Transcript
A (0:00)
I believe that right there is the definition of entrepreneurship. It's when you love your game more than what the game gives you. Unless you are producing content that is meaningful to an audience on this device across seven or eight platforms. Podcasts, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Unless you're producing content in written form, audio form, or video form across 7 to 10 apps on this device, unless you are relevant on those 10 apps, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram. If you are not, you are fundamentally irrelevant in society. This is the GaryVee audio experience. I love you back, mom. Yeah, exactly.
B (0:46)
Everyone thinks that they already know you and think they can just talk to
A (0:48)
you whenever they want they can. I'm like, I love you back. I think the, I think, you know, social came along. The Internet evolution came along at a very good, you know, life is so much about timing. You know, I was born in the former Soviet Union, and if I was my grandfather, I'd probably be in a Soviet jail during this time of my life. And I'm not kidding, because both my grandfathers spent time in a Soviet jail. I happen to have the serendipity of timing where the Internet came along and created a framework that allows people to interact at scale. I disproportionately enjoy human beings so they can come up to me like, I like being accessible. We have never lived in a time where brand was this underpriced. Let me explain. What is the biggest difference between me and a lot of people that look like me or me and the companies that I work with and I get them there? It is the fact that I do branding, not sales. Branding is different than sales. I love when people come up to me like, Gary, I'm a marketer. I'm like, cool, what do you do? Well, I am affiliate marketer and it's conversion based. Top of the. I'm like, you're a salesman, bro. This is a very important thing to understand because I know there's people sitting here who have $11 million business and are super happy and aren't even on social media. I get that. But what you're not factoring in is what happens next to me, what's most important is not today. I stand up here and so unbelievably appreciative of that reception that I just got and knowing how many of you came here to hear me speak. But I promise you, as I breathe here right now, I recognize that literally everything I did an hour ago and back is irrelevant. If I'm unable to execute going forward tomorrow, if I Start making the wrong decisions and not executing begins the vulnerability of unwinding everything I've done. And I think we all understand in society, we react much heavier to mistakes than we do to successes. The reason I'm pushing that you're irrelevant if you're not here is I don't think everybody here, including myself, has factor in how much more attention is going here. Let me promise you this. No matter what you think about technology, your kids on iPads all day, you always on the phone, nobody talking to each other, how you judge kids because they don't shake people in the hand and look in the eye and all the other horseshit that demonizes technology right this second. The way we interact with technology is the most basic you will ever see in your life. Ten years from now, every one of these phones, every one of these video game platforms, every one of these websites are gonna seem like a fucking Beeper and MySpace. You have to understand this. Here's why there is nobody here, pot committed enough to this, including myself. There's nobody in this theater right now pot committed to this enough, including myself. When I say pot committed to this, what do I mean? I mean every person in this room needs to take a substantial step back and understand, am I producing enough pictures, videos, written words in these platforms to achieve what I want? And the answer, and I'll save you time, is no. For everybody. And for somebody who's putting out 85 pieces of content a day across audio, video, and written word a day, my answer is staggeringly no. Meanwhile, there are people here who take four and a half hours to figure out a perfect Instagram post because they want it to look good when somebody lands on their fucking profile. It's true. The quickest gateway, the quickest execution for everybody here to get whatever the hell they're trying to get out of here today is to produce content on 10 websites. The quickest way for you to get what you want in your life is to produce videos, pictures, and written words across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, podcast, your website, email, text messaging platform, period. You know what's crazy? I literally want to say right now, thank you, London. I'm out. It is like, I'm thrilled to go into the mindset. I'm thrilled to tell you. And if you follow me on Instagram, this is where I've taken most of my content. I'm thrilled to tell you that the reason you're not producing enough content is, unfortunately, you value other people's opinions more than your own ambition and happiness. That literally pants 47 can leave a content that you're ugly and it makes you stop posting. I can go into that. I can go into a million other things. But I make this very clear and obvious. The reason I am just beginning to succeed in my ambitions is because today is the least amount of content that I will produce. Because I will produce more tomorrow and more the next day. You have to understand media dictates everything, right? There's a specific reason that when there is a coup in a country that the army goes and takes over the TV network and the newspaper, communication is the game. Maybe