If You’re Losing Patience With Your Business, Watch This

Summary

The GaryVee Audio Experience

Episode: If You’re Losing Patience With Your Business, Watch This

Date: November 20, 2025
Host: Gary Vaynerchuk

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Main Theme / Purpose

This episode tackles the foundational mindset and soft skills needed to succeed in business—especially patience, gratitude, humility, and redefining what “success” really means. Gary Vaynerchuk challenges the popular hustle narratives based on external validation, “flexes,” and quick wins. Instead, he advocates for patience and introspective virtues as the bedrock of lasting entrepreneurial and personal fulfillment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Value of Curiosity and Perspective in Life and Business

• Curiosity as an Underappreciated Virtue:
  • Gary reflects on his self-realization that curiosity is central to his success, even though it isn't often celebrated after childhood.
  • “We start to demonize curiosity pretty quickly. We get a couple of years of it as a kid, but then just subconsciously…we start going into places that overvalue how it's been done.” (02:20)
• Perspective Shift on Time and Expectations:
  • Societal norms around age-based benchmarks (marriage, accomplishment) are outdated.
  • “So much of what we're affected by is, is how our grandparents were affected by their parents and grandparents and those fuckers were dying at 40. Of course you should have your life figured out at 30 when you're dead at 47. But we haven't adjusted.” (04:16)

2. The Importance of Kindness and ‘Soft Skills’ in Modern Business

• Rejecting Old-School Cruelty in Leadership:
  • Criticizes excusing bad managerial behavior as “just business.”
  • “If you're a leader by nature, your job is to stop pressure at your level, not deploy more of it underneath you.” (05:48)
• The “Honey Empire” Approach:
  • Gary believes you get further with “honey than vinegar,” but still aims to build an “empire” (i.e., you can be ambitious and kind).
  • “I'm incredibly ambitious and tenacious. I'm incredibly fast…But I'm incredibly patient.” (06:59)

3. The Entrepreneurship Mindset: Patience, Grit, and Self-Judgment

• Biggest Disadvantage of Small Businesses:
  • Mindset—not resources—is most often the true vulnerability.
  • “The biggest Vulnerability that a smaller medium sized business has is their perspective, that their size is their vulnerability.” (08:16)
• On “Scaling the Unscalable”:
  • Small businesses should play to their strengths, like personalized service, not try to out-Goliath the big players. (09:15)
• Preaching Accountability:
  • “People love capitalism and entrepreneurship when it's working for them… The alternative is go get a job and shut down your company.” (09:44)

4. Growing Exposure: The Power of Documentation and Engagement

• Consistency and Engagement:
  • Documenting the journey is more important than chasing viral content.
  • “It took me two years of wine library, TV before anybody gave a shit. I did it five days a week for two years.” (12:25)
• Replying to Comments is Non-Negotiable:
  • VaynerMedia employs staff specifically to read and respond to comments, drawing actionable insights.
  • “If you are not replying to every comment you get…you are audacious.” (13:41)

5. Happiness, Simplicity, and External Validation

• Key to Happiness is Simplicity:
  • “I think the key to happiness is being content while being ambitious. And I think being content comes from gratitude.” (14:28)
• Quieting the Mind:
  • True worth comes from internal values, not societal kudos.
  • “Addicted to outside affirmation, to acceptance…I wish people lived in their own cocoon and just did the things that made them happy.” (15:15)

6. Redefining Success and Coping with Setbacks

• Decoupling Self-Worth from Business Outcomes:
  • “If this company goes out of business, I'll be beyond okay.” (17:54)
• Embracing Change and Perspective:
  • The greatest gift: Comfortably changing your mind about what matters. (18:42)
• "Hang Out with 90-Year-Olds":
  • Spending time with people nearing the end of life reframes what really matters. (18:58)

7. Letting Go of Judgment, Perfectionism, & Outside Noise

• Work-Life Balance is Subjective:
  • “There is no such thing as work life balance. Every family is different. There is no such thing called balance. You're the judge in the jury.” (26:00)
• Escaping Others’ Judgment:
  • “High school is over. Stop playing in it. It's over. You left. You're not in fucking high school.” (27:35)
• On Perfectionism:
  • “If you're a perfectionist, you're insecure.” (24:06)
• Gratitude as an Anxiety Antidote:
  • “There are almost 2 billion people on Earth that don't have access to clean water. Are you a fucking asshole? Think about what I just said.” (31:46)

