You Don’t Need to Have It All Figured Out | GaryVee Keynote

0:00Hey everybody, you're about to listen to a talk I gave to a bunch of teenagers in Queens, right? Newtown? I hope you enjoy this it's a fun keynote especially good to turn up loud if you got some kids in the back seats right now or if you want to send to a 15, 16 year old especially one that's maybe in a you know environment that is a little bit more challenging financially and literally what's going on around their house and the hood and so yeah I was really proud of this I was really looking forward to doing it and I hope you get some value out of it in any age that you are also if you're listening to this early in the morning I'm on 9 to 11 a.m.

0:36live right now on Tea with Gary Vee. See you there. Bye. When I thought about what I wanted to talk about this morning, probably the biggest thing I thought about is how do I get these kids to realize that success that is being pushed on them, what success is, is incredibly twisted. You know, I know that so many people view success from a money place, from a fame place, from a follower's place, all the shit that's being put into your head from the outside world is confusing. And I say that because the only mark of success as you get older is just sheer happiness, simplicity, joy. when you're 17, when you're 15 when you're sitting in this room listening to me talk you don't believe that shit as much I get that even when you're 20 and 25 and 30 every day I get thousands of DMs that talk about you know not believing that money isn't the unlock to happiness 40, 50, 60 year olds are confused and twisted on how to win life for the kids in here that are overstressed about some fucking test this week let me promise you and this may not go over super well and I apologize but I need this for the kids bad grades is not going to end your life how you do at school academically is not an indicator to your joy when you get older.

2:28Of course, learning how to be disciplined and doing shit, that matters. Right? But we worry about stuff that ends up not mattering, especially at this age. Of course, for many of you in this room, getting good grades is your way out, is your way to build. And if it comes natural to you, that's remarkable. But I had the luxury of chopping it up with your principal, and when he told me about his passion of converting the school to a CT school, and just the way he sees the world, I just really, really feel happy in my heart right now that so many of you are gonna be affected by that, especially the freshmen in the room, that are gonna eventually get impacted by this.

3:13But for everybody in this room, please understand a couple things. Life is very different than school. very different than school. Again, I don't want kids to, I don't want to leave here and all of a sudden B students become F students and they blame me for that shit. I'm not trying to get that heat. But what I do want is for everybody here to understand what you need to extract out of school to prep you for real life. Extracting out of school things like being comfortable with being uncomfortable. like I'm aware that not everybody wants to go to this class or that class it's Monday morning I'm aware that for a lot of people last night was a tough night because you didn't want to come in the next day you live for Friday real talk that was me when I sat where you're sitting right now I hated school I was a bad student but what I learned in school really mattered to what makes me happy today one of the biggest issues in the world not just for kids but for the grown-ups in the back is that we've lost our way with dealing with adversity the world has lost its way with dealing with adversity we've become soft we've become incapable of dealing with things that don't come easy.

4:44One of the great things to learn during your four years here is getting through the things that are not as easy. If one kid in this room leaves this talk excited about eating shit, meaning literally being comfortable with getting through stuff that doesn't come easy, my mission will be accomplished here. Life has challenges. It gets complicated. I'm sure it's not lost on a crew like this. There's a lot of high schools that I could visit where the kids have not faced anywhere close to the level of adversity that this room has. That is ultimately, for most of you, your strength. me growing up in a family that had little and me having to work when I was in high school, after school, every weekend, every summer vacation, that became the foundation of my happiness.

5:43In a world where I'm sure a lot of you can look at others and see how they have it easier or how they have it better, I'm excited for y 'all to get older eventually and recognize how this chapter was the foundation, how this was the moment. A couple things I want to talk to you guys about before we go into Q &A. One thing that I get a lot of questions from this crew, call it 14 to 18 every day, probably the DM I get the most of, it says, Gary V, how do I make money? So I'm going to attack that a little bit here on a practical kick. And this is fun to talk to y 'all because what I'm about to talk about, I talk to companies and executives and big companies all the time and they're confused by it.

