Optimism Fueled by Practicality Is Unstoppable

Summary

The GaryVee Audio Experience

Episode: Optimism Fueled by Practicality Is Unstoppable

Date: July 6, 2026
Host: Gary Vaynerchuk
Recorded on location in Jakarta

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Episode Overview

Gary Vaynerchuk delivers a high-energy keynote in Jakarta, focusing on the immense opportunities of the current digital era, the necessity of blending optimism with practicality, and the keys to achieving happiness and entrepreneurial success. The episode is packed with real talk on overcoming societal and familial expectations, leveraging free platforms, building self-awareness, and deploying patience for lasting results. A Q&A segment features actionable advice for young professionals and aspiring entrepreneurs.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Seizing Opportunity in the Digital Era

• Context: Gary reflects on his immigrant roots, his family's humble beginnings, and how the times have changed.
• Insight: The Internet and smartphones have eliminated traditional barriers. Anyone can build a life or business with zero upfront cost.
• Memorable Quote:

  “Please understand how lucky. That's the only word I have for it. How lucky you are that you get to live during this era. Right now, anything that comes out of your mouth that is complaining makes your grandfather want to punch you in the fucking face.” (00:00)

2. Optimism Plus Work Ethic: The Unstoppable Formula

• Optimism is the fuel; practicality is the engine.
• It's not enough to be optimistic—you must know what work to do and actually do it.
• Quote:

  “Optimism is very close to delusion. However, I believe that optimism is the fuel to practicality.” (07:52)

• The greatest barrier for most people is not skills or tactics, but living for other people’s opinions.

3. Overcoming Cultural and Familial Expectations

• Many are driven by the need to gain approval from parents or others rather than chasing genuine happiness or fulfillment.
• Quote:

  “Living your life predicated on the judgment of somebody else is the great weakness of the human being.” (10:58)

4. The Power and Simplicity of Free Platforms

• Case studies: Early wins on YouTube, Twitter, and MySpace show that being better (not first) is what ultimately wins.
• Advice: Move quickly, post more, stop overthinking content.
• Quote:

  “You're not in the business of getting likes on Instagram, yet you're pandering to the machine of that. You're in the business of creating awareness for whatever you want.” (16:57)

• Actionable Tip: Leverage Facebook Marketplace, Instagram, LinkedIn, and especially podcasting—a medium Gary predicts will explode in Indonesia and globally over the next decade (22:28).

5. Content Creation: Go Where Your Strength Is

• Video and photos aren’t the only options. Writing and audio can be just as—if not more—powerful.
• Include long-form copy on Instagram posts.
• Quotes:

  “[For written content:] Please start adding 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 sentences to your post. Add context, add clarity, add a little story.” (24:20)
  “LinkedIn’s content business… is now about business content. And I believe whether again, you sell rugs or sneakers or wine, there's a way to write content for LinkedIn.” (25:20)

• Audio: Podcasting and voice content are rising fast due to efficiency and multitasking appeal.

6. Reverse Engineering Success and the Patience Gap

• People focus on quick wins and fast results, but real success takes years.
• Gary’s story: Four years of replying to people about wine on Twitter before anyone noticed.
• Quote:

  “For seven to eight hours a day for four years, I would go to Twitter, search, search wine terms, jump into them, and give information for four years before anybody gave a fuck who I was.” (29:06)

• Call-Out: Most people quit too soon—“You've been doing it for three fucking weeks.” (30:34)

7. Self-Awareness and Living Without Regret

• Know who you are; don’t be pushed into roles or careers by outside forces.
• The worst outcome isn't failure—it's reaching old age with regret for things you didn’t try.
• Quote:

  “Regret is scary. Resentment is very scary… I'd rather you have the pain for the next five or six years of fighting and then have one of two things happen... Or you were wrong… but at least for yourself, you never have to live the rest of your life asking yourself, what if? You win both ways.” (43:00)

8. Action, Not Just Inspiration

• Awareness and inspiration are meaningless without follow-through.
• Gary actively traces whether people who claim to be inspired by his talks actually take action—and finds that almost none do.
• Quote:

  “I follow them… six months, nine months, a year later if they did anything about it. And 99% don't. There's a lot of people in this room right now that said, this is it. I'm going to. I see you. And then in two and a half weeks, all the energy is going to be gone.” (46:06)

9. Building a Life and Brand on Your Terms

• Start now; don’t let fear of judgment or lack of confidence stop you.
• The only thing left stopping you is what’s “inside.” Almost all prior excuses have been wiped away by tech.
• Quote:

  “This is the greatest era to be alive. It is. There's plenty going on in the world… but when you look at the macro data, this is the greatest time to be alive… The cost for you to enter it and do something for yourself and your family. $00.” (48:11)

• Close your eyes for five years and focus on consistent action.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On self-awareness: “Self awareness is the most important word. If you don't know who you are, you have no shot. But do not be embarrassed of who you are.” (40:04)
• On entrepreneurship: “Putting entrepreneur in your Instagram account is easy. Living the life of an entrepreneur where nobody else is on the line except you. Hard, lonely, scary, difficult.” (41:40)
• On family pressure: “If you go the other direction of where they want you to go and you become really successful, they are really proud and make pretend they never pushed you in the other direction.” (42:33)
• On regret: “Nobody at 90 years old… will talk to you about what they did. They will talk to you about what they did not do.” (47:21)
• On money and displaying status: “I am fascinated that people buy things they can't afford to impress people they don't like.” (57:08)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00 – Gary’s opening: mindset of gratitude, immigrant story, foundation of entrepreneurship
• 07:52 – The intersection of optimism and practicality
• 10:58 – The damage of living for others’ opinions
• 16:57 – You’re not in the business of likes; you’re here to build real awareness
• 22:28 – Rise of podcasting and audio content in Indonesia
• 24:20 – How to make written content work on Instagram
• 25:20 – Why LinkedIn is underused for content
• 29:06 – Gary’s four-year Twitter “grind” story
• 30:34 – Why most people give up too soon
• 40:04 – Self-awareness and not being embarrassed of yourself
• 43:00 – The pain of regret vs. the pain of conflict with family expectations
• 46:06 – 99% don’t follow through after an inspirational event
• 48:11 – The cost of entry to digital entrepreneurship is now zero

