Why AI Will Force You to Grow | Aspire Keynote 2025

0:00I was watching recently a video you were making on content. Imagine that. And you talked about something in that I said, man, I want to ask you about this. You were talking about, uh, you were having a conversation about AI. Yes. And you said, uh, people are going to regret not them, their brand as AI is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And you were tying AI and what it's going to do into you needing to make sure you have built your brand. What's the connection between those two? The connection there is AI is, I'm going to stand up for this because I got excited.

0:36AI is so fucking big that it's like almost hard to like break it down. Like whatever the fuck you think it is, it's crazier. The speed in which AI is gonna really affect our lives is substantial. Let me give you an example. AI getting really strong and voice devices are gonna really confuse people. For example, the Alexa in your home, and I know a lot of people like shut it off because they're like, gets spying on me. I'm like, that's fine. Like Jeff Bezos doesn't give that much fucks about you, by the way. But I think that when you come home, and like this is the world I see, when you walk into your kitchen and you're like, Alexa, my son is having a sleepover tonight.

1:24Three friends are coming over. One's lactose intolerant. One's gluten-free. Two of them love spicy food and one kid is Persian and I'd love for him to feel at home. Can you please order dinner for all of us? We're going to eat at 7.30 tonight. Thanks. When that then takes that and orders from four different places and delivers you a perfect meal in what I just said, for real, you have to understand then in that scenario Amazon has all the leverage because it's going to decide where that sale is going to go. that's called not having brand. Alexa, can you send me a pizza tonight? I have 20 people over.

2:06That's different than Alexa, send me Pizza Hut tonight. I've got 20 people. Got it? We are going into a place where all that's been happening over the last forever, but accelerating the last 30, 40 years, is we choose convenience over everything. There are people here that are fucking broke ordering fucking$28 bagels on fucking Seamless.

2:34That's how much we give a shit about convenience. Even when we can't afford stuff, we'll pay for time. AI is going to make everything convenient. You're going to have AI agents shop for you in the background. Like you have no idea how big this is going to be. And so if you're not a brand, the human is not going to choose you. You're going to choose it generically. You're going to talk and make decisions based on general principles. I need sneakers versus I need Reeboks. I need pizza versus Pizza Hut. I need business advice versus I need business advice from Gary Vee. Brand is the only thing left in a world of technology at scale.

3:15And that's what's going to happen. Wow. So in that example there, what you're saying is because when you hit that example of AI, if they don't know your brand, you're basically leaving it up to whoever, let's example, Amazon, to decide. Whoever sits in the middle, whoever's the toll booth wins, right? Seamless comes in and now it has leverage. Uber Eats has leverage. You're not ordering direct from the restaurant because we all remember, if you're over 40, you remember like literally having a menu in your fucking kitchen drawer, getting the phone number, calling the fucking place. kids it was wild now we love an Uber Eats or a seamless that's so much faster that's gonna feel in 15 years the way it felt to call a restaurant and stay on hold because AI is gonna do it for you in a way that's good we're gonna be so connected you're gonna be wearing devices of your health the fucking device is gonna order you food based on how you're feeling that minute it friends you're fucking robots you just don't realize it yet i'm being dead serious brother in 15 years i believe most of us will be wearing some form of health device and that device is going to order us dinner not us and we're going to love it

4:37so what happens in that sense you're not making the fucking choice you're not deciding to go to fucking Luigi's tonight and get pasta. But if you love Luigi's enough or you give a fuck enough, you will override. We still are not like completely helpless to this technology. But I don't think people realize how few things they give a shit about. And that is going to play out and that is where all the opportunity and all the vulnerability is as all of you game plan for the next 10 years. so on that on that note i mean the crowd is like dead silence well people are like fuck what the fuck are the robots they're like gary are the robots gonna kill my kids yeah motherfucker you better be ready so in that example there uh let's can you break it a little bit into what someone should be doing then, whether this is five years off, 10 years off, I'm sick and tired of you fucking being right and me like, I don't fucking know, maybe.

5:41And then I'm getting my ass handed to me five years later on some shit. So it's a big deal. Like, let me give you an example. Who's in real estate here? Hans, have you guys seen what happened to the company in Portugal that created an AI bot and did 100 million in sales? Anybody aware of that? Make some noise.