8. Gratitude, Adversity, and Humility

• Gratitude Rooted in Background:
  • “Adversity is the foundation of success. This macro prosperity is the foundation of anxiety.” (34:06)
• Roots of Gary’s Motivation:
  • His perspective shaped by immigrant experience and humble beginnings.
  • “I know what I'm saying is special and important…In a world where anger and darkness is loud and happiness is quiet, what you're seeing…is the loud, dark minority.” (33:08)

9. Dealing with Negativity, Anxiety, and Haters

• On Negative Comments:
  • “They're not good, they're hurt. So they're trying to drag me down to be hurt with them. Don't feel bad for you. Feel bad for them.” (37:34)
• Perspective—It Could Always Be Worse:
  • “I'm very imaginative…it could be worse. It's just completely one big game of gratitude.” (37:04)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Perspective:
  • “So much of what we're affected by is…how our grandparents were affected by their parents and grandparents and those fuckers were dying at 40. Of course you should have your life figured out at 30 when you're dead at 47.” (04:16)
• On Soft Skills:
  • “As technology eats up things that people can do with AI and many other technology advances, robots, they'll kill us in the end. We'll probably all be gone. But the robots will win. Your children will probably get killed by robots. Kidding. But maybe not.” (06:00)
• On Accountability:
  • “Everyone's like such a great entrepreneur and then somebody bigger comes along…it’s not working for them…Stop being soft.” (09:51)
• On Simplicity:
  • “I think the key to happiness is being content while being ambitious. And I think being content comes from gratitude.” (14:28)
• On Social Media Growth:
  • “If you are not replying to every comment you get…you are audacious.” (13:41)
• On Work-Life Balance:
  • “There is no such thing called balance. You're the judge in the jury.” (26:00)
• On Comparison and Anxiety:
  • “Too much prosperity. This is where, again, humility comes in.” (30:52)
• On Dealing with Negativity:
  • “They're not good, they're hurt. So they're trying to drag me down to be hurt with them.” (37:34)
• On Success:
  • “We have to change the definition of success. We have to. It cannot be the flex.” (16:25)
• On Regret:
  • “People looking backwards, backwards dwelling. It’s over…I don’t know if you guys heard, we have not invented time machines yet.” (36:23)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Curiosity & School System’s Impact: 01:55–04:00
• Soft Skills vs. Hard Skills in Tech Age: 05:30–07:00
• Small Business Mindset & David vs. Goliath: 08:16–09:36
• Exposure through Documentation: 11:57–12:42
• Replying to Comments: 13:04–13:53
• Principles of Happiness & Success: 14:19–15:40
• How to Stay Grounded in Crisis: 17:06–17:59
• Changing Perspectives & Hanging with 90-Year-Olds: 18:58–20:07
• Work-Life Balance & Non-Judgment: 25:55–26:37
• Comparison, Affirmation Culture & Keeping up with the Joneses: 27:32–28:44
• Gratitude and World Perspective: 31:46–32:28
• Adversity as Foundation for Success: 34:06–34:25
• Overcoming Anxiety & Handling Negativity: 34:37–37:46

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Conclusion

Gary Vee delivers a raw, motivational, and often humorous message about what truly drives sustainable business and personal fulfillment: a combination of patience, humility, perspective, resilience, and gratitude. He pushes listeners to engage deeply with their community, question outdated norms, and embrace both ambition and simplicity. The episode is a passionate call to redefine success—rejecting the “flex” culture for deeper satisfaction rooted in purpose and self-defined meaning.

Transcript

[A]

