The #1 Secret Weapon Every Business Owner Needs in 2026

Summary

The GaryVee Audio Experience

Episode: The #1 Secret Weapon Every Business Owner Needs in 2026
Date: May 11, 2026
Host: Gary Vaynerchuk

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Gary Vaynerchuk dives deep into the role of love—both the presence and absence of it—in shaping personal fulfillment and business success. He argues that authentic, empathetic love, especially as instilled in childhood, is the foundational "secret weapon" for business owners moving into 2026 and beyond. The conversation traverses personal stories, actionable advice on gratitude and self-awareness, and Gary's signature, candid pep talk aimed at those seeking entrepreneurial and personal growth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fuel for Success: Love or Lack Thereof

• Extreme Love vs. Lack of Love
  • Gary opens by asserting the two primary drivers that lead people to the top—extreme love, which builds durable confidence, or lack of love, which manifests as insecurity-fueled ambition.
  • [00:00] “I believe lack of love or extreme love leads to insecurity or extreme confidence. Pure confidence, which is grounded in humility as well. So it's not ego. You just don't need outside validation because it was all formed inside of you.” – Gary
• Pitfalls of Success Without Inner Fulfillment
  • Achieving financial success does not cure the ache from lacking love; if success is sought to compensate for inner emptiness, arrival at the top only magnifies that void.
  • [00:26] “Financial success is not love. Financial fame is not love. Notoriety is not love. Winning does not cure love.” – Gary

2. Business as an Expression of Love

• Reversing the Old Adage
  • Gary flips the maxim of “treat love like a business,” stating instead: “I treat my businesses like love...business is incredibly personal.”
  • [00:53] “I think the reason things have worked for me...is I don't think business is business. You know, I think business is incredibly personal.” – Gary
• Building Relationships over Transactions
  • He prioritizes warmth, empathy, and depth in professional relationships—sometimes leading to ‘micro negative impacts’ but exponentially greater fulfillment and loyalty.

3. Candor as Love in Business and Life

• The Importance of Candor
  • Whether in romance or business, lack of candid communication breeds long-term problems.
  • [02:10] “If you do not have candor, you’re in trouble...every vulnerability I’ve had on my path to love has been a lack of candor. And I used to think of that as a high form of love...” – Gary

4. Upbringing: The Unconditional Roots

• Mom as the Template for Love
  • Gary attributes his ability to give and feel love to his mother’s unwavering, unconditional love, despite her difficult upbringing.
  • [05:07] “It’s 100% my mom...the sheer unconventional, and I say unconventional, not just unconditional love that I got from my mom.” – Gary
  • He expresses heartbreak for those who didn’t experience this, stating it becomes “the soundtrack of their lives.”

5. Love is Earned: Post-Childhood Reality

• Unconditional vs. Earned Love
  • Only a few relationships provide true unconditional love; all others, especially in adulthood, require initiating love through giving.
  • [09:17] “Love is earned.” – Gary
  • [09:51] “The way to get love is to love someone first.” – Gary
• Giving What’s Needed, Not Just What’s Easy
  • Love should match the recipient’s needs—emotional or otherwise—not just what’s convenient to give.
  • [11:10] “Giving is based on what the person actually needs, not what you want to give them...”

6. Abandoning Entitlement for Happiness

• Entitlement Breeds Unhappiness
  • The entitlement to love or happiness from others, without giving first, leads to deep unhappiness and lack of fulfillment.
  • [12:54] “Entitlement is the single way to be most unhappy, to be...least fulfilled. The audacity and entitlement to think people should love you without you giving first is a framework I do not understand.” – Gary

7. The "Clouds and Dirt" Mindset

• Living in Two Extremes for Success
  • Gary champions the philosophy of dreaming big (“clouds”) and staying grounded in relentless work (“dirt”).
  • [16:56] “I'm a complete byproduct of somebody who lives in the clouds and plays in the dirt...The middle sucks.”
• Self-Awareness & Detaching from Judgment
  • Happiness and sustained business success require tuning out others’ judgments, embracing your process, and valuing your own opinion first.