6:03yeah exactly my friends this isn't coming this is here i really need you listen this is this is super important we are by nature as humans hypocrites you're gonna go home tonight and scold your children about get educated it's important to have knowledge this and the other thing and meanwhile this AI thing is happening and you're putting your head in the sand. What should everyone do tonight? They should go home and start the journey of spending 50 to 100 hours of research time on what's going on in AI and what does it mean for their business and how do you do that? You do that by actually using AI.

6:43Download chat gbt and be like chat gbt what does AI mean to real estate? You know like we've got to put in the work. This is coming and and it's coming fast, and it's disrupting everything, and it's just gonna be the same old movie. Some people here are winning on social, but they don't wanna learn a whole new thing like AI. Again, this is just the way it is, and so I think people are very naive to what's going on out there. Let me give you another one. Everybody now wants to be a fuckin' influencer, right? Well, bad news. Virtual influencers are coming, and they're gonna win. There's a lot of people here already following someone who's not actually a human being.

7:23They don't even realize it. That's how good the tech is. I've dated seven of them online. It's like, wait, you're not real? And by the way, on that joke, in Japan, this is very advanced. VTubers, there are people in Japan that are married to virtual people. Married. Forget about getting tricked and it's like an OnlyFans thing. No, no, no. All the way. I am married to a person that doesn't exist. most of the people in this room will have a grandchild who will date a non-human. Thank you. See you next time. But you know what's funny about that moment? Like when you're like, you know what my favorite moment is when I say something like that?

8:07Right now, so many people in the audience were like, no way, Gary, no. And then I remind them that you do understand that if we went to your great, great grandparents' grave right now because there's some new technology and we can rebirth them by putting a little pill in it and sprayed the fucking thing and they popped up and let's say that existed. If we all went to our great, great grandparents' grave right now, sprayed it, they popped up, they're alive, they would fucking want to go back into the ground because the shit that we're living blows their mind. Like people are, listen, I was an atrocious student but I was good at history and I never understood why I liked it until I got older where I realized how much I rely on it to make my decisions.

8:53The reason I end up being right when I do predict-ish is because I ground myself in history. Let me give you an example. I know a lot of you don't know this, but it would help you understand why I see the world the way I do. When electricity was invented, do you know that most people were scared to put it into their home and continue to use candles because the word on the street was there were demons in the electricity? and do I have to remind some of the 40 and over crowd here who said they would never give up their BlackBerry because it had buttons on it? That one hurt. That would stop. I did that one.

9:32And again, over 40-year-old crowd, let these 20-year-olds know the stigma of online dating in 2003, 4, 5, 6. People met on Match.com and lied how they met because it was so embarrassing. Now it's the only way people do it. my friends, shit changes whether you like it or not. And when I think about coming to things like this, I always think about like, how do I bring value? Like why do people want to continue to listen to me? People paid, people stayed to the end. How do I bring value? If I can bring you any value, it's that if you say the word no in business, you're already in trouble. The only word if you're a no person that you're allowed to change that to is maybe.

10:21Because so many of you are going to lose or limit your upside because you're addicted to the word no. And that is the most dangerous word in business. With technology, you must, with consumer trends, with the way the world moves, you must be committed to maybe. not yes that's where you get in trouble the other way too you get too ahead of yourselves and no has value in other places protecting your time keeping you away from things but when it comes to what's happening in the world you can't use no and so many of you love to use excuses to not do new shit you know what was the big one last year two years ago everyone's like oh gary tiktok I can't do it.

11:13Fucking China. You know, people love to do some USA American fucking pride to disguise you're fucking lazy. Yeah, is it correct, you know? That's a true American trait right now. We're lazy. Yeah. We're fucking soft. Because we've had too much prosperity. You must go do your 50 to 100 hours of AI research or it will fuck you.

11:48I got a little bit of a bone to pick with you please okay so we're gonna pick a bone okay uh so about uh maybe seven months ago you were at an event me and you were backstage I was talking to you I said okay Gary you see what we do it's like your second or third event I was like what what piece of advice would you give me uh of what we could do for marketing different we are now okay I don't know if you remember this yet or not. And you thought there for a second about like that. We were like, hmm. And you said, I tell you what I would do. I would take part of your marketing budget and I would, instead of running ads, I would hire a full-time TikTok-only person.