6:35None of you are going to be confused by what I'm about to talk about because you live in this world. You live in this world. So, a couple things. Number one, I'm sure most of you have noticed that on TikTok, they've been pushing a lot more live shopping. How many of you are familiar with, on TikTok, tuning in, when you go through your For You page, you see somebody doing like a QVC thing, selling shit on TikTok. Raise your hand, I'm just trying to get a sense. Raise it high, I wanna get a sense. All right, good. The middle really fucks with it. What's the matter with y 'all? You don't see it? So, for all of you, one of the biggest opportunities right now is TikTok shop.

7:23Literally, literally going to the dollar store or grabbing stuff that's laying around in your house, going live on TikTok and selling it. It is stunning to see what's going on with this right now. For many of you, another move would be you got 20 bucks, you go to TJ Maxx, you buy three things for 20 bucks, you go on TikTok shop, you sell those things for 50 bucks, you take that 50 bucks, you do it again and again and again and again. for the next year or two, anybody that goes live on TikTok, in a TikTok shop, even if you have no followers, will start to reach people on TikTok. And that is a big arbitrage.

8:11That's a huge opportunity. And for this crew, obviously some people are gonna feel scared to go on camera or things of that nature. But anybody who is about that life, I could not recommend this more to you. it's a huge opportunity and what you're gonna learn on it what you're gonna learn on it is really gonna impact you really gonna impact you couple other things content on social media so the other thing that's going on on social media right now from a business standpoint is you don't have to have any followers any followers to have a post go viral so the social media that I grew up on when you were little, little kids.

8:55You had to amass followers for anyone to see your stuff. I think that comes very natural to all of you. You understand that. What's happened in the last 12 months is the game has completely flipped. Now, even if you have no followers in here, your first post can get 10 ,000 views. If it's good. I was just talking to Principal. I was talking to my team. This book right here that I just wrote, Day Trading Attention, just came out and really breaks it down. I just decided in the back room that I'm gonna send hundreds of books here of this book so some of you can grab that shit.

9:38Don't clap. No clapping on that. Because if you don't read it, nothing's gonna happen. You can clap after you read it or you use it because another thing I'd love to talk to you about that I'm obsessed with, and again, isn't just a 15, 16, 17 year old thing, it's a 20, 30 year old thing, it's a 40, 50 year old thing for the back, is we talk too much. People always talking about what you're gonna do. I need you to look at the people you're sitting with, your homies, always talking about what they're gonna do, and not doing it. We need to shut our fucking mouths. Uh-huh. and we need to start doing instead of talking.

10:23I promise you nothing you want in your head right now, nothing you're hoping and dreaming to do for you and your family will ever happen if you just talk about it. People talk about things and think they're doing it. We talk too much. So I appreciate the clapping. I know it came from a good place but what would make me much happier is when I send them here and they're free and however the school's gonna do it that you actually read it, but actually reading it is also not the game. Actually posting. You know this. Teachers, parents, the media, they're all demonizing social media to y 'all. And you know, you sit there and you watch it aimlessly all day.

11:06I get it, but guess what? Your parents, the teachers, we did the same shit. We just did it on television and magazines. The world's always the same. what's not the same is how you're gonna actually attack it you can use social media just to waste your day or you could use it as the biggest weapon in the world if I had social media when I was your age I promise you one thing my mom and I laugh about this all the time I would have never graduated high school not because I was bad or that was good or bad but because if I had social media I just would have built business after business after business and I just wouldn't have been able to get there.

11:43I was doing it without the internet and social media in the analog world so I would have definitely done it. My friends, kids, this is crazy. You understand the computer you have in your pocket, the phone, is a more powerful computer than Ronald Reagan had in the White House when he was the President of the United States. The world's changed and you live in a time and era where everyone's trying to tell you what's wrong and what's not good. And meanwhile, you've never had more opportunity in your life. If you harness this stuff for good, for you, it will change your life. And so please do not buy into the negative and choose optimism.

12:30No matter how deep the adversity is, I promise you, you're capable. And I get it, listen. I'm sitting here giving the talk and I'm literally thinking about kids sitting in the audience right now listening to me and they're like whatever can't, no I don't see it maybe for you bro but not for me all that shit and what really motivates me to be here this morning is with the desperate hope that just one of you in this audience hears me just one I can't get all of you to believe what I'm saying. I just know the math of how this shit works. But if I can get one person in here to understand that everything you hear that tells you that you can't is fake, if one person realizes they can, whether they decide to go down TikTok shop, whether they decide to just post content about whatever you're interested in, no matter how chill or whatever you are in this room, all of you give a shit about something.