8. Takeaways for 2026 and Beyond

• Self-Esteem Disconnected from Finances
  • Detaching self-worth from financial and career achievements paradoxically leads to greater success.
  • [13:57] “Detach your self esteem from your financial and professional success and watch your financial and professional success grow.” – Gary
• Gratitude & Simplicity
  • Business owners who operate from a place of gratitude, honest self-communication, and love are “unstoppable.”
• Hard Work and Patience Over Trends
  • The landscape offers endless opportunity, but “overnight” success is a myth—sustained, passionate effort is the real key.
  • [22:55] “The path to happiness is actually wanting to work 15 hours a day. The key is you have to like it.”

9. Execution Over Inspiration

• Motivational Content vs. Action
  • Consuming motivational content is not the same as executing the advice.
  • [16:06] “A lot of you feel like you’re doing something by just being here. This isn’t the game. What you do tomorrow is the game. So I ask you to execute.” – Gary
• Content Creation as Leverage
  • In the modern era, the ability to communicate at scale through content is the “secret weapon” for building business—a call for quantity and persistence, not perfection.
  • [36:35] “Everybody here can put out 23 posts tomorrow...I’ve been doing this shit since fucking 2006. I didn’t have a team either for the first 8 years.”

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• [00:53] “I don’t treat love like business. I treat business like love.” – Gary
• [09:17] “Love is earned.” – Gary
• [09:56] “It's a lot easier to be loved because you've been so loving and caring and emotionally there and actually gave a fuck about someone else. And then they love you back. Then you made $40 million and now they love you.”
• [13:57] “If you don't love yourself, who the fuck is gonna love you?” – Gary
• [16:56] “I am a complete byproduct of somebody who lives in the clouds and plays in the dirt...the middle sucks.”
• [22:55] “The path to happiness is actually wanting to work 15 hours a day... The key is you have to like it.”
• [36:35] “Everybody here can put out 23 posts tomorrow... I've been doing this shit since fucking 2006. I didn't have a team either for the first 8 years.”

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

• 00:00–00:43: Love as the primary driver—confidence vs. insecurity
• 00:53–01:59: Treating business as an act of love
• 04:01–05:07: “Nice Guys Finish First”—kindness in entrepreneurship
• 05:07–07:13: Gary’s upbringing and the roots of his love philosophy
• 09:17–09:56: Love is earned; the importance of giving first
• 13:57–16:05: Gratitude, self-love, and detachment from financial status
• 16:56–22:55: The "clouds and dirt" philosophy; happiness rooted in work you love
• 22:55–26:00: Dangers of chasing trends; importance of patience and self-awareness
• 36:35–38:09: The call to action: Content, communication, and execution over inspiration

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Final Takeaways

Gary Vee’s core message is that enduring business success in 2026—and real happiness—come not from hustling for external validation or trendy shortcuts, but from:

• Grounding yourself in genuine love, starting with self-love and radiating outward.
• Letting business be an extension of personal warmth, empathy, candor, and care.
• Rejecting entitlement and focusing instead on giving—emotionally and practically—to others.
• Detaching your self-worth from achievement or wealth, while committing deeply to hard work you believe in.
• Adopting a “clouds and dirt” mindset—dreaming big, operating with humility, and executing without pretense.

Action Step:
Stop consuming and start creating. Give first, communicate authentically, and build a business (and life) that feels good from the inside out.

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“I ask you to execute. This isn’t the game. What you do tomorrow is the game.” – Gary Vaynerchuk [16:06]

Transcript

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I believe lack of love or extreme love leads to insecurity or extreme confidence. Pure confidence, which is grounded in humility as well. So it's not ego. You just don't need outside validation because it was all formed inside of you. I believe those two things are literally the fuel of what gets people to the top. The problem is when you get to the top and you were fueled by lack of love and insecurity, you have a problem, because once you get there, it's not what you think it is.

[Interviewer]

What do you mean?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Financial success is not love. Financial fame is not love. Notoriety is not love. Winning does not cure love. And so when you get there and you thought that that would create it, that you would force the world or others to love you because of what you did, it gets double only and sometimes becomes even a bigger vulnerability than even what got you there.

[Gary Vee (Podcast Host)]

This is the GaryVee audio experience.