because of being born in the Soviet Union and raised in the U.S. i had this paradox of being fascinated by a closed and open system of communication. Maybe because I'm an extrovert and I talk a lot. I don't know why, but something came natural to me. But my whole life, which is communication, what are the things that make people do things right? What I'm fascinated by is the democratization of media. What I'm fascinated by is that everybody here, how many people here, have been following me for more than one year, raise your hand. The fact that 90% of this audience knows that all I want you to do is run Facebook and Instagram ads and you still aren't, makes me want to punch all of you in your fucking face. I mean, literally all I've been asking you to do for the last two years is run Facebook and Instagram ads and you fuck faces still aren't. And I say this because I put it on film, because I'm gonna run this exact video against you in five years on some platform telling you that you missed the golden era of Facebook and Instagram because now it's appropriately priced. And you guys have heard me, if you follow me, say this. I regret that I wasn't able to build my dad's business bigger because I didn't spend enough on Google. I didn't spend enough. I had it figured out. It was called Google AdWords. It was working. Yet I still was doing newspapers and direct mail and radio and television because I didn't understand the context of the moment that I was living in. Hey, everybody. Hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. We really need to have a conversation in here about judgment. The far majority of you will not go home today and start posting more on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter not because you don't get. I love when people are like, gary, I didn't grow up with this technology. I don't get it. I'm like, that's nice, Sue. You didn't grow up driving and you figured it out. It is very cute that you tell me you didn't grow up with this and that's why you don't get it. I am wildly smart enough to understand that you are bright enough to spend two hours on an app to figure it out. The reason you're not posting or doing is cause there's insecurity about what you're gonna say. You got your perspective. Just wanna be happy. Don't you wanna be happy? The fact that we sit here in 2020, in the maturity of the social web and these opportunities and There are still two platforms right this second that require $0 for you to start communicating what you want to happen in the world, I think is remarkable. That doesn't even take into account the fact that Facebook ads, YouTube pre rolls this new Spotify ad product that is going to have hosts read live. Reads like the old radio game for podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, Twitter's appropriately priced. But everything else I just mentioned to you, the ads are underpriced. The cost of spending $1,000 on these platforms to get people to see something is underpriced. I really am desperate with even the tone and tenor that I'm bringing to this talk. I'm desperate for people to understand how wild this is. I want to remind everybody, for everybody who raised their hand in the first group, like myself, the way you built a business or brought awareness if you're 43 and older and the way we grew up was by spending a lot of money. Ads cost money. Direct mail, newspaper, radio, ads, television that cost money. It was a very high cost of entry to build brand. Brand is the whole game, I think when I analyze what's going on in the business world and with people, I think most people are transactional. I believe. How many people here are entrepreneurs? Raise your hands. I believe the majority of the hands that just went up, that when I look at the delta between the ones who've won and the ones who've won less than they've wanted to, I put them always in my mind into two groups. One, one group is transactional, AKA deeply care about the money in the short term. And the second group is looking to build brand, AKA reputation in perpetuity and are more concerned about playing it out in the long term. What is exciting for me right now is that this device, this device, like the fact from this young man down and up, every one of us has a device in our hand that is a computer that is actually more powerful than the computer that Ronald Reagan had when he was running the free world. It really is interesting. It really is. I think again, what I'm really trying to establish in this talk this afternoon, this morning, is I don't think people have quantified the opportunity. I struggle, regardless of circumstance, with people dwelling or complaining in a world where the Internet is free. Has no idea who you are, could care less. It's right there. And it becomes a game of skill, not necessarily finances, to actually win. It's interesting to me, it's interesting to me that you can be in the retail business overnight by setting up a Shopify account, which cost nothing when that same action to sell something 30 years ago meant that you had to sign a lease and build out a store and rely on the local traffic that walked by. It scares me and excites me that the biggest music company in the world, Spotify, was built in Sweden by a kid. And on and on and on. And you've heard every story, but more importantly, for every ridiculous story we've seen of Instagram or Facebook or Uber or Spotify, there are hundreds of thousands of stories of people with wins that are micro versions. I actually think the most unhealthy thing in entrepreneurship and opportunity is the big stories that everybody thinks they have to build a billion dollar