13:35Something. And if you make content about that on social media, that's free. That can be the gateway to a whole new world for you. You will learn. You will build community. It will be real. But you just can't talk about it. You gotta start being about it. I mean that. Honestly, I wanna go into Q &A. Gary starts off this Q &A by answering a question from a student who asks, what's your advice to someone who believes they suck and can't do it? I think it's fake. I don't know what else to tell you. Like, I promise you, people have had it way worse than you. I got one. I am on the board of a nonprofit called Charity Water.

14:24What we do for a living is we build wells in Africa and parts of Asia, so that people can get clean water. As we sit in this auditorium this morning, there are 800 million people on earth, almost 10 % of earth, 800 million people on earth that can't drink a glass of clean water within 24 hours because the water's that far away from them. What do I do to give someone advice here that's at wit's end and think they can't for them to realize how good they have it. For you to realize how good you have it. The world has so much adversity. And I think that people have to choose optimism versus negativity.

15:17No matter how, somebody in this room has the most fucked up situation. Somebody. Somebody in this room, if we ask 50 people to analyze everybody's life in here, somebody has it worse. With their parents, their financial situation, could be something, alcoholic parent, it could have it fucked up. Somebody has it worse. But for that person in this room, there's billions of people that have it worse. You live in America. And to me, that should make people happy, not sad, and make you realize you can. How many people have a phone? Raise your hand. Real talk. How many people have a phone? Every one of those people can.

15:59The whole fucking world's in here. That's it. The next student asked, what can schools do to support kids with these new opportunities? What can schools do? They can stop being ideological and political and like thinking about yesterday and they can start focusing on tomorrow. When I hear that we're going to teach kids practical skills that they can live their life, that excites me. Listen, for a couple kids in here that are deeply into science and are gonna work for SpaceX, like knowing what's going on with Saturn and Mars right now matters. For 99 % of us in this room, it does not. And so I think schools need to do a better job to be practical.

16:43Because being practical actually is putting the kids in this room into a position to make something happen. And so I'm very motivated and very inspired by what this school is trying to do. For example, all these schools are now demonizing chat GPT. Right? They should be teaching prompt engineering in class. What do you want these kids to do? You don't want them to write their papers in chat GPT? I get it. The problem is chat GPT is real. I gave this same talk 20 years ago about search engines. They didn't want kids to use search engines. I did this shit about calculators. Remember when they didn't want kids to fucking use calculators?

17:25What do you want? You want these kids to memorize shit that doesn't matter for a week, for a test, and then forget it for the rest of their lives? We need more fucking practicality. That's what we need. What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a business right out of high school? One, work a job for someone that's already in that business because they're going to pay you to learn. Even if it's a shitty job, even if you're getting very little, if you go work for somebody for a year that's in the general idea. Do you have your business idea? Not yet. So I think first, to start a business without an idea is crazy.

18:06That's like driving with your eyes closed. So first, try to figure out, but if a lot of you are trying to think about starting a business, I would highly recommend starting with something you like. So if you like sneakers, sneaker business if you like music music business if you like cooking cooking like do business is hard as shit like don't don't let entrepreneurs on Instagram confuse you it's hard so if you're gonna do something hard you might as well like it if you like it you might actually do it for 12 hours a day if you're doing it just for the money you will quit so first do something around something you like and then consider working for somebody for a year while you're building your business at night because you need to learn because you're so young and you don't have experience yet.

18:54Got you, my man. This next student asked, how do you combat procrastination? I got a good one for you. Bro, procrastination is just an indication that you don't like it. Procrastination, I procrastinate everything I don't like and I go hard at everything I do like. This goes back to the beginning of the talk. what you're gonna learn in this time in your life at school and at home is getting through shit that you don't like you're not gonna fix procrastination on your homework if you don't wanna fucking do homework what you need to do is just learn how to get through it that grind like procrastination is just an indicator to what's in your soul I promise you're not procrastinating on stuff you like you understand?