[Interviewer]

When we talk about treating love like a business, what does that look like or how does that look like for you?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

It's an interesting question. I mean, I think it's almost like it's funny what's going through my head. It's the reverse. It's. I think I treat my businesses like love. I think the reason things have worked for me over the last 30 years is I don't think business is business. You know, I think business is incredibly personal. And I think business is built on relationships. And I believe that the ultimate level of a relationship is love. And so I think I've gone against a lot of conventional wisdom in building my businesses around, like, how my relationships go. They're deeper now. That's led me to struggle with certain firings and, you know, candor. And it's definitely had some collateral micro negative impacts that I've gone so personal trying to achieve love with my teammates and my partners and my investors and my employees. But I don't treat love like business. I treat business like love.

[Interviewer]

And so when we in general in your. I forget like this. What do you think is the biggest thing that you've learned about love from business or specifically romantic love?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Romantic love. Well, I've definitely learned through my life now that I'm 50, that in both those arenas, if you do not have candor, you're in trouble. That, you know, every, you know, vulnerability I've had on my path to love has been a lack of candor. And I used to think of that as a high form of love. Like, my love language was like, not being negotiating feedback, making it cozy and awesome, you know, so I've definitely learned that. Listen, I am the byproduct of the ultimate love. You know, I run on that currency because my mom instilled it so deeply in me. But business teaching me about love is hard. Even the second time around of you asking it, because I came to business loved and loving that. I never knew business without the energy of love first. I knew business second, and it trumped the way I thought about business.

[Interviewer]

What do you mean by that?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I appreciate you asking that. Well, the way I like to do business is for it to be warm. Like, you know, for it to be caring about the feelings. Like, I don't. I'm not, like, detached from my emotions when I do business. You know, how do I love my employees so much that I can love my customers even more? And then if I do that well, then they'll love me back, and then that will work.

[Interviewer]

Mm.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I've always been weirded out by, like, people thinking that business is cutthroat or, like, sharp elbows. I say this a lot publicly. I've thought about starting a fashion brand called Nice Guys Finish first. Because one of the things I hate the most is that nice guys finish last as a mentality in business. And so what do I mean by that is, you know, I've been selling lemonade since I was 6 and baseball cards when I was 11, and wine when I was 16, to 20, to 30. You know, I've been in business and selling and marketing and operating my whole life, but I've always treated it from a very warm center. The way I view love, like a very positive energy, you know, very accountable framework.

[Interviewer]

I think when a lot of people hear Gary Vee, they know the business side. One of the things that I'm really wondering about is, like, how did your family really start instilling that form of love in you that transferred over to business?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I mean, it's 100% my mom. I love my father with all my heart, but, like, you know, the man held down the responsibility of, like, working every minute to start our American dream. So, you know, just the sheer unconventional. And I say unconventional, not just unconditional love that I got from my mom. My mom had a very challenging upbringing. She lost her mother when she was 5. My grandma died when my mom was 5. And then her father spent significant time in jail in Russia because the USSR was a fucked up place. And so she had just so much adversity. And, you know, she had a brother that she loved so much. She had my father, her husband that she's still with after 50 years. So she loves him. But my mom often describes when I was born and she was 20, so she was still young, that it was the first time she really felt like unconditional love. And she made me feel that the whole way. And, you know, I just. I feel so heartbroken. For people that don't feel loved when they're a child, I think it becomes the soundtrack of their lives. I think it is incredibly binary, that if you feel incredible love or if you don't as a child, that it has an extreme impact on your life. And for me, I felt extreme love. Just full support, full safety, full joy, positive reinforcement, accountability, you know. You know, love doesn't mean that you create entitlement or nepo, you know, means caring and giving. And I just felt it so much that. And then it was naturally in me. I feel like I share my mother's DNA. And then I was reinforced by her energy. And so I just became that person for everyone around me long before I. You know, that's how I felt about Robbie Turnick and Eric Godfrey and my sister. You know, like, those two, first two people were the friends I grew up with in the streets of Edison, New Jersey. I just love naturally and easily.