company. I think we do not talk enough about the practical $150,000 a year, $300,000 a year, $700,000 a year business that you genuinely love, what you do, and you can live your life being happy and financially sound and what the cost of entry to be able to do that is in today's environment, which once again, let me say it very slow, between putting out a media company, if you decide to put that on a WordPress or a Squarespace, a retail company on the back of a Shopify, you could start a radio show that is global on the back of just uploading something you record on your memos on your phone and upload onto Spotify and Apple and SoundCloud. My friends, distribution is free. I know it's a nerdy thing, it's not like some big profound statement, but let me say it nice and slow. Distribution is free. It used to cost a fortune. Now what you put inside of it is the variable of your success, not your financial capabilities to create the distribution you have. I wish we could zoom In. I literally have goosebumps on my neck right now. No, but really, I really do. It's like a very. I will live my last breath trying to get people to understand. This is remarkable. This is a game of perspective. Are you educated or capable of seeing it from the lens that I'm speaking about today, which is the barrier to reach the end person, Whether you're a financial advisor and trying to get to a client, whether you sell bow ties, whether you want to be. How about the fact if you want to be a professional football player, and now there's all these websites where you can upload your film because the scout didn't come to your tiny, tiny town. And. And now you actually can be discovered. Everything has changed. My question and my dream every time I speak is, can I get one person in this room to get their peace for me? If you are not disproportionately happy sitting in this room professionally, which will trickle into your actual life, you have to take a step back and understand this perspective. So I think we're living through the greatest era ever for opportunity. I think it's on the back of the current Internet, which is wildly visual. I'm very aware that the audio revolution of our society is coming. What do I mean by that? Is how many people here have a Google home or an Alexa in their house? Just raise it high. I'm curious. Raise it high. I want people to see this. Google and Alexa. Look around. It's a real number. Now, granted, most people are just telling jokes with their Alexa or listening to music, but I want to remind everybody that the first killer app on the iPhone for the first year was that app that looked like you were drinking a beer. If you remember, it takes some time for the apps to catch up to the platform, but we are all very close to being in an era where we order a pizza or where we get our plumber or how. And where we navigate by talking to a voice device, not to our phone. As voice becomes the platform and less happens on this, which seems foreign now because we all live in it, but I want to remind you, we used to not live in it. And I want to remind everybody here, technology likes to move when. When, not if. When you start doing a lot of things that you do on your phone right now start happening on a voice device, it will no longer be visual and written, which will lead to less opportunity. To grab attention to the current opportunity landscape, which I'm gonna remind everybody, is quite remarkable, because if you've got a local bakery now and you can do a really good job on LinkedIn and TikTok for free or on Instagram with money. When in a decade we go into voice and I say, alexa, send me six muffins to the office. Amazon gets to decide which muffins come to the office. Now, if you did such a good job building brand and I knew about Carol's muffins and I said, alexa, send me six Carol's muffins to the office. You've now accomplished your task. I spend 100,000% of my time on brand. I want people to know my name. I want people to know the name of the things I do. VaynerMedia, my agency. When we killed Mr. Peanut yesterday, which a lot of you heard about, that is us doing brand, that makes you think about planters. You weren't thinking about it prior to what we did yesterday. We think about it. It's all brand. And so I just want you to get your long tail of it. And this is what's led me to the most interesting conversations of my career. Because as a businessman, I never thought I would get into categories like parenting and insecurities and self esteem. But as somebody who just spoke all that and has done that pretty much every day, 600 times a day on the Internet for the last decade, it has led me to realize, wait a minute, there's the other component of everything I said. I can show every one of you what to do. I have just sat here and told you 100%, not 99 the two attention arbitrage platforms of our society right now. If every person here went home and made five to seven pictures and videos a day on both TikTok and LinkedIn within a year, something good would happen for the far majority of you. 99% of you won't post on either. Once after this talk, the question to me became why? That led to the next part. We really need to have a conversation in here about judgment. The far majority of you will not go home today and start posting more on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter. Not because you don't get. I love when people are like, Gary, I didn't grow up with this technology. I don't get it. I'm like, that's nice, Sue. You didn't grow up driving and you figured it out. It is very cute that you tell me you didn't grow up with this and that's why you don't get it. I am wildly