What just happened between the three of us is the single reason that Gary Vee the character exists way too long. Guys looked up to guys on dumb shit trying to do quick cash and fucking Mercedes and flex. I'm here to fucking squash that. Because there's plenty of people with good intent who've been miscommunicated to to take shortcuts and do bullshit shit. This is the GaryVee audio experience. What's incredibly clear to me at this point in my career is that from a business standpoint, and clearly from a life standpoint, I think we grossly underestimate perspective. I really genuinely believe that life is exactly as you see it. I believe that there are inherently people who are cynical and because of that they're just going to believe things are not good or stacked against them. And I think there are people who are optimistic, I think there are people who are practical and delusional and all those things that I think many of you have heard about. But there are a couple things that really stood out for me during this last 18 months. And it really is interesting that when I thought about what do I want to talk about tonight? What can actually bring some value? What's something that somebody can build off of? I really think it's time we start talking about curiosity a little bit more. So I've become incredibly passionate about curiosity. I think that in self reflection mode, so much of what works for me, there's many things that are part of the equation, there's many ingredients that get me there. But curiosity is not something I saw or really even understood as part of the equation. And I think when I think of the collective in this room, something that is very obvious to me is in our current society, we start to demonize curiosity pretty quickly. We get a couple of years of it as a kid, but then just subconsciously it's not some crazy agenda, but subconsciously we start going into places that overvalue how it's been done. The black and white, the system. So much of what I've always felt as an entrepreneur was a vulnerability of a school system is not the cliche stuff that you might see in my content. But just by nature, all of us spending the majority of our youth in a system that grades us every 90 days and we pander to a subjective reality within that really sets us up to eliminate our creativity. And our curiosity makes us subconsciously conform to the short term and inherently makes us lack patience. The other thing I'm spending a lot of time on is how much we struggle with our relationship in time. And with time, you know, we get sold so many things like life is short, which, you know, I think all of us at this point know, depending on the context that you look at a statement or a situation, it changes the altercation. But so many of the rules in society of when you're supposed to have your life figured out, get married, accomplish is predicated on a world where people live to 45 years old. It's just the reality of it. So much of what we're affected by is, is how our grandparents were affected by their parents and grandparents and those fuckers were dying at 40. Of course you should have your life figured out at 30 when you're dead at 47. But we haven't adjusted. You know, 1880 may seem a long time ago, but it's stunningly not. And when life expectancy is in the late 30s and early 40s and now we're 75, 85, 90, 95. I just think that there's so much confusion in the system and I just think that we need to have different conversations. Let me give you an example. A different conversation that we need in the business world, that's where I'll keep it. But it's clearly a societal statement is I'm genuinely struggling why anybody should not be kind. I have watched in the business world for the last 20 years, people justify being cruel to the people that they're a manager of or their admins because they're stressed. I'm sorry I scolded you. You don't get it. The client had me in a bad day. We have completely accepted bad behavior off of bullshit. I'm really passionate about this. If you're a leader by nature, your job is to stop pressure at your level, not deploy more of it underneath you. I think that we need to just do better. I think that people in business are confused. I think that the way that business is branded, misbranded. I think people think that if you're kind, you get walked over. And I think that is absolutely asinine. I think that a lot of people who claim they're being walked all over are actually just trying to manipulate situations and it didn't work out the way they wanted to, so they use I got walked all over as excuse. I'm kind as fuck. None of you are walking over me. Well, in the short term, and we are short term structured and I think that I'm passionate at this point in my life to really start talking about the nuances that are very clear to me that sustainable things are grounded in very good virtues. And that we have to start recognizing that soft skills will continue to dominate and gain momentum because hard skills are starting to be commoditized. And as technology eats up things that people can do with AI and many other technology advances, robots, they'll kill us in the end. We'll probably all be gone. But the robots will win. Your children will probably get killed by robots. Kidding. But maybe not. But I think for all of us, as we navigate these next two, three, four, five decades, I think it's incredibly important to take a step back and really recognize how much is changing all these changes. Whether it's blockchain or a mature social media or all the other technology, things are fundamentally changing the world. The railroad system really changed shit, right? Airplanes really changed things. Like the television really changed things. I believe that all of us are incapable, including myself, to really wrap our heads around what a mature Internet with an emerging blockchain means to society. And my intuition is, is that what it's definitely causing is a very big opportunity for soft skills and other things that we haven't talked about in entrepreneurship. In my brain and in my company, I call it the honey empire. I believe you get more out of honey than vinegar. But let there be no confusion, I'm trying to build an empire, which is not a soft word. People struggle with contradictions. I'm incredibly ambitious and tenacious. I'm incredibly fast, day by day. But I'm incredibly patient. I think people struggle with patience and ambition, even though it's exactly what you see. If you study things that have been built that are meaningful. And so I think nuances, context really matters. And we've lost that. We've become an incredibly hot take headline reading Society. Clearly, politically, everybody understands that that's the easiest thing to read. It goes beyond that.

[B]

Gary, what's up?

[A]

What's up?

[B]

I'm freaking out.

[A]

Don't.

[B]

I am. This is crazy for me, guys. I mean, we have Gary Vee in the house. Nuts. Lots of questions for Gary tonight, starting with this video question from Service Credit Union.

[A]

Hi, Gary. What is the most notable disadvantage a micro or small business would have in today's market? And more importantly, what is a key attribute a business owner should have in overcoming it? Can I get him to play it again? What's the biggest vulnerability that I'm.

[B]

What is the most notable disadvantage of a micro small business in today's market? And what is the key attribute trait a business owner should have to overcome it? And this is coming from Michael.