[Interviewer]

Talk to me about for a second, because what I think is really interesting is when I'll talk to business leaders, oftentimes they'll cite the absence of love leading them to create these crazy, extravagant things in life, like building the same business.

[Audience Member / Event Host]

But for you, it's the reverse.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You.

[Interviewer]

It was the opposite.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's right. I just said it like, I think you're. It's so. It's a very smart observation. As such a young dude, I believe lack of love or extreme love leads to insecurity or extreme confidence. Pure confidence. Right. Like the purest form, which is not. Which is grounded in humility as well. So it's not ego, it's just confidence. You just don't need outside validation because it was all formed inside of you. I believe those two things literally the fuel of what gets people to the top. The problem is when you get to the top and you were fueled by lack of love and insecurity, you have a problem, because once you get there, it's not what you think it is.

[Interviewer]

What do you mean?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Financial success is not love. Fame is not love. Notoriety is not love. Winning does not cure love. And so when you get there and you thought that that would create it, that you would force the world or others to love you because of what you did, it gets double. Only and sometimes becomes even a bigger vulnerability than even what got you there.

[Interviewer]

I think that's really interesting. I feel like as a society, we often conflate desirability and lovability. And so, like when we are at the top and we have the status, we have the money, we have the fame, it's almost like there's this. This implicit promise that like, therefore we

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

will be loved, therefore you will be desired, therefore you will be chased after. Therefore certain people will want to be around you. Both from a romantic standpoint or from a friendship standpoint or a business standpoint. The problem is humans are animals. And they know deep down when we're all by ourselves and are quiet, we know. And those people in those circumstances know those people don't love them.

[Interviewer]

That's hard.

[Audience Member / Event Host]

It is hard.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

But I also tell those people, nicely, deeply, empathetically, sympathetically, compassionately that love is earned.

[Interviewer]

Love is earned.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Love is earned.

[Interviewer]

How does that work with unconditional love like we were talking about before?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Well, love is earned. From outsiders, you can walk into unconditional love, but that comes from very few people. Primary, a parent and a sibling. Right. Once you get to us status, we're grown. Now what. What I think a lot of people that are successful don't realize is the way to get love is to love someone first.

[Interviewer]

The way to get love is to love someone first. I'm not sure I understand.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Well, it's a lot easier to be loved because you've been so loving and caring and emotionally there and actually gave a fuck about someone else. And then they love you back. Then you made $40 million and now they love you. It's grounded in something real. When you build wealth or success for yourself, the fuck does that have to do with the pretty girl or that buddy that now wants to be best friends? But when you're actually a human being and you're there for them in some manner, you know this because you do this. People have different love languages. Sometimes it's financial, sometimes it's emotional. Sometimes there's the rare breed that does both. And they're put into pedestals by families. What are you doing for the other person? Just because your mommy or daddy didn't love you doesn't mean that the world owes to love you. You get to a place where you have the capacity to flip the script and it's hard because you're empty. And so there's this chip and this, you know, struggle, right? But the reality is to ask a stranger to love you just because it didn't work out for you. And the luck of the draw of how you were born is audacious.

[Interviewer]

And so the way that you love is giving first.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah, and giving. And this is very important. I think one man's point of view. All of us are trying to figure this shit out. So there's no expert shit here. My belief is that giving is based on what the person actually needs, not what you want to give them. You know, through my years I watched a lot of people who had siblings, children, friends who wanted emotional support and they threw money at it and they thought they were giving. Yeah, right, Makes sense.

[Interviewer]

I think that's the biggest tragedy. Like you can try all you want to give someone love, but if you're just two ships passing the night, it doesn't count.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Correct. So yes, I think that is what works. But you have to actually deliver on what the person needs. And almost always the person needs emotional. A lot of us think we need financial, but there are incredible amounts of people that live incredibly humbly that are incredibly at peace and are enjoying their lives. But those people have the emotional thing figured out. And then there's a staggering amount of people in this big bad city that have all the resources in the world and are living dark ass lives.