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Audience Q&A Highlights

• [52:21] Generalist vs. Specialist (Alexander):
  • Gary’s Advice: Be a generalist first. “You don't know yet what you're best at. Why are you picking your expertise if you haven't seen everything else? You need to taste everything.” (52:58)
• [54:40] What makes an entrepreneur investable (Mehdi Astarina):
  • 51% the person, 49% the idea. “I've lost a lot of money...when I loved the idea so much...but the person running the business wasn't capable.” (54:55)
  • Advice to founders: Seek investors most likely to understand and believe in you, not just the “cool” ones.
• [56:39] Best Financial Decision (Ben Arthur):
  • “Never spending more money than I had.” (57:08)
  • Don’t take risks beyond your means, even if aggressive: “I'm never willing to go below zero.”
• [59:41] Photo Request and Final Motivation
  • Gary encourages the audience: “Go do it. Please don't let this energy go away. One life. Live it. Please live it. Go work.” (60:14)

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Final Takeaways

• The tools, platforms, and access exist for anyone to build their own path. Only internal obstacles—fear of judgment, impatience, lack of self-awareness—stand in the way.
• Deploy patience, publish content consistently, and be practical with your optimism.
• Don’t live with regret—start now, experiment, and take full advantage of the greatest era of opportunity.

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Summary prepared for listeners and action-takers who want substance, context, and tactical advice from GaryVee’s Jakarta special.

