Transcript
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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.