12:24Yep. And you said all I would have that guy or girl do is just TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. And you said, you don't understand. You're like, you have no idea what will go viral. Like, the thing you think will go viral won't. And this stupid shit of, like, it's Magic Johnson dropping a cup goes viral. Remember this horrible story you told me? so I did that shit okay okay uh the dude's right here we hired him from California he moved to Florida to do TikToks we're gonna fire him today now listen I need you to fire him so check this out bro so we he was he's a great he's doing great and we've had some his chef hit bang bang whatever He does aspire.

13:02He's doing something for me. Listen to this, bro.

13:07He had this video they wanted to shoot. I shoot this video for him. Four days ago, this fucking thing, it finally hit. It hit 2.2 million views, like 200 ,000 comments on this one stupid ass TikTok video that we shot. then then people magazine reached out and said we wanted an interview newsweek reached out we wanted an interview uh today uh a show reached out and said we wanted an interview uh inside of this so my issue is i should have done this like 20 years ago uh where the fuck were you 20 years ago in my life because that's all free. Like, you know how hard it is to get on people to get interviewed for that shit, and it worked.

14:00It fucking worked, bro. Yeah, I mean, look, I think for everyone here, I need to say this very clearly. This era that we're in right now where you can post something on a social network and it's free, I just need everyone to wrap their head around what I'm saying here. It's free when you post it. of course you can run ads, but the story he's telling right now, it's free. This era that we're in is going to go away. And everybody here who's been listening, you know, when you just said, where were you? I was fucking here. You were there. I don't know what the fuck you were doing, but I think a lot of people, like a lot of people know I've been on this shit for 20 years.

14:46And I've been very consistent. I wrote Crush It! in 2008. Right? It came out in 2009. We're talking about 17 years ago. Wow. I've been, you know, if that made some of you feel old, trust me, I get it. So I've been here. This era will go away. The phone that a lot of you are holding right now is going to look ancient in a decade. We are literally within the decade of glasses or something else circumventing the phone. Once the phone does not become the primary device, the social networks and the feeds don't work the same. When the printing press was the most important, the people that wrote books and newspapers won.

15:29When the radio became the most important, the people that spoke in it and were listened to became the device. Then the television came along and completely changed our society. This social network moment is incredibly important for us. Unlike every other medium, there were gatekeepers and very heavy expenses to have big moments. Now all of us with our phone in there for free can change the course of our life, our business, our passions. You know, I could literally end this talk right now on this rant. And I mean this from the bottom of my heart. The only agenda I have to get across to everybody here, regardless if you're the biggest fan of me, and have consumed me for 15 years, or you have no idea who I am right now as you sit here, is for all of you to understand how significant the opportunity is in front of us to take advantage of the last five or six years of this window that has created a level of democracy and meritocracy around opportunity that has never in the history of the world been accessible to a human being.

16:44I could not implore you and for most of you if not all of you social has been around for long enough that you're taking it for granted you're taking it for granted and just like what you just felt a lot of you've been posting for a long time and the thing hasn't happened and that's because you just might suck at it but what's cool about being sucky at something is all of you sucked at walking. Like you couldn't walk and then you learned. And so the reason I've been doing what I'm doing and continue to be passionate about this is I know that once people in this audience get over their insecurities of worrying about people leaving negative comments or being insecure that they only get seven views and they think that that's bad or all the normal things that humans go through in their journey of getting to actual self-esteem and comfort and self-love, once they get over that hump, which more than half of this room has not gotten over yet, then you get into the second part, which is the tactics.

17:56The reason I wrote my last book, Day Trading Attention, was I went very deep into the tactics. Thank you. And so, you know, look, I really don't know how else to say this other than if you do not attack the free social network, and I mean all of them. Another issue here is for some of the people that are winning, they're only winning on TikTok or Instagram. And I will tell you right now, the most important platform for me of the last month for me and my team is Facebook proper. Classic Facebook. So I think most people here are not on enough platforms. And definitely most people here don't take the thumbnail the first three seconds, the copy, the strategies, the real skills of actually getting your video to get 500 ,000 views instead of 49.