Transcript

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Please understand how lucky. That's the only word I have for it. How lucky you are that you get to live during this era. Right now, anything that comes out of your mouth that is complaining makes your grandfather want to punch you in the fucking face. How we doing? Jakarta. I just flew 24 hours, took a quick shower, plan on delivering this keynote, couple of meetings, and I'm heading to the airport at 4pm So a very quick trip, unfortunately, this time. But I'm very excited about it and there's a whole lot I want to cover. So let me create some context for some of the people in the room who don't know as much about me, and then I'll go into the reason why. I genuinely believe, as we all sit here today together, that because of this device that many of you are holding, we are living in the most opportunistic time ever to put yourself into a place of happiness. And happiness comes in all forms, and I think a lot of business and entrepreneurship. But I definitely want to articulate today a framework that speaks to how do you get happy because of how much opportunity there actually is. Let me take a step back. I was born in the Soviet Union in 1975. A little ways ago. I came to America when I was three years old. It was a very challenging upbringing. In the first couple years, you know, six family members in a studio apartment, we struggled. We had to learn a new language. We started from the bottom, no question. As you can imagine, my parents are very much my heroes. My mom stayed home and raised the kids. My dad worked every day, many, many, many hours a day. First as a stock boy putting bottles on the shelf in a liquor store in New Jersey for only $2 an hour. So very humble beginnings, where the Vaynerchuk's come from. But entrepreneurship was definitely foundational in the happiness that we were able to create over that period of time. My dad worked quite a bit. Eventually he became the manager of that liquor store. And that's when we moved to New Jersey, outside of New York City. And that's where I mainly grew up. And that is where my entrepreneurial career began. I. I always wanted to work. It came natural to me. It's what I wanted to do when the summer days happened and all the kids wanted to play. I wanted to go wash people's cars. I wanted to sell lemonade. I wanted to do business. It was always in me. It's what made me happy. When I was 5, 6, 7 years old, I convinced all my friends to stand behind booths from the lemonade That I made, and I would make signs and try to think about how to market. Long before the Internet, I cared about one core thing, which was the attention of the person that I was trying to reach and how I could get them excited to buy my thing. Eventually, after lemonade, I started my first kind of real business in America in the 80s. Baseball cards, sports cards that people could trade became very, very big. And I rode that wave. I got very involved. I loved sports, and I loved even more buying packs of cards, getting good cards, and reselling them. And that's really where I learned much. I mean, to think that sitting here today and having so many people clap for you on the complete other side of the world, and so much of that was what I learned in the malls and conventions in New Jersey, selling these cards, it's remarkable. I'm very humbled. I very much appreciate the warm welcome when I came out here and I'm setting up this framework because I think, you know, as I was getting ready for this conference and I looked at so much of the chatter about the conference and obviously the phenomenal Instagram account of. Of our hosts and kind of just looked. The thing that I've become fascinated about and the thing that I want to talk about today is really two things. Literally right before I came out here with the organizers, they're like, talk about the how. And I asked them, I said, the how here or the how here? What's interesting to me now that I've been a little older and had my career, and I'll go back to it in a minute to frame it up, but as I'm segueing, what's interesting to me is every wonderful person that I'm looking at right now, for them to get what they want, happiness, forget about money for a minute, happiness for them to get what they want. It actually is only one of two. Here or here, and here represents doing the work, knowing what to do. My whole career, as I got more known on the Internet, I did not want to be a motivational speaker. And I spent many years not talking about this. I mainly talked about this. But after a while, what started happening was I started reading enough comments, because I read all my comments, and I just started realizing so much of why people can't get there has to do with this that I started talking about it more over the last four or five years. But I think they both matter. You could be the most optimistic, happy person up here, but if you don't put in the work and if you don't know what Work to put in. It's not going to happen. Optimism is very close to delusion. However, I believe that optimism is the fuel to practicality. Right. If you don't believe you're doing it for a reason or it's exciting, you're not gonna wanna put in the hours of the work. And so that's who I've always been. I've always been ambitious and happy. I was very fortunate. I had a tremendous mother who loved me very, very much. So I felt good. However, she did not create entitlement. When I lost or when I was doing bad, she told me she didn't make a fake environment, which is a huge factor in, and to be honest, my biggest concern about the last 20 years of parenting. Too much fake environments, too much entitlement. Which is why so many people struggle when they go into the real world. Because the real world doesn't care. The real world is not your mama anymore. And so I think about those things fast forward. I was very good at selling baseball cards. When you're making three or four thousand dollars a weekend, when you're 14 years old, you. You've got it. I was good. Fine. But then my dad eventually bought a liquor store, and he dragged me into the liquor store when I was 14. I started making two bucks an hour bagging ice. This was huge for me. If I didn't have that transition, all the money I was making as a young kid, it came so easy because I was naturally talented. I think not having that struggle of losing all that because my dad forced me to work in the store and making $20 a day, that really helped me. And I learned a lot in that liquor store. Most of all, what I learned was to watch people. Today after this talk, I will go to the airport and on my flight, I will literally read most of the comments on Twitter, on Instagram, your DMs. I will read them and I'll read them to understand. Was there anything I said in this hour that stood out, that didn't hit? That did hit. I learned that watching people, and more importantly, understanding people, and most importantly, being empathetic to people, was the best way to build a real business, to build something meaningful. The biggest problem, I'll tell you right now, one of the biggest reasons most people in this room, if they decide to start an entrepreneurial venture, a side hustle, whether you try to sell something in your home, on Facebook, Marketplace, which, oh, by the way, I'm gonna bring up later, my biggest belief, that the quickest way for many people here to Start is to sell stuff on Facebook Marketplace, but I'll talk about that later. Whether it's that, whether you're finally ready to start your podcast on Spotify, whether you're gonna build your Instagram profile or meme page because you want brand dollars, whatever you're up to in this room, the reality is that if you have to put in so much work, but so much of what comes out of people's mouth or what they post is selfish, not selfless. It's what you want. You want them to buy it. You want them to like your post. You want them to follow you. The biggest reason I have the luxury of standing here today is, is from the wine business to the content I made on YouTube when it first came out, to everything I've done over the last eight to nine years in my books, in all my free content, I've always thought, how do I bring more value to you than I get in return? It's very simple. Karma, or doing the right thing, always works. The problem is most people are impatient. The reason most people are impatient, especially in cultures like mine, Eastern European, in cultures like here, there's too many people in here that are trying to get successful too fast because they want to prove it to their parents. And in that, impatience is a very important point, my friends. The number one thing I fear, period, is that people live their lives based on other people's opinions. The number one thing that I have seen as I've gotten older, that has been very obvious to me, is that most of the people here today do many of the things they do because of one to five people's opinions in their lives, whether their parents, their spouse, their older sibling, their neighbor. Living your life predicated on the judgment of somebody else is the great weakness of the human being. The biggest reason. Do you know how many people are here today just to get affirmation from me, to go and do something. I mean it. I mean it. And it's fascinating to me, and I'm empathetic. I understand, and I want to talk about it a lot. Because no matter how I tell you how to leave 500 comments on Instagram posts, or what time to post your posts, or why you should start a Spotify podcast tomorrow, or how you actually list an item on Facebook Marketplace, no matter what I tell you, if you post the first day and the person that you're worried about has a bad opinion of it, it's already game over. And so I flew all the way here 24 hours to put pressure on what is the Most obvious conversation, which is, are you prepared to finally get quiet in your head and not allow the opinions of others to dictate your behaviors? Every person here knows what they want to do. If you're here today, there's something running through your mind that you want to do. There is no reason for you to be here today unless there's something running through your mind that you want to do. How many people here are over 40 years old? Raise your hands. Raise them high. Raise high. Don't be scared. Raise high.

[Audience Member]