[A]

Michael. I think the biggest Vulnerability that a smaller medium sized business has is their perspective, that their size is their vulnerability. It fascinates me how much people love to think about why they're not growing. And no question, this is the luxury of getting so much content sent to me text, email, DMs. Everybody goes to this person, got more fundraising. This is a bigger company. They opened a location in my area. There's a very specific reason why David and Goliath is a story that still plays out in our society. The biggest mistake and the biggest opportunity for a smaller business is to be David. Right. The problem with small businesses is they inherently want to be Goliath. They want to be bigger, but they don't have that resource. The problem with Goliath is they're slow and audacious. It's actually very easy to build compete with big companies today because of the size and scale of the Internet. We see it so much. If Goliath always was going to continue to win, well, IBM would still be the biggest company. Microsoft would have never let Google happen. Google would have never let Facebook happen. I think you need, when you're small, you need to lean into scaling unscalable.

[B]

Behaviors for small businesses and small business owners. Where do they get the confidence to grow their business in what might be a very saturated market?

[A]

What's the alternative? You decided to have a fucking business. Seriously though, right? Like, like, like the confidence comes from the audacity of thinking that you can build a life for yourself where you pay for yourself and nobody else is doing it for you. You already made that decision. The alternative is go get a job and shut down your company. Like, you know, it's. People love capitalism and entrepreneurship when it's working for them, right? The second it's not, they don't like it. I mean, I'm so tired of all my friends that are capitalists. I'm a capitalist, which means I'm willing to go to zero and if I lose, I lost. But like everyone's like such a great entrepreneur and then somebody bigger comes along and takes market share and they're crying about some shit. Everybody hates when the government's involved until they need the government. Stop being soft.

[B]

Love it. Stop being soft. Everyone, myself included.

[A]

But it's a very. I want to stay on this. It's a very important point. This is what you signed up for. If you don't have the confidence, you can build it through historical staying alive. Do you know how many people here clap up? If you've had your own business for more than Five years. The level of admiration I have for everybody who just clapped, it's hard. Your confidence should come from the fact that you're part of a small group of people that decided to take on the risk to begin with. Anybody who just clapped and did it for has been doing it for five years. That's remarkable. But don't be audacious. If somebody big comes along, they're better than you, then that's what you're saying. Don't cry about it. Don't try to change the rules because it's not working for you. My favorite version of it is you were small, you got bigger and hurt other people, but now somebody else came along and is bigger than you and you're crying about it, right? You weren't crying when you were taking other people's money. So don't cry when I'll take yours.

[B]

I love it. All right. This is from Mark sky on Twitter. My girlfriend and I are quitting our careers to take on an ambitious 20,000 kilometer bike ride and paddle from home in Canada to a summit as a charity adventure that lasts 18 months. What is the best way to gain exposure?

[A]

The best way to gain exposure is to do the most obvious thing to everybody in this room. Anybody could sit in this seat and answer this, which is to document the entire journey. The question is, are you good enough at it? Everybody knows the answer. You start a vlog and you put on YouTube. You chop up all the pieces of content you put on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter, but are they compelling? Do they know how to post that content? Will they reply to all the comments? People's lack of patience with building exposure is why most people don't have any. It took me two years of wine library, TV before anybody gave a shit. I did it five days a week for two years.

[B]

Now, Gary, in one of your podcasts you said something super commendable that you actually had a position in your company for someone to read the comments, reply to people, and from there you guys create this assessment as to what your content should be. Can we talk a little bit about the importance of replying to comments and acknowledging people in social media like in the prior session.

[A]

To your point, we have a very prominent role at VaynerMedia called PCs Post Creative Strategist. These individuals jobs are to read every comment from every post of a brand and then use their psychology anthropology skills to make observations from the comments by reading the qualitative data and inform an insight that makes the next piece of content the amount of people that hit me up every day is hundreds, thousands of people who are sad that they're not growing. And then occasionally, I used to do it all the time, now I do it occasionally. I will go look at their account. 90% of those people don't even reply to the 15 people that leave a comment. If you're in this audience and you're sad that your profile is not growing on the business side or the personal side and you are not replying to every comment you get from the content you are putting out, you are audacious. Thank you.

[B]

I love this next question from Michael on Twitter. He asks what are the key principles to happiness and success in life?