[Interviewer]

Last question, because I want to take some of your time. If you could go on a rant, if you, if you forgot, I'll frame like this. If you forgot everything that you knew about love and the only thing that you understood was this guiding principle that love is about giving. Like you said before, can you just like go on a rant for a second? Like, can you like, like selling? So I mean, like, why is this so important to understand? What is it about giving that makes loving so much easier afterwards? I guess especially for the lens of like, once you have like wealth and

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

money, entitlement is the single way to be most unhappy, to be list, to be the least fulfilled. The audacity and the entitlement to think people should love you without you. Giving first is a framework I do not understand. You know, why are you allowed to be in a place where you're supposed to be getting something and the other person isn't. The sheer lack of empathy. And people confuse compassion and sympathy with empathy all the time. Are you able to feel the other person or not? And if you do get blessed with empathy, everyone, if you get blessed with empathy, if you get blessed with empathy, no worries. But I see the camera. But if you get blessed with empathy, you are a rare breed that can actually feel others and Then you will know immediately on the spot in a second that you should give love first. Please.

[Audience Member / Event Host]

So many of you are in the

[Gary Vee (Podcast Host)]

business of band Aids. When you have cancer, if you are here and you are ambitious and you want something big, you have to understand it starts here, here, here. You will burn out. You will give up. You must get good. And good is based on a couple of very simple things. One, gratitude. Let me promise you one thing. Way too many of you are sad or worried or jealous or envious of what you don't have. And you take for granted what you have. Everybody here who's trying to achieve money, fame, success. I promise you, if you achieved it but the person you love the most was sick, you would not be happy. We must be happy our lives. Simplify. The reason I am unstoppable in business is because I don't care about it. Detach your self esteem from your financial and professional success and watch your financial and professional success grow. We must simplify. We must lean into gratitude and we must start to fall in love, first of all, with ourselves. If you don't love yourself, who the fuck is gonna love you? In three and a half years, I'm gonna be flying like I did for 12 hours. Today we're back and one of you in this room are gonna email me. I know this because I get 20 of them a day. And one of you are gonna email me and say, hey, Gary, I just

[Audience Member / Event Host]

want you to know I saw you

[Gary Vee (Podcast Host)]

speak in Dubai in December of 2024 and I did X I today, at this point in my life, live for that email. I am at the mercy of of you doing something about what I just talked about. I ask you to do something about what I just talked about. Unfortunately, in these last 15 years, I have learned that a lot of you feel like you're doing something by just being here. This isn't the game. What you do tomorrow is the game. So I ask you to execute.

[Audience Member / Event Host]

Hey everybody.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

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.

[Audience Member / Event Host]