There's not.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Jesus Christ. This is a young crowd. For the very small percentage of us here that are over 40. Thanks, brother. There's like eight of us, bro. For like the 11 of us. Look here, here's. This is a lot of fun for the 11 of us. We lived life before this. We were grown. We were grown ups already. Before the Internet came, I was 18 years old. I'd lived my life, at least the childhood part of my life, without the Internet. The biggest thing that excites me, especially in a mature Internet market like here, WhatsApp and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Spotify, like, there's so much opportunity and you don't even have to leave your home. There was no building your life, you know, after hours. When I was growing up, when you had a job and you had to take care of something, you didn't then start another job because it was late. But now this allows it. The biggest thing that I want to get across in this little moment of this speech is everybody in here is. Is taking this for granted. Your grandparents, your great grandparents, your great great grandparents, they didn't have this. If you aren't succeeding or attacking your success with this in your hand, then what are you doing? Every single person here has the opportunity to create a profile and a presence online, whether it's yourself or your business or your idea. And the cost is zero. I love when people get mad. When Facebook or Instagram's organic reach goes down. I keep reminding them it's free. How many people here are on Instagram? Raise your hand. Jesus. Over the next year or two, Instagram's reach is gonna go down because more ads are gonna go in. So as you can imagine, I'm so passionate to get you to post three or four times a day. Not once a day. Yet. Everybody overthinks their posts so much. Cause they're so scared not to get as many likes as they did last time. It's true. It's 100% true. The amount of people here who Want to post something but retake it 53 times or change the filter or things of that nature, or my favorite move, you post it, but in the first 83 seconds you don't get enough likes and you remove it. It's a fascinating thing for me to watch because what it speaks to is, in my opinion, people being confused about the game. I view the game macro. I watch most people play micro. You're not in the business of getting likes on Instagram, yet you're pandering to the machine of that. You're in the business of creating awareness for whatever you want. You want people to know what you want them to know, whatever that may be. Business. Raise money for a charity, sell something, become a personal brand, you know, whatever it might be, whatever it might be, that's what you want. Yet people get so caught up in the semantics. Listen, what I can tell you from my career is this repeats over and over and over again. In 2006, I started one of the first YouTube shows, period. It was the longest show on YouTube when I launched it, YouTube wasn't even a year old. I sat in front of a camera and I drank wine for 30 minutes and a lot of people watched it. A year later, Twitter came out and I was one of the first people to move on that. I invested because I got smarter at that point. But I also was one of the first people to amass a million followers on that platform. Before I did YouTube and Twitter a year or two earlier in America and many other parts of the world, MySpace had won and dominated, and there were people that won on that platform. If you pay attention to what happened on MySpace, if you pay attention to what happened on YouTube, if you pay attention to what happened on Twitter and then Facebook and then vine and on and on and on. It's all the same game in the beginning. If you move quickly, you can get more attention. Most people get frustrated that they aren't first, and then they don't go all in because they think they missed it. However, winning on these platforms is a game of being better, not first. Being better comes in two ways. This is where it gets very important, my friends. Being better on. Putting out content only comes out in two ways. Either entertainment, right, or information. If you are putting out content on these websites and trying to grow and you want to succeed and build an audience, you either do information, you know what you're talking about. Whether it's painting, nails, business, wine, sneakers, hair care, I don't care what it is you either know or you entertain. Entertainment comes In a lot of ways, this, this is playing out on Instagram. Entertainment comes in being funny. Entertainment comes in being musical entertainment. And escapism comes in being attractive. Being a model, it all plays. If you're lucky enough to have both, it gets really crazy. But if you do not do one or the other, you lose. If you go look at your Instagram account right now and look at the last 10 posts, my question to you is very simple. Did you post those posts for your audience so they could be entertained or informed? Or did you post it for yourself for your own self esteem or insecurities? Let me save you time. You posted it for yourself. The biggest takeaway that you could have from here, in my opinion, is a couple things. Number one, you are very fortunate to live in a country with disproportionate advances on these platforms. When I look at the data of how much attention is on this device and those six platforms in this country and the size of this country, it is staggering. This is one of the best places in the world to produce content for YouTube, Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. It's one of the best places in the world. See, you did it again. You clapped for yourself. Oh, actually, fun fact, actually. Back to this amazing place and the Internet and apps. I don't know if a lot of you know this, but I was actually one of the first five investors in Path, which was a huge app here for a long period of time before it shut down a year ago. So because I was an early investor in Path and because this became the biggest market for Path four or five years ago, I spent a lot of time paying attention to this market from far away. And what I can tell you is this, the beauty of the people that live here. And there's so much, you know, it's funny, there's so much amazingness, you know, in the world that I see and how many people here consume my content. Raise your hands. Thank you so much. Thank you. So if you. Do you have a good sense of me, you can imagine why I love Indonesia so much. All the love and optimism and warmth plays out here. But the biggest thing that I'm passionate about is getting people to be less insecure and care less about what people think, especially their parents, plays out here too. And so for me, it's a really interesting market to look at with trends and, and how people do things and what they respond to and who they follow and why. And so what I can tell you is if you are capable, if you are capable to be strong enough internally to start posting on these platforms. More truth. More your truth. You your truth. You will see a remarkable return on that investment in this market. Now, let's talk about content. Because no matter what you're doing in this room, you're gonna have to produce it to achieve what you want. The problem is there's a lot of ways to produce content. One of the biggest issues that I'm excited to address here is in a world where Instagram does Extremely well, or YouTube, people think pictures and videos are the only way to go. I'm here to tell you that that two of the places I'm most excited about are the written word and audio. 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. If you are not comfortable taking tons of pictures and videos, you immediately have to make a decision here today. Are you a good writer? And if you are, I have a lot of good news for you. I'll go to that minute or two. If you like to talk however you're uncomfortable with video, I couldn't be back to your clapping. More passionate about the last six months in Indonesia. The consumption of podcasting in this country is exploding. This episode is brought to you by Starbucks. That is fire. Whoa, that's good.

[Event Host / Moderator]