19:49my girl said to me the other day she's like you can't get up for this stuff but you get up at 5am to play basketball because I fucking love basketball procrastination is showing you the truth of what's in you you're not going to fix procrastination there's no fixing procrastination what you can work on is discipline and getting into a mental place where you know you just have to do shit to get to the next place and that's how you have to just address it you got to start practicing being comfortable with not liking shit. It's a mindset thing. Gotcha. What would you do if you had to start from zero?

20:29What would I do if I had to start from zero? What would be my first step? My first step would be what I just told you all before. The number one thing if I had to start at zero that I would do is make content on social media. My friends, it's great. Again, it's so fun because I don't do this with high school kids that often. I do it in business environments. I know how much people are telling you social's bad. Social's the best if you know how to use it. Everything is good and bad. Everything is good and bad. So what I would do is I would make content on social media because it's free and I would be starting at zero.

21:08And one piece of content could change my whole game. What would be a plan to start? I'm gonna send you a free book called Day Trading Attention. You're gonna read that shit and you're gonna be off to the fucking races. What are your thoughts on Ivy League schools? So Ivy League school wasn't for me, but Ivy League school is one of the best brands in the world. Let there be no confusion, my friends. If you go to Harvard or Yale or Princeton, when you get out, it creates real opportunity. to me Ivy League school is you know how earlier I said practical learn HVAC be a plumber do stuff I like practical to me bro Ivy League schools are practical if you can get into one of those motherfuckers go there because if you go there when you come out on the other side the business world the world looks at you different and you've got leverage the problem with college right now is the schools that are not Ivy League schools are losing leverage.

22:14It matters less than it did when we were growing up. But for Ivy League schools, if you can get there, now by the way, I need you to hear this very carefully. Other schools not named Ivy still will work for so many of you. It's just, you gotta understand how it is. One of the things I worry about, for example, is debt. College debt is scary to me. A lot of kids choose to go to a slightly better school and take on the debt versus going with a school slightly lower where you get a full ride. I always tell kids, take the second one because that debt is too scary to me. And I think the education is negligible in comparison to the debt.

22:56But bro, Ivy League schools, if anyone here can get into one of those things, go. Is marketing the most important side of business? It's one of the two most important things. Let me explain. I'm really good at marketing. I've done it my whole life. I have one of the biggest marketing companies in the world. Three weeks ago, we met with a company. They wanted to give us millions of dollars to do the marketing. We had a great meeting. When the meeting was over, I called the CEO. And I said, bro, you need to wait a year or two before you hire us because your product sucks. The most important thing in business is marketing is only true if your product is good.

23:36If your product is ass, all that marketing does is speed up the process of all of us knowing that it's shit and then you go out of business quicker. You understand? It's one of the two most important things. Product quality is number one. Then getting people to know about it. Marketing is number two. So how do you reach the audience off your product? The way you reach audience today, in my opinion, is social media. It's the lowest cost way to reach people. Obviously, there's a lot of ways. If you've got paper, then do a Super Bowl commercial. You'll reach 120 million Americans in one day. But for the people that have smaller budgets here, we're starting their own little things.

24:23I could not recommend social media more, especially organic. You don't even have to pay for ads. My man. This student asks, what is your opinion on AI? Is it going to change our future? It's going to be the biggest technology that impacts every kid in this room. AI is massive. It's such a big deal. But we shouldn't treat it negatively or overly positive. It will be in the middle like everything else. My man, you know one thing? Right now a lot of people are scared of AI, as you probably are aware. I was in a meeting the other day and I educated somebody. By the way, back to my high school career, I don't know who the history teacher is in here, but that was the one class that I was really good at.

25:06And I was always interested in it. And I use it a lot in business now. Let me give you all a history lesson. Right now, everyone's scared of AI and saying how bad it is and how it's going to ruin the world. When electricity was invented, electricity, almost 80 % of the people's opinion on electricity was that it had demons inside of it and they did not bring electricity into their home. They continued to use candles because they thought it was bad. Let me give you a lesson that I want you to take with your whole life. Remember this, this will help you. Humans, humans, always pick the negative when new shit comes up.