Since at a very young age, I've been playing in the two extremes of having a North star, a perspective, a mindset that has allowed me to be happy and then all the way on the other extreme, be wildly and deeply in practitionership and actually making and doing. And you know, even seeing this gentleman wearing the clouds and dirt sneaker like that was. I'm not sure I'm ever gonna position anything or any product in a more honest place from where I play. Because really I am a complete byproduct of somebody who lives in the clouds and plays in the dirt. And in the analogy I started this with, which is the middle sucks. I genuinely watch people play in the middle. They don't fully have a strategy or when I say strategy, they lack self awareness of who they actually are. They're deeply dependent on other people's judgment. There's a whole lot of hopes and wants versus realities and. And they're just genuinely not structured to be happy because of the circumstances of DNA, parenting environment, and that's the clouds. It's just so fun to live a life where you're not worried about other people's opinions, when you're not dwelling on the past, when you lack the ability to expect things from others because what it leads to is just a whole lot of happiness. It also leads to all the stuff I talk about. When you genuinely are happy about your process, you're really enjoying what you do. You've really tuned out both the cheering and the booing. And all of a sudden so much good behavior comes from that. You don't buy dumb shit to impress people because you're not worried if they're impressed or they're not. You do make content or start things because if it fails, you're not worried about them booing you. You're not worried about the judgment. It's just such an interesting place. And I will probably spend the majority of my next 60 years trying to get to a place where I figure out different ways how to communicate this clouds thing. Because it's extremely obvious that my mentality, the way I was raised, the serendipity, and this is completely driven by gratitude. I get to stand up here because of the luck of the moment that my parents decided to have sex. Right. Cause this is a DNA thing. I mean that. I genuinely mean it. Like my perspective on life, my complete and utter obsession with not having any expectations from any other human being. Having no expectations, having zero entitlement, genuinely not thinking I deserve anything. Still being in a place where. And I was at the airport just now. I took like seven selfies before I boarded it. Some guy slides in. I saw him watching the whole time slides in. He's like, you ever tired of them? Like, never, never. How. How in the. How in the world can a human being be tired of admiration? Like, it's, it's too humbling. I live a life where people think it's cool to take a picture with me. That's. That's ludicrous. That's incredible. I will never figure out how not to lean into my humility. But that humility comes from a mindset that starts with deep self esteem and deep understanding that other people's judgments actually have zero, zero impact on your life. And I get to be the byproduct of tremendous parenting to have that mindset. Not everybody had that. My father didn't. I know how my grandmother raised him. And I watch how his actions go based on that. So I stand here, Orlando, today, with deep gratitude for the way I was built. When I hear the accolades, when those cheers come, it's so easy for me to default into your cheering me as a byproduct of. Of a whole lot of great circumstances, a whole lot of good parenting, which doesn't allow me to get high or ever have an ego of. Not the humility. I'm the byproduct. I am desperate to figure out how to put sentences together to get you to understand how much that's the game. The reason I'm not interested in talking about becoming a millionaire is because I know thousands of millionaires who are miserable as fuck. What I'm interested in is trying to figure out how to get you to understand why it's so fun for me to play in the dirt. What I'm interested in is why does this work for me? Why did it work for me? Why does it work for other people that I see? Right. Because most people have no interest in putting in the deeply, deeply deep hours of work required to actually be successful. Let me save you a whole lot of time. There is no shortcut or system or program or magic formula. If you want to build something that's meaningful and sustain takes an obnoxious amount of hard work in perpetuity, forever bleeding out of your fucking mouth. That's just the truth, you know. Are there maneuvers that borderline are illegal or at best wildly unethical that lead to short term cash? Yes. Do 98% of those people end up losing that money or going into a very dark mental place? Yes. And if you're interested in that, that's awesome.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Do you.

[Audience Member / Event Host]