This might be the drink of the summer.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Okay, I like this one too. I'm rocking with it. Okay, try it for yourself. Starbucks refreshers concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours. I highly recommend if you have something to say about some category, I highly recommend getting very serious about podcasts because I believe that audio over the next decade is going to be one of the biggest ways we consume because we don't like wasting time. Humans love efficiency and audio saves time. Audio is exploding and will continue to explode, and I highly recommend you look at it seriously. Another thing that's interesting to me is actually a little tidbit. I don't share very often, but I always say, watch what I do, not what I say. When I looked at the hashtag or the comments for this conference, I looked at a bunch of accounts. The number one mistake I believe people are doing on Instagram right now is not leaving enough written copy. If you look at my posts, when I post a picture or video on Instagram, I write a lot of copy. I don't do that for my health. I don't like wasting three minutes. I Do it because it matters. So I know a lot of you are trying to build your Instagram. One of the best tidbits I can give you is Please start adding 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 sentences to your post. Add context, add clarity, add a little story. You will see substantial returns. Speaking of written, how many people here are on LinkedIn? Raise your hands. Quite a few. If you're paying attention to me, you might have noticed, literally, I've talked about LinkedIn more in the last four months than I have in the last seven years. LinkedIn's content business. It's business. And even if you're a fitness influencer, there's a way to do business content. Write an article. Six things a Traveling businesswoman and man can do when they're in a hotel room. So you could always make your content fit. LinkedIn organic reach on content is very high. Very high. I highly recommend everybody here get serious about their LinkedIn. I know a lot of you haven't signed in in three years, four years. The LinkedIn that many of us grew up with was just to get a job. It is now about business content. And I believe whether again, you sell rugs or sneakers or wine, there's a way to Write content for LinkedIn. Remember, the mindset of the person on LinkedIn is business. So you have to consider that it's different than Instagram, right? LinkedIn is your office. Instagram's the club, you know. So you have to act differently. You have to act differently. But I'm telling you right now, LinkedIn and Spotify podcasts, for a lot of this room that hasn't been making is a very big opportunity. Posting three, four times a day on Instagram is a very big opportunity. All this content that I want you to write is a very big opportunity. Content is how you will make your happiness happen. Putting out content is how you will make your happiness. Whether that's build a big business, whether that's get a dream job, a collaboration, content, talking content is how you'll make your happiness happen. The problem is I need you to look inside yourself and tell me why you're not doing it to me, what I've learned in the last five or seven years, I can sit here for half an hour and give you every detail. I can tell you right now that if you go into your Explore page on Instagram and click on every one of those videos and then go leave a comment on that post, a thoughtful comment, watch the video or picture, not just hey or an emoji, look at it and Spend two minutes and leave a comment. That if you do that 30, 40, 60, 100 times a day, if you're hungry, if you're ambitious, if you want something, if you do that, I know that will work. It will work. You will grow, you will get more attention. You will get more attention to your business, to yourself. My question is, why won't you do it? My question is, why won't you do it? Will you not leave a comment because you're nervous to leave a comment on somebody who's famous as Paige? Will you not leave a comment because you think somebody's gonna judge your comment? Will you not leave a comment because you don't want to spend an hour leaving comments? Why? For me, everything is about reverse engineering. What do you want to happen? Like what? What do you want to happen? And then understanding in 2019 that written words, audio and video on seven platforms can get you there is remarkable. It's just remarkable. It's so crazy to me. What's. I'm sitting here listening as I'm talking, and I'm literally blown away that I believe it. I mean it. I'm shocked that we are now living at a time where the Internet is at scale, the apps that dominate the culture are free. You could literally walk out of here right now and start the process of changing the course of your life if you want. And literally the only thing left now because the excuse of money and time is over. That's amazing. The fact that money and time have been subsidized by the Internet because you can lay in bed and do it at 11pm if you want, and the cost is zero. You don't have to buy a store and open it like zero. It eliminates all your excuses. And now the question is, why not? Why are you not? And so I'm very passionate of getting this room today to start thinking about what they want to be doing and how and where and why. I'm breaking it down into audio, written word, videos and pictures. You know, what the five or six platforms are now it just becomes the match to get it started. And more importantly, and the biggest thing that I fear, will the group have enough patience to see the results? I was on Twitter from 2007 to 2011 and I replied to every single person that tweeted at me. And in the beginning, because nobody knew who I was, I went to Twitter search and I searched the word wine and other wine terms, found people talking about it, jumped into the conversation and left good information. I did that for seven to eight hours a Day for four years before anybody gave a fuck about who I was. Let me say that slowly one more time. For seven to eight hours a day for four years, I would go to Twitter, search, search wine terms, jump into them, and give information for four years before anybody gave a fuck who I was. Now I get DMs from people saying, in three weeks, I'll get a DM from somebody here saying, gary, saw you in Jakarta. It was awesome. I started doing stuff I'm not getting any traction. I reply, that's nice, Mario. You've been doing it for three fucking weeks. The level of pain. Let me take a real step back. If you are sitting in this chair and you want to do something that makes you happy and makes you money, let's just say that I have no idea what people want in here. But fine. How many people? Happy money. Raise your hands. If you want happy money. Raise it. Don't be scared. Great. Let me ask you a question. If you have the audacity to be happy and have money, which by the way, the amount of people that have lots of money and are very happy is very small. It just is. If you want to be happy and have money, don't you think it should take a long time and it should be hard,

[Audience Member]

Right?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That to me, has been the most interesting thing in this world. That everything's so fast. And this world where one or two people look like Mark Zuckerberg or Travis, where you can point to one or two people, you know, I don't know if you heard there's 7.7 billion of us, but because you can point to one or two people that got it fast and a lot, all of a sudden everybody thinks it should be fast and a lot. At 34 years old, after working for 12 years helping build my family business, I left my family business and I had no money. 34. No money. How many people here younger than 34? Raise your hands. Drock, where are you? Hold on.

[Audience Member]