25:51That is where the actual opportunity is. You understand? Humans, and for the rest of your life, all of you, good news, you were born at the right time. Y 'all are gonna live to like 120. So you're gonna live for a while. God willing. Remember this for the next 100 years of your life. Especially if you're an entrepreneur or business person. Humans, when new big technologies come, will always look at the negative. That is where the opportunity is. I think AI is gonna change the world in a significant way. You know how they talk about AI taking people's jobs away? The tractor. The farm tractor. when it was invented, 80 % of the people on earth worked on farms.

26:39It didn't put everybody out of business. It allowed humans to do bigger and more important things. AI is gonna allow, there are kids in this room, my guy, who are gonna change the world because of AI, because they were born at the right time as AI was building. AI is gonna allow us to be better, to be bigger, to do more things and I'm excited about it. But it's got a long way to go and there's gonna be a lot of confusion along the way, but keep digging into it. There's a lot of opportunity there. How do you deal with burnout? You know, it's really funny you asked me that. Besides health, besides health, do you know what the number one thing I wished for every kid in this room right now?

27:24The ability to not give a shit about what anybody else in the room thinks of them. So the way I deal with burnout is by realizing that whatever I'm struggling with, that anybody else's opinion on it doesn't matter. I think a lot of you would be very surprised how much of your anxiety or burnout comes because it's grounded in you worrying about what other people are going to think about the thing. Whether that's your teacher, whether that's your parents, Or worst of all, whether it's your classmates' judgment on you. So the way I deal with burnout or when I'm struggling is to take a step back and recalibrate my perspective on the situation.

28:13Right? I'll give you an example of something I really struggle with. I struggle when my company has to fire someone. To me, it's out of all the things I do for a living, the idea that I have to fire someone crushes me. Because I'm sad. I know that they're gonna have to deal with it, right? And sometimes that can overwhelm me when it's at scale, but I have to take a step back and realize that it's my ego talking because the person on the other side is capable of getting another job. Maybe they're gonna get a way better job. Maybe they're gonna get paid more. And so I think just taking a moment, and I'm not worried about what people think about my firing.

28:52That's what makes it palpable for me. So the way I deal with burnout is perspective and understanding. I play a trick in my mind, it might work for you, which is I'm the only person that lives on earth and thus nobody else can say anything about it and I just gotta keep moving forward. And so I keep things very simple. I think gratitude really helps me a lot. When I'm really struggling, I just think about the fact that my family is okay and that whatever I'm dealing with right now, if that was okay but my family was sick or hurt or worst of all died, what would that mean? And then all of a sudden the thing I'm worried about gets really small.

29:31And so I use gratitude and perspective, which is why I don't sit in burnout or negativity or anxiety very long. I'm a human, it pops up, but I have coping mechanisms to attack it and it's based on gratitude and perspective. If you had a business that failed, what would you do to keep your motivation alive? Business is sports. Business is UFC. I've had so many businesses fail, brother. My man, I've had so many businesses fail. Do you know that 90, 95 % of businesses fail? So to me, it's like, I'm a little bit of a sicko when it comes to this. Like, I enjoy the loss. Like, you've got to get to a place where you enjoy the losing.

30:19Like, it's okay. And again, notice what I just told her earlier. If you don't worry about what your homies think about your loss, then all of a sudden you're moving, right? So it's just part of the game, brother. It's the way it is. There's no choice. There's no undefeated entrepreneur, brother. And honestly, this is going to make you happy. The more you lose early on, the more you learn the shit that fucked it up so that you don't do it. So losing now is a lot better than losing in your 40s and 50s. So look at them as battle scars that are good. What is more important in business, finances and logistics or psychology and marketing?

31:02Similar to that young dude right there when we talked about the product and the marketing, the answer is both. But if I had to answer you and you said, no, you've got to pick one, I literally think the psychology. Anybody in this room that is interested in psychology and all that stuff, I could not get a sense that that's where you're at. I could not push you more to go into that field. It is very valuable as technology, back to my man talking about AI, as technology keeps getting bigger, the emotional intelligence and psychology will become more valuable. And so if that comes natural to you or you're interested in it, I would highly recommend pursuing it.

31:43If you were a female interested in sports, what would you say to someone who is trying to get into sports departments even though there aren't many spots for females? So that's a great question. So the young lady that you just handed the mic to, her, she is the single reason that we're having this happen. Her, she is the single reason.