[A]

I believe it's simplicity. I really do. I think for the people that know me in my life, I'm really simple. You know, I really enjoy my career. I love this. Like I'm. You couldn't even imagine how humbled I am by people's interest in what I talk about. But I think the key to happiness is being content while being ambitious. And I think being content comes from gratitude. I'm so grateful for what I have and I've always been that way that all this special stuff that has been happening doesn't mean enough to me. This is not where my self worth comes in. The Gary Vee crap and the claps and the follower. Like it's incredible, but it's not what I aspire to, it's not how I see my value. And I think the only way to be happy is to have a quiet mind. And I think a quiet mind comes from a balance of very deep humility and true perspective of understanding that you just genuinely understand that you don't mean shit in the scheme of things, but you aspire in your behavior to mean something. And I think it's a very interesting balance and I think it works incredibly well. I just wish people, people are just impossibly addicted to outside affirmation, to acceptance. And I wish people lived in their own cocoon and just did the things that made them happy. So many people would aspire to make so much less money if they didn't care about what other people think and would be dramatically happier, dramatically happier. And I wish that on society now.

[B]

What do you do when. Yeah, it's a good one. They're all good ones.

[A]

It's a tough conversation because in the business world, so many people think that scoring is based on how big your net worth is or how much money you make. And it's really unfortunate because I think true bred entrepreneurship almost doesn't give a shit about all the collateral that comes along with it. It's art. You just love doing it. And we've got to find our balance. Much like the chat I had up front as I spend the next half decade refining what I talk to you about up there. And what I'm talking about right now is we have to change the definition of success. We have to. It cannot be the flex. We cannot put expensive watches and cars and bank accounts on a pedestal. We must get away from that. But that doesn't mean we demonize it either. We have to make it about the process of the game. We've got to find. We've got to find our way, because right now we're over here. We've got to find this.

[B]

Now, Gary, tell me when life hits, when the storm of life hits, because we've all been there. No matter who you are, how do you remain in that state and that space of gratitude and balance very easily.

[A]

When your entire life is only predicated on the health and well being of a small group of people you love more than breathing, nothing scares you.

[B]

Love it.

[A]

I mean, the first couple months of COVID Vayner was in a very weird spot. I don't build it for profit, so we didn't have profit. You know, I build it for growth. We were very weird in the US the way they subsidized businesses. We were in the middle. We weren't small enough and we weren't big enough, so we got nothing. All of our clients are humongous. All of them right away said, we're gonna slow down the way we pay you. It was a very big challenge. And I just remember having the greatest moment with myself when it was super scary week one, saying, oh my God. Everything I've been telling them is true. If this company goes out of business, I'll be beyond okay.

[B]

I love that. I have a question, because what you said prior to what you just said really hit home for me because in my previous role, in my previous job, I actually attached my worth and my identity to income. My job, my work, my schedule, social media. Because I worked so hard to get it, I fell in kind of that loophole. Then life hit me with a very big wake up call and I was stuck with this super uncomfortable feeling of my internal changing. And if I didn't change my external, it just wasn't working and I became a very unhappy person. So just in case there's anyone in the crowd and in the fans, in the audience, anyone listening online who can relate what would be your advice to them to have that courage to start redefining success in their life that they.

[A]

Can, you know, like, everybody's so obsessed on what they've done and said, like the greatest gift in the world is the ability to be comfortable in changing your mind.

[B]

I love it.

[A]

Actually, I have a very different thing to say right now. We need to start hanging out with 90 year olds more. I mean this. You want to do something that will bring you an incredible amount of value, but also bring someone else an incredible amount of value. Go donate your time to a retirement home for one week. You will learn a lesson real fast that 99% of the stuff that all of you are right now thinking about means jack shit. This is a game of perspective. I don't understand how we don't understand that. You must shift perspective into simplicity, which then makes the ability to do what we all do so much more palpable because there's no weight on it because it doesn't matter as much. Which then inherently makes it more enjoyable. Of course you're gonna burn out. If your entire self worth is in how good your business is doing, of course you're gonna burn out. A funny thing happens. You don't burn out from games. When you make your career a game, things change very quickly.

[B]

Love that. I'm gonna start the clap on that one. All right, next we have a video question from a Facebook winner, Matt Coober.

[A]

Gary Vee.

[C]

It's Matt with Tuber Towing here in Edmonton. Absolutely love what you do. The focus big time on the humility aspect. We're five years strong, growing 20 to.

[A]

30% year over year.

[C]

We got 20 Albertans working with us and just, just rocking it. Our question for you is how do we get from the small business to the medium sized business? We got managers and we're helping them succeed. But how do we let go? How do we grow that to the next level?