I don't give a fuck. You're not my sister, you know. You're not my kids. I don't care. What I care about is being historically correct, selfishly. And what I know is the following. We live in a time that is so opportunistic, it's wildly uncomfortable how many people here over the age of 40, raise your hand. So for the people that have their hands up, we are fortunate to have the context of understanding a world pre Internet at scale that how many people under the age of 30. Raise your hands, you characters. First of all, in my opinion, deeply the most interesting and best generation. I hate watching old people fucking shit on you. I mean that. On the flip side, you have the unfortunate nature of what you don't control, which is you've never really been punched in the mouth because the economy's been too good since you've been a grown up. So you're fucking delusional. We live. Let me say this, this is some real talk. How many people have been running their business for five years? Raise your hand. If you've raised your hand and you're not crushing it, you've got a problem. And let me tell you what that problem is. The last five years have been the single easiest years to build a successful business in the history of fucking time. So if you just raised your hand and you're not winning and you're not happy, you, you're in a fucking shit spot. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that's a. Take a step back and think, maybe this isn't the right business. Maybe I'm chasing quick cash. The reason there's so many fucking crypto and cannabis and social media experts is people chase trends, not what they're good at or like not super complicated. People are chasing the next fast thing. If one more fucker rolls up on me in public and says they have a CBD brand, I'm gonna punch them in the fucking nuts. I know you do. Fuck, Bro. I have a CBD infused beef jerky. Great dick. Now what People think CBD is like the fucking magic formula. You're commoditized, everybody's got one. It's now bad to be in that business. Same old shit. Supply and demand. Supply and demand. My friends, I come here this afternoon with one agenda. To put pressure on the thing that has always been tried and true. Self awareness and work ethic lead to happiness. We're living in a very dangerous time. Even though it's great, because right now we are in the white hot moment of entrepreneurship being cool. I live the benefit of that every day. Hence I feel a triple responsibility to remind people that it is an extremely lonely and difficult venture to be a successful entrepreneur. Most people fail and many will. And God forbid the economy softens. So many people are so over leveraged with raising capital or dilution that they're going to get caught. And so it's just an important time right now while it's still good for everybody to truly, truly realize that the. It's so simple. The path to happiness is actually wanting to work 15 hours a day. Whether you work 9 or 11 or 2 or 30. The key is you have to like it. Like, you're. You're talking to somebody who failed all his classes starting in fourth grade. Because I didn't like it. I was capable. I didn't like it. I have so much empathy for people trying to start businesses who don't like their business or are not meant to be entrepreneurs. Because I lived it for the majority of my life. The entire first chapter of my life was being forced to do something that wasn't naturally in me. I mean, every day of my life now, 15 hours goes like a blink. First period of 8th grade felt like a fucking eternity. How many people here hated school? Just raise your hands. So for everybody who remembers, like, remember looking at the clock, that shit didn't move. I was like, haven't we been in science for an hour? No, four minutes. Fuck me. What's crazy is I know a lot of you are living that professionally right now, and half of you are doing it because you think there's the money in that thing. Whether it's real estate or crypto or cannabis or T shirts or whatever it might be, you're literally doing what you're doing because somebody told you or somebody, you know, made money in it. We have to break that. You will never, ever win playing a game that somebody else loves more than you. We also need a huge conversation around patience. You guys know I push this shit, if you follow me, but it's because I lived it. You know what it's like to go into a business at 22 and know you're signing up for 15 years to build a business for your parents and you're going to leave with nothing. That's what I did. You know, when kids are like, gary, you don't get. I'm like, I fucking get it. I fucking worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week, had no social life for 15 years of my life to build a business for my parents and bounced with nothing and had to start VaynerMedia out of somebody else's conference room because I had no fucking money. I get it very simply. I get it a whole fucking lot. I get it the most. I love when people are like, oh, fuck this guy. His parents gave my favorite one, his dad gave him $3 million no, dick face. My dad had a business doing $3 million. I worked 15 years to build a business to 65 million. And I left with owning none of it. Now what? Now what's your fucking excuse, Johnny pants, motherfucker? So you're talking to somebody who did it, who left the 34 and started at zero and built what I've built in the last decade because of my experience, my talent. I get that. And we all have different paths. But people are impatient. This goes back to judgment. The reason so many of you want to win right now so fast is you want to show other people you won. This is why credit cards fucked everyone. People want to buy shit they can't afford to show people they're actually winning versus actually winning. My friends, my friends, we're in a deep. Listen to me. We're in a deeply, deeply complicated place where we've always worried about fronting and impressing others. And that used to be 13 people. And now we live complete public lives. And it's everybody. So it's compounded. Everybody's taking a hike on the weekend for the Instagram photo, not for the fucking hike, people. Right now, subconsciously. You don't even realize that you're doing it right now. If you took a step back, you can't imagine how much you're thinking about your holiday vacation predicated on the photos you post versus the vacation itself. We live in a world where people yearn for affirmation or compliments, which makes them wildly vulnerable to booing, the reason so many of you struggle and you don't post with a negative hater. Or this is because you overvalue compliments, which make you vulnerable to negativity. This is