many of you, it's just so obvious to me how capable so many of you are to deal with the ramifications.

7:47It connects the two characters. So many of you need to jump and you're scared of what will go wrong without realizing what will go wrong will just require adaptability for you to go back. The fear of going backwards after you jumped is something that I am so fascinated by. As if the people in the crowd judging your misstep have anything to actually do with your life. So many of you are crippled to jump into the courage because you're scared that if you lose, you have to go backwards, when in reality, you're already backwards. Do you understand? Bro, you're already fucking backwards. You're already stuck.

8:36You want it. And yet, you can't jump. And courage should be applauded. Courage needs to be understood. And courage's relationship with adaptability is a very big deal. I promise you, you will never, I promise you, I promise you, you will never regret your acts of courage. Ever. When you go and talk, and so many of you know my spiel here, you know how much I love hanging out with the OGs. When you talk to the people that have actually lived it, Their regrets are never their moments of jumping. Their regrets are always the moments they didn't jump. This week I've had the luxury of hanging out with the OGs.

9:23Some of them bang Newports like a fucking gangster. That's you. And I respect it, fuck. But when I tell you what they focus on and what they understand and what they see, there's so much power in youth. but the saying of youth is wasted on the young is very true. Experience is incredibly important. Going through the reps and I just implore all of you if you leave with any part of this keynote please take a little courage away from this week and do something. Do something next week that you've been scared to do. Cool? Thank you.

10:10By the way, just because this might be my best opportunity to do it, just a little commercial halftime break from this talk. Just a little noise to be made for how VCon 3 was for all of you.

10:29Thank you. Good. Next slide. Ah. Now we've got to take it down a notch. This is one of my favorite characters because in all the rah-rah shit that comes out of my mouth, you can do it and we're gonna do it and fucking courage and jump off the fucking cliff and da-da-da-da. The level of practicality that runs through my body is extraordinary. There is no delusional dinosaur in VFriends. But after talking for the last three days, I might have to draw that shit.

11:11Where there is confusion in the subtleties of this message, this mission, this hopes and dreams that I have for you, is yes, like I said earlier, I'd love for you to quit your toxic job. Yes, I'd love for you to do X, Y, and Z. But some of the shit that I heard in line that made absolutely no sense. Like, I'm gonna do this. I'm like, well, tell me about your stability. They're like, I got like a week's worth of runway. I'm like, you're fucking out of your mind. They're like, I'm gonna build an AR company selling Mars tokens, but I've got a week's worth of runway. I'm like, who the fuck are you?

11:52It's incredibly cool to be courageous, but when I saw my dad's disappointed face looking at my mom when I just told the Cliff story, what he doesn't realize was it was very practical. There was nothing dangerous about it. It was just scary. and that is an incredibly important thing to understand. The things that so many of you fear, the thing that so many of you don't understand, the thing that I see people get it wrong is so many people are scared of things that are not scary and then are completely petrified of things that they should be scared of and instead of being petrified of it, they just jump because they think it's okay.

12:30It's called the hippo shark theory. All of you are scared of sharks. Not all of you, but you know what I mean. Meanwhile, hippos kill way more fucking people a year than sharks. But because we had fucking hungry, hungry hippos, we think they're fucking cute.

12:48Hippos are fucking dangerous. But Jaws came out, scared us, and now we're scared. That's what I see in a lot of you in your career decisions. There's things that you're scared of that are not that scary because you can adapt and just go back if it didn't work out. And then there's things that you are looking to do that have no practicality in them. They have no shot. And that is a very important thing for all of you to understand. Do not allow your passions to make you delusional. Practicality is important. There are bills to be paid. I believe that many people who are unhappy can have smaller bills, can lead into other things that can bring it down.

13:32But I ask you and I beg you and I implore you to get more practical with some of your decisions. This is why, and I don't have it up here, but this is why there's two patient characters. Patient pig and patient panda allow you to be practical. If you're willing to eat shit for one more year, then you can actually maybe be practical and go after your dream. Understood? Let's lean into a little bit more practicality. Cool? Next slide.

14:01Now here is the fucking counterpoint. at all expenses, full tilt, all in, please, please, please, please consider to cash in on your passion. Crush It, my first public business thing outside of wine, the subtitle was How to Cash In on Your Passion. I wrote it in 2008, it came out in 2009. I stand here 16 years later as convicted about passion as I was as that young man. Passion is always the bet. Passion is always the right thing to run through a wall for. If you team it up with practicality, it gets really good. If you don't, you usually have to go call in the adaptable alien and go back to a job.

14:55This is an incredibly important framework. But so many of you love so many different things. so many different interests and right now we live in a social media world. I don't know if you've heard about social media marketing but I'm into it. It's free. It's free. You post content and it gets distribution and it's free. Of course you can pay someone to make content, I get it, but you can do it for free and not making content on social media around your passion, your opinions about it, your ideas about it, debating about it. if you're into cooking, cooking, if you're into praying, praying, if you're into cards, cards, like not leaning into putting out content that costs you nothing on this current social media world that will go away.