[A]

You know what's tough about video questions is you want to ask the, you know, there's the next question there. It's like, you know, again, I talk about these a lot and I will repeat them to my death. The best way to go from a small business to a medium business is by deploying patience and doing what you did to get to become a small business. Of course there's strategies. I've been very consistent about this for 15 years. I put out a very simple message that has been uncomfortably historically true. If you understand where the customer's attention is and you know how to make pictures, videos and Written words for those platforms, you will grow. For that gentleman's business, if he got great at LinkedIn ads, his top line revenue would grow. The question is, how's he judging himself? By the way, what is even a small or medium business? Like, what are the rules of all this shit? It's like, is 5 million small? Is 50 million medium? Like, what is this shit? I'm sure there's some answer to it if you Google it, but everybody's answer is different, right? Like what? Like it's these constant games of making these things for us. You know what that is? That's fucking the 90 day school grade shit. The fuck are you trying to do for tomorrow? What is that? He's gonna make his own subjective call if he's a medium business or a small business. We're playing dumb fucking games out here.

[B]

Oh my gosh, I love it. I love it. Gary, you speak a lot.

[A]

What's a. What's a medium sized business?

[B]

Honest God, I'm with you. Who effing knows?

[A]

But really, is it 50? Somebody help. What's a medium sized business? No, no. Revenue, not people. Five million bucks. Somebody just said that's a medium sized business. That's small. As to me, that's a bullshit business perspective. But this is important to understand how not right? I'm not cool, I'm not special. It just doesn't work for my brain. For somebody else. A million's insane. That's insane. Do you know how hard it is to build a million dollar business? And oh, by the way, what about the fact that you change over time? What about 23? A $5 million business is a medium sized business. But then you're 36 and it's not. Or it goes down. Like we just, we play in these semantics that don't mean anything except make us anxious.

[B]

You speak to patience a lot. And I'm very curious to hear this answer because I am not patient at all. And I'm one of these people where I have this grand idea and if there isn't this outcome that I'm looking for within the week, I immediately think that I'm failing and I'm doing a miserable job and no one cares. So if there's anyone out there who's like me, what advice would you give them in being patient with their business?

[A]

Do you remember in sixth grade when you had a zit and you were scared shitless to go to school? No, but everybody else had zits too. Yeah, that's my answer to that question.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

This is where humility is a fucking superpower. You may see bravado on stage. My happiness is grounded in humility. You know what humility looks like in this scenario? If you don't think you're important, it's almost like your results don't matter. Who are you disappointing? Yourself? Those are voices that were put inside of you by somebody else.

[B]

But what if you're a perfectionist? Like, what if you expect 12 out.

[A]

Of 10 every day? If you're a perfectionist, you're insecure.

[B]

Well, that's a good. Hit me right between the eyes with that one.

[A]

Well, if you're getting a shitload of views and a lot of. Not a lot of conversions, it doesn't sound like it's a platform issue. It sounds like your offering isn't good. No. No, it's not. By the way. By the way. This is why business is so funny to me. That's a good thing. That wasn't a bad thing. That wasn't a razz. That's a. Okay, because. Because listen to how the question was asked. I'm not on the right platform. You're getting plenty of attention. You're not converting, which means you have to understand that what you're offering isn't landing. And this is where curiosity and humility to take a step back and say, how do I tweak this? Right? Because you might be an inch away, brother. You might literally have to drop the price by 10 bucks. Add a day, change a word, and everything flows. But what people often do is they go to the front to fix when the back is the issue. It's never this. Everyone here is obsessed with the sink. It's the fucking well. You know what's so crazy now? I'm gonna get up. This is what. What you just did about. I see his true intent, but when you were squirming with everything, I said no. In a good way. In a good way. I know. It's the. What just happened between the three of us is the single reason that Gary Vee the character exists way too long. Guys looked up to guys on dumb shit, trying to do quick cash and Mercedes and flex. I'm here to fucking squash that. Because there's plenty of people with good intent who've been miscommunicated to. To take shortcuts and do bullshit shit. Okay. Let's keep going. Okay.

[B]

All right. This is a tweet from Rob. How does one balance family life, two small businesses, and a full time job?

[A]

By not judging themselves.

[B]

Oh, love that. Can we go deeper into that.

[A]

How do you.

[B]

How does that look?

[A]

Easy. There is no such thing as work life balance. Every family is different. There is no such thing called balance. You're the judge in the jury. Just like a medium sized business or a small business. We do these things to make ourselves upset. We have to stop. How do you balance it? By trying. You try. You try to go to the recital, you try to go to the parent teacher conference. You try to run your business. You try.