smart enough to understand that you are bright enough to spend two hours on an app to Figure it out. The reason you're not posting or doing is because there's insecurity about what you're gonna say. You go very deep into who's gonna care what I'm gonna say? What would I say? Who cares what I think? Or even worse, the thing that breaks my heart the most, you actually do post something. Somebody leaves a post that you look ugly and you cripple and fold like a cheap chair. So that's what I spend my time on now, trying to figure out how to get people to realize that the judgment of others has zero actual impact on their lives. They have zero context on your actual life. And how do I get you to understand that perspective, which would then lead to you speaking? And when I say speaking, let me break this down. Let me take out the other excuse of why you, for yourself and your business, aren't posting. Not everybody is great on camera. I get that. Not everybody is so wildly charismatic and very good looking. I get it. However, on the flip side, I am incapable of writing. It's not my natural skill. I struggle with reading and writing. It's not my skill. Plenty of people here are incredible writers and it is an incredible opportunity to go write six to 15 sentences together around a thought on LinkedIn and hit post. Others can work in Photoshop and make a picture. Others enjoy. I don't. I was born in the Soviet Union and grew up in a very Eastern European household. I think there's like eight pictures of me in my entire youth, right? We didn't take photos, so it doesn't come natural to me. On the other hand, there are people in here who took 97 photos on their iPhone yesterday. There are plenty of people here who are great at taking photos. My question here today, my friends, is very simple. When are you going to start talking? What are you waiting for? If you are not communicating, you don't exist. I believe that if you are not communicating, you do not exist. More importantly, communicate about what you love. What scares me about the long tail of the Internet is I know there's somebody sitting in here who's watched every episode of Friends. Okay? Deeply loves Friends. Can't get enough in their own mind of debating. Rachel and Ross loved the show. Watch it every night to go to sleep too. And I know they make 49, 62, 88, $103,000 a year doing something they don't like. And I know that if they started a podcast about Friends every day when they went home, instead of consuming content to escape the fact that they don't like their job. If they created content around the thing, they love that after 24, 36, 48 months, that along could have came Netflix and been a sponsor of that podcast that would allow them to actually leave that job they hate and now be a full time friends podcaster. You don't believe that. I understand that that seems like a far fetched story to you. The problem is you don't live my life because I wrote a book in 2009 called Crush it that laid this out. And I get to live the best life now where I get three, three to six emails a day of people that tell me this exact story. Whether it's about pickles. People like pickles. I do too. I eat pickles like crazy. Star Trek esports. Don't even get me started. Because I used to push it a lot and people have gone completely and made real careers in that just stuff. I just. I just really, really, really hope you hear me today. Whether it's for yourself, whether you're a top executive in your organization and the company still does direct mail or print or still sponsors the town fair instead of running content and ads on Instagram and Facebook. Guys, it's 2020. And don't give me this, not in my town, not in my industry. I'm watching your town, your industry. And so that's where we're at. The biggest opportunity in the history of humankind to do what you want to do. And yet you will continue to find reasons not to. And I think that comes in under the categories of self esteem and self awareness. And I think we need to make those words important in our society. You can work hard all you want. If you're insecure, you're gonna be vulnerable. Cause the second there's pushback, and there's always pushback in the journey, you won't go there. So that's my framework. Those are the things I think about. I spend a lot of time thinking about that. And then I have a company that helps Fortune 500 companies navigate that world. And I see it every day. Just going back to the Planters thing. Cause I know it's on the radar today. There was a real debate if we could get America to know that Mr. Peanut was dead so that we could run the super bowl spot that we're running during the Super Bowl. And if we couldn't, the spot won't make any sense. I and VaynerMedia knew that the Internet is real. We knew that if you went on Twitter like we did yesterday, the Daily show will pick it up at Night. And it will be on all the recap emails this morning and in the papers and the apartment and the USA Today. The Internet is real life. This is fake life. I just. And really, I'm really going. I know where the giggles come from. And by the way, an enormous amount of people hate that thought, right? Like, I live in life. I know how we are doing such a great job currently demonizing technology. We hate that. The kid. You know, my favorite is my friends who are parents who, like, you know, because they know where I sit on tech, and they're like, Gary. You know, I'll be hanging out with them and they'll be like, gary, this tech is terrible and the kids are on it too much. But the second the kid comes over and bothers our conversation over a glass of wine, they throw the iPad at that kid