18:50But all roads, politically, socially, and definitely in business and marketing, all roads, what's today's date? The 13th, 17th, what's today? 12th. All roads on March 12th, 2025, lead to social media organic content. Organic, not paid. All roads lead there. And regardless of what you want to accomplish in this room, every person sells something, get clients, become famous, or something much more noble. Raise a couple bucks for your PTA, win local office because you want to fix the pothole on Main Street, be a better father or mother. all roads lead to this distribution platform. And I could not implore all of you to get more fucking serious about it.

19:43Thank you. Okay, so you just said something that's very unique. So obviously platforms have been around for, we're coming on 20, 25 years. They've really been around. You just said that in the last, let's say the next, you know, the next crystal ball, but within 10 years that you think this whole thing is going to change on his face basically. I do. So we're on the, you're saying we're on the back half and on the way down of the hill on social media. Not the growth of it, but it going away and changing something else. Look, I get a lot of credit for predicting things. I don't predict things. I just am always on it and then I talk about it, right?

20:24For example, right now, how many people here sell something physical? Can you make some noise? Just make some noise so I get a sense. So every person that raised their hand and made some noise, every one of them should be paying attention to live social shopping. TikTok shop, whatnot, Fanatics Live, eBay Live. Like that is not me predicting. Whatnot's doing three billion in gross sales on the platform. Most people here have no idea who the fuck whatnot or whatnot is. Three billion. So I'm not predicting that live social shopping is happening. It's already happened. it's been happened in China for 10 years.

21:05And whether you sell t-shirts or vitamins or bikinis or sneakers or banana chips, you should be really focusing on live social shopping because it's the next frontier of opportunity over the next 36 to 48 months. And first mover advantage really matters. I can promise you, like you, a lot of people here wish they got more serious about TikTok when I was yelling at the top of my lungs in 2017. I'm sure of it. So I'm not, you know, I don't like to predict. I like to move fast when shit's happening. But it is very clear to me that Meta, Facebook Inc, has a major agenda to get us off the phone and onto their device.

21:47And they are pop committed to these glasses. I also have the luxury to have witnessed future forms of the glasses by going out there and playing with it. it is very clear to me that whether it's them or Apple or Google or Microsoft or a Chinese company, that we are only going in one direction in technology. Innovation continues to happen. I'm sure a lot of you are thinking about how AI might hurt you. Let me just remind you, technology is undefeated it's undefeated there was when the car was being made the guy that owned 30 ,000 horses made fun of the car and said it wouldn't work not because he was dumb but because he had financial vested interest in the car not winning a lot of people here are making decisions about things because it isn't what they want to be happening the only reason I think I've been successful in business is I know that business doesn't give a fuck about my feelings.

22:53Zero for sure. So, I don't want to predict, but I think it's unlikely that in 10 years that the mobile device, the way we know it, is as primary as it is right this nanosecond. And if that's true, the way social plays is going to be different. And that's where AR and VR and other things that are looming that we've heard about for a long time start to become serious. So, yeah, I mean, I guess for me, none of us know, but what we all know is that every day, businesses and humans are going viral at scale and it's changing their outcomes. Or if you don't even go viral, if you're just good at it, your business or your financial impact goes up by 20 or 30 % because you're good at it and that's good too.

23:42So I just want people to take it more serious. Let me think of this. I was interviewing Mark Cuban a while back, and I was in Dallas, and I asked about AI. I said, what's your thoughts on AI? And his answer was, he's like, how often do you use apps on a daily basis? And if you stop to think about it, it's like nonstop. You're constantly, when you open your phone, then it goes to an app immediately, right? And his answer was, he said, as much as you use an app on a daily basis of your life, AI is 10 times more powerful and will be bigger than all those apps combined. that was his point of the AI.

24:18And I'm sure he knows this. You know, it's 10 ,000 times. It's not 10. This is really big. Again, bringing it, we've gone pretty high level here today on the first couple things.

24:33If you decided to come to this, this is a good place to go. If you're here, my brain goes to like, what the fuck are you doing here? Right? And where that goes next is this is a room full of people who are hungry and ambitious to do something. Right? Like you decided to fucking come. Like I don't know. I don't, I mean, you didn't come here to fucking sit in dark and just hang out. Like you fucking came because you're trying to make something happen, I assume. What bothers me about something like that is just coming to consume this information isn't doing anything. You could have laid in bed and consumed.