something we really need to start talking about. Like, why are you here? Like, why are we here today? Like, I love you too, on some real shit. Like, what are we doing here? I assume if you've decided to spend money on a. Let's say Monday, on a Monday afternoon and listen to this shit, that you're looking for something, which is cool. My curiosity is what? Because for me, if you're looking for tactics, they're so easy. I've been telling you how many people here follow me? What, you think you're going to get something crazy up here today? You know exactly what I'm going to fucking say. I feel like Aerosmith up here. I'm not playing new music. I'm going to play the fucking classics. But the reason I keep, like, doing this and why it's interesting to me is I've learned in the last decade especially, but kind of always knew right place, right time, right analogy, right moment, right. Like to me, it's been fascinating to watch people consume my content. You know what's great about how I do it and how I recommend you do it is read your comments, read your DMs, read your. You know, I know a lot of you are mad I haven't texted you back. I get fucking 4,000 of them a day. I'm texting 300 back, I just can't fucking catch up. But I'm telling you, I read that shit and the reason I read it is it allows me to know what I need to talk about here. You think I knew that people were fucking super sad because their parents were paying for shit? I didn't know that my parents didn't pay for my shit. So I could have never known that. It was the thousands of of emails in the last five years that I've read from kids in their 20s who finally reconcile the fact of oh fuck, my unhappiness comes from the fact that my parents are secretly paying for my life, which consciously and subconsciously makes me feel like a fucking loser. Let me tell you something right now. You want to get happy real, real, real fast. I don't know how many people this is going to work for in this room, but if you're in this camp, if you are over the age of 22 and your parents pay for anything on some real shit, you need to leave this conference, call your parents and say, I'm never taking another fucking dollar from you. There is nothing more obvious to me, out of all the listening I've done in the last half decade, that the thing I just said is leading to a stunning amount of bad. A bad between the kid and the parents. A bad about that kid. All they're doing is taking that money to look like they're doing something which starts corroding you subconsciously in a way that you cannot imagine. I'm telling you, living on your own two feet is foundational to happiness. The resentment that you're creating towards your parents and the resentment that your parents are going towards you is remarkable. It's really funny. 40 year old crowd and higher go up. You guys remember when we were growing up, if your parents were going to help you, you borrowed money, you paid it back. We're not living there anymore. And that's amazing. And I know parents listen. As somebody who grew up with not a little and has it a lot now I look at my kids, I want to But I want them to be happy, not look like they're successful. My friends, we are living in a unbelievably special time, one that the robots in 4,000 years are going to talk about as an important era. And what's important about this era is the clouds and the dirt. This is the greatest era of opportunity. It's also one of the most vulnerable eras ever because of that opportunity. This is a game of going inside. You need to map. Here's a tactic. You want to write some shit down? Here's one. Write down, in order, whose opinion matters to you. There we go. But on some real shit, the people's opinions that matter the most to you are the things that you're most vulnerable to. And you need to hack that. That is a real important hack, because I am watching people completely live their lives based on other people's opinions, from things that kind of make sense, like your parents, to things that make no fucking sense, like a random comment on your fucking post. And so for me, for me, I come here today with, like, the hope that 3, 6, 11 people hear me this time. You know, because the reality is when, like, I've given you the tactics, I'll give them to you one more time since we're here. The only thing that matters in the end is the ability to communicate what you're trying to achieve. No matter what your services, B2B, this commercial, that T shirt, this T, that sneaker, ice cream, house bird going for mayor, whatever the fuck you're trying to sell yourself. The only thing that ultimately matters in the Internet world is the ability to communicate to others that thing that becomes the variable of how many people you close. If you are a tremendous communicator, then more people will buy your thing. It's not complicated. Nobody here is going to fucking Hollywood and starting their own TV show on primetime or on fucking Netflix. Let's stop fucking bullshitting. Everybody here can put out 23 posts tomorrow on these platforms, but you're not. How many people here consume my content? No shot. Anybody that just raised their hand is putting out 64 pieces of content a day. You hear it, you see it, you get hyped for 48 seconds.

[Gary Vee (Podcast Host)]

You get.

[Audience Member / Event Host]

You're going to be super fired up in another 40 minutes. Going to jazz you the fuck up for the next 40 minutes. But I'll be very honest with you, that hit means nothing because next Thursday comes in and then you try to do your first LinkedIn post, but you don't know what to say, right? Like my friends, the reason I try and listen. I. Three, four years ago, I tried to stay very far away from mindset and motivation. I hate that shit. It's just that I can't understand what I'm telling you. Exactly what I've now put out three decks in full fucking detail of what you should do. Everybody in this fucking room should put out 50 to 100 pieces of content a day. Do it. Why? One isn't immediately. Gary. I don't have a drock or a team, motherfucker. I've been doing this shit since fucking 2006. I didn't have a team either for the first 8 years. How do you think I got to having a team? Patience and doing it. So please listen to me. Everything you wish, everything you dream, everything you hope to accomplish out of today tactically is completely predicated on your ability to make pictures, video and written words across Facebook. LinkedIn, TikTok, you know, YouTube pod. That's it. That's the answer, 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

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

being part of this journey.

[Audience Member / Event Host]

See you later.