Keep them up.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Drock, where are you? Yo, right here. Come here. Look at this. Put the lights on. Hands up. Look at this. Every hand here, stand up. Actually, if you raised your hand, stand up. Every person here standing is under 34 years old. When I left Wine library day to day at 34 years old, I had nothing. When I started VaynerMedia, we started it in Buddy Media's conference room. Cause I didn't have dollars to spend on rent. Imagine how early I think you are in your life. You can sit. Thank you. If you can keep the lights on. I like It. Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you. My friends, it's early for 90. It's early for 100% of the people in the room. It's ridiculously early for 95% of this room. This Internet thing, it's big. It's real big. We haven't even started. Please understand how lucky. That's the only word I have for it. How lucky you are that you get to live during this era. Right now, anything that comes out of your mouth that is complaining makes your grandfather want to punch you in the fucking face. You understand? Do you understand how much better you have it than every generation before you? This is such a ridiculously special time. And literally the far majority of this room is not gonna take advantage of it because of the insecurity of worrying about somebody who they don't even know, leaving a comment that they're ugly. Are you literally not gonna take advantage of the actual ability to. To be happy and successful because somebody comes on your account and says you're stupid? But this is what's playing out. This is what's happening. I mean, look at different cultures on the way here. Do you know that one of the biggest things that was DMED here is that there's a lot of people coming here by themselves and they wanted advice how to say hello to somebody that they didn't know? What are you scared of? They're gonna bite you. We are living in a very fascinating time. A very fascinating time. It reminds me of when new countries are born and people buy up real estate. The attention. The attention of this room is real estate. You're trying to get it. Everybody's living on these things. It's gonna happen more, not less. You can judge it, that's fine, but that's what's gonna happen. And so if you are not producing words and videos and sounds for these seven platforms, you almost don't exist. Now, what you say, though, matters very much. And let me give you a couple advice points from somebody who's really one. The number one thing you have to always do is talk about what you know. I watch people try to talk about stuff they don't know every single day because it's hot. Whether it's cannabis or sports betting or blockchain or social media, people start talking about things they don't know anything about because they're trying to grab. They think they're gonna get a fast score. Everybody wants a fast score. Do you know many people have emailed me crying about buying Bitcoin at 10,000 a coin? Cause it was gonna be 100,000 in a year. People are looking for fast scores. You know how many people here spent $800 on a course because it was going to happen fast? Fast is bad. Fast is bad. Fast if you have talent and the right intent is amazing. Fast if you want cash immediately. So please, please, please understand the world you're living in. Take it into context. Understand how remarkable this era is. Next. This is the most important word you have to deploy. Self awareness, my friends. Self awareness is the most important word. If you don't know who you are, you have no shot. But do not be embarrassed of who you are. When I knew that I was an entrepreneur in the 80s, I got D's and F's in school and that was not acceptable in the 80s and 90s in America. If you were a bad student in America in the 80s and 90s, you were a loser. My friend's parents looked at me, looked at me as I was a loser. But I knew who I was. I was self aware. I knew that I was an entrepreneur. I wanted to go and sell things on the weekend. I wanted to study the prices of wine and baseball cards instead of studying for school. I knew who I was. Playing video games seemed like a waste of time 20 years ago. Now there are people who make $50 million a year playing video games. If there is something you know and you like and you're passionate about, but it's not cool right now or important, do not deviate away from your thing. Triple down on your thing. The other thing is be self aware. How many people here are an entrepreneur or want to be? Raise your hands. I'm just curious. It's a lot of hands. The reality is most of you can't be successful. I mean that. I'm not saying it to Raz. It's rare to be a successful entrepreneur. It's hard. It's a real talent. We don't think it's a talent now because it's so easy to say you're one. One of the most important things about being self aware is knowing. Do you have the stomach to be an entrepreneur? Putting entrepreneur in your Instagram account is easy. Living the life of an entrepreneur where nobody else is on the line except you. Hard, lonely, scary, difficult. If you do it because it's cool or you think it's right or you're not self aware, it leads to depression and loss of money. If you deploy self awareness and realize you're a number two, a number three, a number four, you find an entrepreneur and you win. Self awareness. You have to understand who you are. Without it, you are massively vulnerable in society. And the fact that we now live in a world where you're more than welcome to be what you are, so much more. Maybe not in your family because your parents want you to be a doctor and a lawyer and an engineer, but in the world. Yes. And so I highly recommend self awareness. It is easily, in my opinion, I believe that self awareness and the ability to actually give without expectation are the two bricks of happiness. And it's been a big factor for me which has allowed me to go fast. When you're stable, you can go fast because you're not worried about judgment. I've been able to do a lot of things because I'm not scared to lose. Because if I lose, it's my loss. If I lose money or time, it's my loss, not yours. I don't care what you say in the comments. That lack of fear is what gives an entrepreneur an advantage. That lack of fear is what lets somebody live life in happiness. We have to start having more important conversations of the operating system of your life. There are people here that work more on upgrading their phones than upgrading their minds. I mean it. I mean it. I am desperate. Listen. To come here all this way to talk about tactics is a waste of time. To come all this way and have one person in here gain actual courage to do something is super worth it. And for me it's a very simple game. Let me give a very big secret to all the kids here who are living their lives for their parents or based on their parents judgment. There's a very big secret that parents never tell you. If you go the other direction of where they want you to go and you become really successful, they are really proud and make pretend they never pushed you in the other direction. The number one thing I fear and the number one thing I learned and this is very interesting to me. I'm going to tell you a story. I don't tell a lot. When I was a little kid in Edison, New Jersey when grandparents came over, I would go play with the grandparents a lot. A lot. Maybe it was because I lost three of my four grandparents as a kid. But even as I get goosebumps right here on stage, it's because I think I've always been filled with a lot of wisdom and old soul. It's just DNA. It's nothing I did. It's just been in me. But I was always gravitating towards old people my whole life. I mean really old. You know, I'm seven, eight years old, I see an 80 year old, I run over, sit next to them and talk my whole life. I loved it my whole life. And the number one thing I learned in the first 20 years of my life, spending more time with old people than most kids is the biggest thing I fear is regret. Regret is scary. Resentment is very scary. The biggest reason I push kids to do what they want versus what their parents want is because I'd rather them and their parents have five or six or seven years of bad than 80. Because it gets very ugly when you're 60 and they're 80 and you lived your life based on what they wanted and now you resent them. It gets real ugly real fast. I would rather you have the pain for the next five or six years of fighting and then have one of two things happen, which I think both are amazing. Number one, you were right. You were right, and you are an amazing fashion designer, not an engineer. And you built a real company and your parents are going to be very, very proud. Or you were wrong. You suck at fashion design. Nobody liked it, but at least for yourself, you never have to live the rest of your life asking yourself, what if? You win both ways. You live in a culture. I know. I watch you live in a culture with a lot of expectations. You live in a culture where parents treat their kids as a property that indicates who they are. So does most of the world. This is not a Southeast Asia thing. This is not a Indonesia thing. This is a world thing. Parents are insecure, too, and they like their kids closing their gap. We have to start talking about this, because now that it costs zero to start a Spotify podcast, now that you can do that at 9pm now, there's nothing left. In 1974, not having money and time was an excuse. In 2019, it is not. And so the only thing left is this. Not this, this. And so I come here today begging, not pleading, not asking, begging you to look yourself in the mirror tonight and ask yourself if you're happy. And people always say, I don't know what my passion is. I don't know what I would do. Yes, you do.