25:15please act. Please act. And so very simply, I'm gonna make this simple. This is like a foolproof formula in my opinion. Pretty basic. And guess what? The cost of it is free 99. What I'm about to tell you is free. But you have to do something. Number one, you must have a comprehensive plan on making content for social networks. There's seven of them. There's LinkedIn and YouTube shorts, not just TikTok and Instagram. Facebook regular is exploding again. There's Twitter. It fucking matters. And number two, you must do 50 to 100 hours of research on AI. You must touch it. If you do not have chat GPT on your phone right now, the fuck are you doing?

26:02The fuck are you doing? And don't give me like, I don't believe in AI. No, you're fucking lazy. You're fucking entitled. or maybe you're of a certain age where you're just hoping that you could just ride it out before it takes you out. No, really, people do that. They're like, Gary, you don't get it. I'm 60. I'm like, what the, you're 60? Like, I'm like, are you retiring in the next three years? If they're like, yes, I'm like, okay, but even in the next 40 years of your life when you're retired, you probably want to use these tools to just make your life better. but people use these noble political frameworks to actually use as full pledge disguises to the truth which is you're fucking lazy.

26:53Yeah, that's exactly right. Notice how the claps were not as strong on that? We love to tell everybody else to do work but ourselves. This is work. this is work by the way on the record technology doesn't come natural to me either I don't like to do shit mean it I get pissed when new shit comes along like I get I do well with it but when I saw Musical.ly which became TikTok I was like oh fuck like another thing I have like I'm not pumped either like if the world would slow down I'd be chilling I'm winning but it's just not the way it is the game is not built that way and what's crazy is it's high stakes poker these new things that come along you either ride them and explode or you kind of put your head in the sand and they start to chip away and fuck you and so please do not underestimate what's happening here let me uh ask this question to you because this is something that i i i would think a lot of times back in the day when i would look at you uh and you say shit right and so probably maybe some of the crowd is saying this shit to themselves which was a hypothetical excuse for me to be lazy and that was uh i was like yeah but gary has a whole team right gary doesn't actually do social media like gary doesn't he's not actually doing it he's got 25 people motherfucker he's out here doing uh and i just just to be clear i have seen you backstage on your phone posting shit i've seen you do it uh there was also the seven and a half years that i did it every single day before where I had one employee.

28:30Five years ago. That's right. There's, you know, there's that part too, y 'all. Like, you know, like, people are just always like, so confused, like, listen, work is part of the equation. I know that we got like weird for like 10 years where people trying to convince you like, work wasn't part of the equation. You know, I remember like people got mad at me for using the word hustle. I was like, fine, I'll change it to hard work. Like, work is part of the equation. But yes, go ahead. It was an excuse that I came up with that... Or what people do, I apologize, is not in my industry. Gary, you're right, but not in restaurants.

29:14Or Gary, cool, but not... No, no, you. Technology is coming for you. You ever see Friday the 13th? that motherfucker is coming for you like it's I do not understand how people don't get it and so one of the reasons I want you to use social is if you're doing social heavy it doesn't make the jump to AI feel as hard when you do AI it's you know if you're staying on the sidelines it just gets it gets further and further away from you it's hard to like go to the glasses when you're still on a flip phone you know and so we just need practice it's i'll use this analogy i'm trying to get y 'all to do shit every day like you're training for a marathon so you can then run the marathon it's hard to go like eating chips and fucking beef jerky on your couch and drinking beers and not doing anything physical for a year and then just getting up in the morning and running the fucking new york marathon that's what a lot of you are doing with your business by not doing all the steps every day as the technology keeps moving it gets harder for you and the gap gets bigger you become more discouraged and it's fucking game over but it's shockingly easy even for the least discipline in the room when you realize how much pain is on the other side if you don't do it and more importantly how much once you look at it from a different angle it becomes a lot easier by the the way I lived this.

30:47For the first 38 years of my life, going to the gym and eating well was the worst. To this day, 11 years later, I still struggle. This morning my trainer's like, I need you to get into the gym. I'm like, oh, but I gotta go to Florida. You know, like I'm fucking, when it comes to working out in the gym, I'm loaded with excuses, which is why I know when I see it on your faces when it comes to business. In business, I have none. I'm a fucking robot. I can go 19 hours a day, every day, and this is why I talk about liking what you do. The reason I can do that, and this probably will resonate to you because I feel like you'll have this angle.