15:50One day, the cell phone will look like the pager, like the yellow pages, like the radio. And we are not guaranteed that the advertising platforms of the next medium will be free. The regret that many of you have in the next decade or two for not going all in when social media was free will be very high. The time in your life that so many of you in this audience are in right now is such an opportunity. Please lean into your passion. Please try. Just try. Because fear is what is holding everyone back. just try. Don't worry about people making fun of you. Don't worry about people judging you. All the best shit that has ever happened in the world that changed the world was laughed at by the people that didn't understand it.

16:45They always laugh and then they marvel. Got it?

16:55Next slide.

17:02I think some of you know this. This was the original mascot of VFriends. I believe Andy K, Andy, are you here? Andy, was it the night before, the morning of? When did I change the logo before we launched? Night before. This was the original logo of VFriends for a very specific reason. I am the byproduct of somebody who told me always and every day that I was capable.

17:55Tamara Vaynerchuk told me, he said, Sasha, you were not the one who told me that I was capable every day. Okay. My mother told me I was capable every day. She held me accountable for all the dumb shit I did.

18:15Actually, I have an idea. Just because this will be really enjoyable when we fly home tonight. Can everybody make some noise, preferably more than the noise you made for Sasha, for my mother, Tamara Vaynerchuk, right now? Everybody up, everybody up, everybody up, everybody up, everybody up, everybody up.

18:45Dad, stand up for mom, dad. No speech.

18:56So, the reason I wanted to make the Capable Caterpillar, the logo, was I had a very distinct vision for this brand when I started it, and I continue on that journey today, which was through a series of storytelling, digitally and physically, through all the things, many of now that you are seeing, with many more, because it's early, that we will achieve. I just really want this collective community to leave thinking they're capable. Most of you, some of you, unfortunately my belief is that a majority of you are not byproducts of somebody that told you that you were capable every day. And my guilt and gratitude that I lucked out in having somebody who did, motivates me like a fucking monster to do it for everybody else.

19:58You know how it's weird when you work out and then like if you get more advanced in it or if you work out with somebody, you think that you're done and you can't do it, but you actually have like 17 more fucking reps in you? I think about that shit all the time or the cold plunge you go in and like you don't realize, but like your brain does something to protect you this is the punchline, that it makes you get out way earlier than you're even remotely close to being in trouble. That's how I feel after these three days of talking to so many of you. So many of you are so much more capable than you think and I can see it in your eyes that you don't think you can and it's so blatantly obvious to me that you can.

20:40I just want all of you to know from the bottom of my heart you're dramatically more capable than you think you are. How's it going?

20:53You could deal with breakups and job changes and crazy shit that you never thought you could. This is why I'm always sad when people are complaining about dumb shit. All of us in this room have incredible heartache in front of us. It's the story of life. And becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable and then leading into gratitude in your darkest moments is an incredibly important framework and so I just hope that you get to fall in love with the capable caterpillar as much as I.

21:26Next. Who owns a humble hedgehog?

21:34And the next one?

21:39The humble hemmingbird. And going back to the last one if you can, I know I haven't made you do that before. and the next one. I think a lot about the characters I chose to do more than one superlative for. There's a reason that there's two patient characters and I think we've done a good job in the first three years really giving a lot of love to Patient Pig and Patient Panda. I believe that the biggest thing that is holding back most people is their lack of humility. I am profoundly taken aback by people's ego. We invited so many different people here. I used a lot of my tickets for different people here.

22:21So many of them seemingly successful and have so many things. And I watch very carefully. And watching different people navigate different ways because they think they're somebody. Because what? They have 500 ,000 followers on Instagram? Who gives a fuck? Fuck you. So, humility is an unbelievably beautiful and remarkably powerful trait. I want everybody to hear me nice and slow as I deliver this sentence. When you do not deploy humility, you are posturing. You are deploying ego. You are manipulating. You are dancing around, not physically.

23:10When you do that, especially if you're good at it, you can usually trick 50, 60, maybe even 90 % of the people. The problem is when you're doing that, you're also exposing you to the 3, 5, or 10 % of people that you actually want to be winning with. I'm gonna let this get claps.

23:43My friends, you are not tricking winners. You are losing credibility with winners. Please learn how powerful humility is. If you've been enjoying getting away with not being humble, I promise you when you look around the circle, of the people it's working on, it's not the greatest circle you can be in. This is very imperative. Please understand this. You can have unbelievable ambition, confidence for days, gusto and competitiveness, all of it. That is not in conflict with humility. You can balance these seemingly two opposite things because in fact, they are far from opposite. They are tremendous partners in crime.

24:32End state emotionally for so many of you that I dream of is deep confidence with overwhelming humility. And I hope you learn that humility is not soft. Humility is fucking strength.