like it's the cure to every disease. The hypocrisy that we have around technology is fascinating. We as humans are incredible at romancing the past and demonizing the current. And so these are the trends I watch. But I will say this. If you are a vibrant, active, ambitious human being, which there is zero reason for you to be at this conference, if you're not zero, and you do not, for yourself or your company, produce in the ballpark of seven to 25 different pieces of content across three to nine different platforms a day, you are making a fundamental mistake. I'm gonna say it again. Because when you're talking about 25 pieces of content a day, in a world where 98% of this room is not making 25 pieces of content a year, we have a very big disconnect between where I sit on this and where you sit on this. I am giving this talk for one reason, because Drock is filming it and I'm gonna air it in a decade on whatever the current platform is, when it has been completely accepted that everything I just said was 100% right, I have zero interest of you actually taking the advice I just shared. I don't know you. I've got my own problems. I prefer it. I deeply. You know, I'm speaking at Harvard tomorrow, so I have to go. I have a couple more meetings here and I gotta go. Dallas to Boston, I land at 1:40 in the morning. And on those kind of flights, I like reading the emails of you saying, hey, I saw you in Mobile in 2020. This is now imaginary 2023. I finally listened. I was passionate about X, Y and Z. I did do an Instagram account or a podcast or a YouTube show. And now, three years later, this happened. I love that. That is the big win for me in this room. But you won't. You won't. And I know that because I've lived this life now for a while. You know what is more likely is you're gonna email me in six years and say, I wish I did. Cause this happened because I was the leading lawyer in town, and this other person who didn't was not even. You know the emails are funny, right, Gary? I mean, they come in all shapes and forms. Gary, I wish I listened to you and you start reading it. Because I read. Because I want the qualitative feedback to learn. Right? Heard you four years ago at the Atlanta Business Summit. You said the thing. I didn't believe you. I thought you were loud and obnoxious. I'm not cursing today because Maggie asked me, but you cursed. It turned me off. I'm a Jersey boy. Meanwhile, this upstart kid, he listened to you. And then my favorite line, no matter what, is lawyer, doctor, real estate. He's not even good at being a lawyer, but he's killing it on Facebook and he's hurting my business. What do I do now? And I smile. I smile the same way that I saw some of the kids on the field yesterday that didn't go with vaynersports that we know. We were in the final two with them, and they went in a different direction. I see them. I root for them. I'm a kind person. My mom did a good job. But I'd be lying to you if I didn't say, when I look at their faces, I smile, knowing they made the wrong decision. Because I love merit. I love sports. You either make the right move or you don't. I've already won by articulating my thoughts here today. Either you're gonna actually use this talk as the final piece to actually get out there and finally do this. Because you cannot be in this room and not know what I'm saying is actually right or you're not. And then you lose. And then I get to see you. Because they're both good. I did it or I didn't do it. I both enjoy because I actually love the merit of the game. I mean that. So I hope you do it. I don't need you to do it. As a matter of fact, I'll get really technical on you. A lot of my smartest friends always ask me why I do this. Because if these people start making content and start running ads, it's gonna be harder for you to Build what you're building, Gary. And they're right. The feed of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, it's just one feed. It's just supply and demand. If all of you start posting, that's just more content, less attention, less opportunity for me to build what I'm building. That's where it's going. So I hope I've articulated the punchline. I don't think I'm supposed to be doing Q and A now, but to be very frank, I gave Nagy the no cursing. I'm taking the Q and A. So I'm gonna take a couple of your questions right now. Thank you. Because to be frank, I think I've articulated my point and it is the point. If you do any. You know, I was a terrible student, but there was one class I was decent at. It was called history. And I finally figured out why. I like history because I know that things repeat themselves and humans are consistent and I like context. If you listen to my talk right now and immediately ran home and read a book or articles about the transition of America from the radio to the television and everything I just said would make sense to you, my friends, we have transitioned from the newspaper and television to the Internet. It's happened. It's not going back. I'm sorry. It's not my fault. It has happened. It's never going back. This is why the mainstream media will always be wrong about their predictions. Because they look at the wrong data. They will always be wrong. Watch it again. They'll always be wrong. It's why big companies, why my company's exploding, because they worked with other agencies from, like the Mad Men era. They're always wrong. It's based on subjectivity, politics, ego. We're here. I want you to take advantage of it. Because if you don't, somebody else will. There's 330 million of us out here in this country and 7.7 billion. Yes, sir. Yeah. So, Gary, if a person is. What's your name?