[B]

And if you try your hardest and can't do it, you should not judge yourself.

[A]

What is can't? What's can't do it? What does that even fucking mean? You missed a baseball game. Come on, the kids can have. You miss a fucking baseball game. It's true. It's true. Every single, single person here has 9,700 things they can think of that their parents fucked up and they still love them. And, oh, by the way, forgot 8 trillion things their parents did that was fucked up. We are in some crazy dynamic of, like, overanalyzing everything so fucking much with a layer of cynicism that is making everybody go fucking crazy. If you are a good person and you're trying, truly trying and not trying to hurt anybody, you're fucking phenomenal enough.

[B]

How do we. How do we eliminate that outside noise? Sometimes, you know, you.

[A]

I'm not fucking caring about other people's opinions once and fucking for all. High school. High school is fucking over. Stop playing in it. It's over. You left. You're not in fucking high school. You are. I know, but everybody else. Stop. It's over. What? Who? Your mom. Tell your mom to go fuck herself. She fucked up, too. What? Your spouse? What? Who? What? Fucking just living for other people's judgment. Everybody else sucks shit, too.

[B]

Now, if you're gonna tell your mom that, how do you have the courage to have that kind of conversation with her?

[A]

Because you don't say it the way I'm saying it. You say it a different way. You say, mom, I appreciate your opinion of how I'm being a father. How about the time you did this? That shuts them up real fast. I love it. I love it. Like, I just don't understand how people are so deeply into this affirmation culture. Keeping up with the Joneses. It's just really a problem. And it's getting worse by the second. And news alert. It's not social media's fault. It's your fault. This lack of accountability is fucking disgusting. We have to go deeper and we have to be more optimistic and positive. We have to become more optimistic and positive. You know why you get to decide life? Just so you know. News alert. You're deciding what life actually is. It is your subjective call. And if you are, if you're like, well, Gary, fuck you. I grew up in a family that was very pessimistic. And this is what it is. Well, then what do you want then? Go to therapy, right? Like, do something. Fight for it. Fight to be happy. Listen to positive shit. That's a funny game. Miraculous thing happens when you cut out your most pessimistic friend. You become more optimistic. And let me tell you about complaints. The only people that are listening to your complaining are people that extremely love you, but are enablers or your other loser friends. And you're just complaining to each other.

[B]

How about those people who. Because I'm sometimes like this, I have high anxiety in certain moments and I create this narrative, this storyline in my head where I'm like, this person's judging me because of this, or this person's mad at me because he didn't look at me today and didn't say hello when I said hello to him. How do you escape that mental block? Because sometimes that's by making pretend that.

[A]

You'Re gonna die tomorrow.

[B]

Actually. I love that.

[A]

I'm being serious. I'm giving you my answer. How the fuck am I gonna care about Johnny thinking that I'm not good looking today if I'm gonna die tomorrow? You think I'm gonna care about that? We don't have perspective all of a sudden. Miraculously, people stopped worrying about a lot of things when Covid hit. That was funny. Shit changed. We just care about dumb shit because the world is too good. How about that one? How about that one? My friends, we've decided it's so bad because it's so good. Look at the data. What can I tell you? Too much prosperity. This is where, again, humility comes in. So much of this good shit for me, it's all. So many entrepreneurs struggle with the word luck. I do. I worked so hard since I was 14 years old. I struggle with it, but I'm incredibly lucky. I was born in a communist country and was in the right time, in the right place. My grandfathers both spent years in jail for being entrepreneurs in Russia. And I get clapped for in Edmonton, right? You know, so, so, So I lived in a studio apartment the size of this fucking stage, with fucking multiple family members. So I. I have perspective. I'm grateful for everything I have. We lack gratitude. You understand that, right? You lack Gratitude? There are almost 2 billion people on Earth that don't have access to clean water. Are you a fucking asshole? Think about what I just said. There are over a billion people on Earth that don't have access to clean water, and you're complaining that your Instagram's not growing? Fuck you.

[B]

Okay, this next photo.

[A]

Can we stay on this one?

[B]

I'd love to. Are we good guys? I'd love to.

[A]

You want to take anxiety out of the system? You want to be happier, look at the world and be grateful for what you have. Everybody's so interested in paying attention to people that have more than them. They don't recognize that there's way more people that have less than them.

[B]

So, Gary, what do you do to stay grounded, to stay in the space of gratitude? Are there affirmations that you say? Do you meditate? Do you spend time with your family? What is your source of that gratitude?