[Event Host / Moderator]

You do.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You just don't think it would work. You think it's too small. You think it's too silly. You think people would judge you. You know, you're just scared to say it. You know exactly what you would do if you could do it every minute of your life. You may not. Right now, as I'm saying this, you're like, no, I don't, Gary. I don't. It's because you haven't even allowed yourself to look. This is the time to build businesses and profiles and content around what you enjoy. This is the time. This is the time. And waiting one more day makes no sense to me. So whether you use the momentum of the energy we created today or something else, please don't get older and regret. Please don't watch this exact video on whatever YouTube is in 35 years. You want to hear something weird? Everybody in here right now is actually watching this right now. In 35 years. Everybody here right now is actually gonna watch this exact talk on video on the Internet in 35 years. And I'm gonna ask you, did you fuck up or no? I mean it. I mean it. Because what I'm interested in is did you understand what I was saying here today and do something about it, or do you do what so many people do? Do you know what I watch every day? I watch people see a video clip of mine on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook. Facebook or what have you leave a comment that. That was the clip that was. Changed our life, right? Feels very nice. Oh, my God, this just changed my life. I'm gonna do it. But I'm weird. You know what I do? I follow them. And sometimes, especially on trips like this, when I'm in the air for 24 fucking hours, I will go and look and see six months, nine months, a year later if they did anything about it. And 99% don't. There's a lot of people in this room right now that said, this is it. I'm going to. I see you. And then in two and a half weeks, all the energy is going to be gone. And I spend every day thinking about that. How do I. One of the biggest reasons I produce so much content is I used to speak a lot, but then there wasn't as much content. So I thought, okay, maybe if I put out content eight times a day, it can get them going. I've come to learn, and I very much believe this. I was gifted and parented very well. That allowed me to actually not care about other people's opinions. I respect them. I never think I'm always right. This is not about thinking. You're right. This is not about me being delusional or audacious. This is me understanding that if you judge me, you don't have all the context. You don't know me. So how do I know you? I don't. Even the person closest to you, a spouse, a parent, they don't know Nobody knows. So why would you take somebody else's opinion over your own? Please, my friends, don't live a life that gets you to 80, 90, 100 years old where you're sitting there and saying, I wish I did. I wonder if I did. Nobody at 90 years old. Go find your oldest relative and go take them out to lunch and ask them, just like this, talk to me about life. They will not talk to you about what they did. They will talk to you about what they did not do. They will talk to you about what they wish they did. Don't wish they had an excuse. Your grandparents, your great grandparents. It wasn't practical. You couldn't do what we can do. This didn't exist.

[Audience Member]

Oh,

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

this did not exist. Please take advantage. Please take advantage of this existing. This is the greatest era to be alive. It is. There's plenty going on in the world. Plenty going on in my country. Plenty going on in the world. But when you look at the macro data, this is the greatest time to be alive. And you happen to be living in a great place. For my thesis, you live in a place where this country lives its life here. And the cost for you to enter it and do something for yourself and your family. $00. I do not want to hear that you don't have money. I don't want to hear that somebody else is further along because nobody else's life matters. This is an inside game. Inside. Start making content. Start talking to the world about what you either like or you know. Do it every day. Close your eyes for five years. Not how are you doing in five days, not how you're doing in five months. Five years. I come back here in five years. Or I see you in an airport in five years and you say, every day I made five pieces of content and I went nowhere. I would say two things. Number one, I'm proud of you. That was a long time. Number two, you clearly suck. Because if you're putting out things for five years and nobody gives a shit, your stuff sucks. Please, Please. I hope. Jakarta, you heard me today. Everything on the platforms, you know, you know which ones people use. You use them, your friends use them. You don't need that information. What you do need to do is take a step back and don't think that video and pictures are the only way. I do think audio and written word for a lot of people here matters. By the amount of hands that went up for entrepreneurship, I think a lot of people here have to look themselves in the mirror and ask who they really are. Are you self aware about your skills, but leaning into what you're interested in and producing content has never been more practical. And I implore you, I implore you to take advantage of this very special time because you have one life, you might as well live it. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Q and A. I know we're going to do some Q and A. Ladies

[Event Host / Moderator]

and gentlemen, please give it up for

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Gary V. Thank you.

[Event Host / Moderator]

Gary Vee.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes, sir.

[Event Host / Moderator]

Thank you for being here.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Thanks for having me.

[Event Host / Moderator]

It was really good.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Thank you.

[Event Host / Moderator]

We have a Q and A after this, so if you can just sit down to my right.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Okay.

[Event Host / Moderator]

We have a few questions from the audience member that we have chosen from our social media.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I've heard of social media.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Event Host / Moderator]

So without further ado, our first question comes from Alexander. Is Alexander here?

[Audience Member]

Hello. Hello.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

What up, Alexander?

[Audience Member]

I'm good.

[Event Host / Moderator]

Good.

[Audience Member]

Thank you so much for the.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Let's clap it up for Alexander.