[A]

My source is that I was extremely fortunate, with the luck of the DNA game and outrageous levels of remarkable parenting by my mom. That's me. That's me. That's why I stand up here today, not thinking anything of me. All these things that I'm spewing. I'm just a vehicle passing through what my mom gave to me, and I'm sure she got, you know, like, I don't think there's anything special about me. I know what I'm saying is special and important. I know a lot of other people know it to be true. I have so much judgment on me in the world because I am obsessed with talking about positive things. In a world where anger and darkness is loud and happiness is quiet, what you're seeing on the mainstream media and social media is the loud, dark minority. The problem is the quiet, happy majority is quiet. If you're happy, do me a favor. Share it and not flex it. Don't show them you're happy with your Porsche, Rick. Talk about real shit. This is real talk here.

[B]

You. You're a son of immigrant parents. I'm a daughter of immigrant parents. My beautiful mom is here today. Her and my dad escaped communist Poland back in the 80s, created this unbelievable life here in Canada. And I remember listening to you on a podcast. I think maybe the moment where I truly fell in love with Gary Vee. And you said your greatest gift was being the son of immigrant parents.

[A]

100%. And adversity is the foundation of success. This macro prosperity is the foundation of anxiety. You don't worry about everything we talk about in society. When you don't have Food.

[B]

Gary, did you ever have anxiety? Did you ever put these pressures on yourself when you started first creating content? How did you get. If you ever were in this space of doubt and fear and insecurity, how did you get out of that bubble? If you.

[A]

The most insecure place I've ever been in was the fear of confrontation, which blows people's mind because on stage, in public Persona, candor is my strength. But in real life, I hated candor because my father was very aggressive with candor but very negative. And I wasn't able to separate the vehicles he was deploying the candor in from the value of candor. So for 25 years of my career, I was anxious. Every time I decided somebody had to get fired. It completely put me into spirals. I would avoid it. It was always sloppy to a T. Every person that's ever been close to me in business that works for me or worked for me, that doesn't love me is based on one thing, my inability to be canderous. And it's been a very big shift for me in the last three quarters, four years. The new book is called 12 and a half. It's about 13 attributes, but I call it 12 and a half because I'm only halfway through my journey on kind candor. And I needed to create the word kind in front of candor to even begin to deploy candor. And it has led to an incredible amount of unhappiness in my life and career was my inability to be candorous, which is wild because my content is incredibly candorous. Because I'm not talking to anybody, I'm talking to everybody. But when it's Steve or Sally or Johnny or Nicole or Karen, it was very hard for me and so now I do it.

[B]

Would you change, Would you change anything about your journey or your process? Even the negative moments, the life changing moments, the things that you didn't love. If you're here right now and you could.

[A]

Of course not. Of course not. It would be crazy.

[B]

I love that. I agree. It's all about the process.

[A]

The number one, people looking backwards, backwards dwelling. It's over. I don't know if you guys heard, we have not invented time machines yet. They're not going back anyway. People sit and dwell and they make these subjective calls. This keeps going back to the theme of tonight. They make subjective calls that that's where their life got ruined and they decide that that's where their life got ruined for 47 years. They think about it. It's no, I think I'm incredibly grateful. And I always do a fun game with myself, which is maybe something on paper would have been something great, but maybe that would have led me to going over here, and that's where I would have gotten hit by a bus. You know, like, I believe in that.

[B]

I do, too.

[A]

I'm very. I'm very imaginative of. It could be worse. It could be worse. It's just completely one big game of gratitude. And I want. I come and do this because I'm passionate about one person in this audience emailing me in nine years saying, I was in Edmonton in 2021 and I wasn't grateful. You're right. I was spoiled. I was entitled. I was delusional. And I practiced it and it changed my life. I believe in that because I'm on the receiving end of that now, 15 years later. I like it. It feels good. It makes me feel nice. It's a better feeling when you're full, when you're full, when you're good. You have nowhere to go but trying to make it good for everybody else. Which is why I know that I have to deploy sympathy and empathy for everyone who's mean to me. Because they're not good, they're hurt. So they're trying to drag me down to be hurt with them. People struggle with negative comments. I'm gonna save you. I'm gonna make you get real comfortable with negative comments on social media and in life. They're hurt. Don't feel bad for you. Feel bad for them. They're showing you their hand. They're upset, they're hurt. You're welcome, my man.

[B]

All right, everyone, please give it up for Mr. Gary Vee himself.

[A]

Thank you so much.