[Audience Member]

Thank you for the pants that you give me that. So that's me. Make me wake up. And I run a small branding agency.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You have one?

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Okay.

[Audience Member]

That help fashion, brand, designer, local to get them the better logo, better brand identity and better campaign.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Understood.

[Audience Member]

What I want to ask is, should I learn all the skills? I mean, be a generalist so I can see the bigger picture or I focus on one skill that make me a specialist or expert?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

No, I'll tell you why. You're too young. And how will you know if you decide right now to be an expert just on Instagram? Organic, creative. Let's say that. How do you know that you're not the most talented strategist around social media? Spotify growth of podcast until you become a generalist. Do you even know which thing to become an expert in?

[Event Host / Moderator]

That left him speechless.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I say, but you, you understand Alexander, like, like you're a kid.

[Event Host / Moderator]

No.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's good. You don't. You don't know yet what you're best at. Like, why are you picking your expertise if you haven't seen everything else? You should go in. It's like food. I love when people are like, gary, I like eating exotic food. So sometimes I'm in a meeting and I'm. And I'll order oysters or sea urchin or whatever. I order and I go. And my dinner person will be like, well, I don't eat. I don't like oysters. I'm like, well, have you ever had an oyster? No. And that's how I think about this. You need to understand ads and media and ads and creative And Spotify and Instagram and LinkedIn. You have to taste everything. You may think Instagram is delicious until you actually taste LinkedIn. You need to be a generalist first, then you can tell me what you're an expert in.

[Audience Member]

Thank you.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You're welcome.

[Event Host / Moderator]

Should we go to the next question?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Please.

[Event Host / Moderator]

All right, the next question comes from Mehdi Astarina. Is she here? There she is.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Okay. Awesome.

[Audience Member]

Hi, Gary.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

How are you?

[Audience Member]

I'm fine. Thanks for the opportunity. I'm Madi. Okay. So I. My. Me and my spouse have a photography and videography agency, and both of our parents don't do business at all. They work from 8 to 5, so they kind of not believing in us.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Right.

[Audience Member]

And then after two or three years, we started to think that we may need an investor.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

After two or three years, you what?

[Audience Member]

We might need an investor. Okay, so I want to know from you, because you have already invested in many things as an investor. What is the most crucial thing you see in the business you're going to invest in? What makes you invest in them?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

So for me, when I look at investing, there's only two things I care about. One, do I generally believe in the idea or the concept? And then two, and more importantly, do I believe in her or him and they're capable to drive it. I've lost a lot of money as an investor in the last 10 years, 15 years, when I loved the idea so much and I could figure out what I would do with it, but the person running the business wasn't capable, and I learned from that. So now it's 51%. 51% you. 49%. The idea or the concept. That's what I look for. But I think more importantly, because I want you to be successful, you need to find what startups here need to do or businesses here. You have to find investors who are most likely to invest in you. I see so many people wanting to get money from the cool VC or a bank, and they're never gonna get it. You need to find the investor that's gonna invest in you. And a lot of times that's somebody that did what you did before and they understand it. So as a startup, look for investors that are most likely to invest in you. Don't be ideological about where the money's coming from. As long as you're getting the money, you know, make sense.

[Audience Member]

Okay. Thank you.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You're welcome.

[Event Host / Moderator]

All right, our last question comes from Ben Arthur. Is Ben Arthur in the building? There he is.

[Audience Member]

Hi, Gary.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

What up, Ben?

[Audience Member]

Good.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I'm A fan, man. I'm a fan too, Ben. So I'm gonna ask what is the best, the best financial decision that have made you and shaped you today? The best financial decision I ever made was never spending more money than I had. Go figure. And what I mean by that, Ben, and I appreciate the reaction because that means it's a very smart crowd. I am fascinated that people buy things they can't afford to impress people they don't like.

[Audience Member]

Thanks, man.

Yeah, man.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Like from a practical standpoint, right back to your question. I think being aggressive is important. When I met Mark Zuckerberg for a drink many years ago, it took me two seconds, and I mean two seconds, and I knew he was gonna win. And so when I went home and had an opportunity a year later to buy stock from his parents, right, I spent all. I took 90% of the money that I had saved in a bank and I invested it, right? And that was a great decision, obviously for me, But I didn't take 200%, I didn't go borrow money, things of that nature. I took a risk, but it was a risk I could afford. Here's why. If I was wrong and it went to zero, all that would have meant was I couldn't eat as fancy or maybe go as fancy on a vacation, but it didn't mean I was going out of business. And too many people here take big risks that they can't afford without thinking about what happens when you go to zero. I'm very aggressive and I do a lot, but I never take myself below zero. I'm willing to go to zero because I'm not fancy. I don't need stuff, but I'm never willing to go below zero. So keep that in mind.

[Event Host / Moderator]

We have time for one more question.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Event Host / Moderator]

So this is open to everyone. If you have a question, raise your hand up.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Who's got the mic? Yeah. Okay. That crazy.

[Event Host / Moderator]

He's all hyped.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

What's your name? Let's start with that. I have two questions. I have very. You are my adult since I was in college, back in. When I was in school at University of Indonesia, Faculty of Law. And I really want to take a photo with you.

[Event Host / Moderator]

May I?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

What do you say? I didn't hear. I didn't hear. I couldn't hear it.

[Event Host / Moderator]

You want to say it one more time?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

May I take photo with you?

[Audience Member]

Oh, photo. Yeah.

Let's go.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

What? First grab. You're welcome, my friend. You're welcome.

[Event Host / Moderator]

Everybody give your round of applause for Gary Vee.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I love you. Listen, go do it. Please don't let this energy go away. One life. Live it. Please live it. Go work. Thank you, everybody. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention, and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.