A (0:00)

The number one resource in the world is attention. Unfortunately, I'm charging my phone in the back because I'd love to pull it out right now. But attention sits on the phone. You may not like it, you might have a point of view on it. You might think social media is bad, good, I don't care. What I care about is that if you have any hopes and dreams, if you want to achieve, you must learn what is happening on the phone. Social media is disproportionately the most important platform for everybody in this arena. Here's why it. Stay with me now. It is free. The platform is free. Of course you can run ads on it. I have a company with 3,000 employees globally that spends billions of dollars spending money on it. However, we only spend those dollars when a client will listen to us after we post something for free that does. Well, my friends, for the last 15 years, for the last more than 15 years, I've built my entire financial foundation on social media. It is disproportionately one of the biggest economies in the world. What is happening on it right now over the last two, three years is profoundly important for all of you to hear. And hear by show of hands, how many people are in the B2B business? Not the B2C business. Raise your hands. I just want to get. Raise it. Actually. Stand up. Do me a favor. I need to get a sense. Stand up if you're in B2B. Thank you for the lights. Keep that on for a second. Actually, if I can have the lights, I'll take it because I want to see the pretty faces. For every person that is standing. Keep standing, please, if you don't mind. It's good for your blood. For every person that is standing in this room right now that is in B2B. Marketing is always a very complicated thing in B2B. Because the reality of B2B is it's more of a sales organization than a marketing one. You all know that. I already see you shaking your heads as we stand here today in December of 2024. By far as I look around this stadium and see all the different people without knowing what B2B sector you are in. I know for fact more than the sun will come up tomorrow that the biggest opportunity for you to actually double your business is your commitment and your organization's commitment to producing content at scale on LinkedIn. You can sit down, but please keep the lights on because I want to see the faces of the people that just stood up. The biggest thing that will grow your business 2025 is directly correlated on how much money, time and energy you decide to put into making pictures and videos to post on LinkedIn for free. The amount of attention in the B2B sector, and I'm fortunate enough to be an investor in 50 or so B2B companies in stages C to series D. I also am very fortunate that I work with some of the biggest B2B companies in the world, with my marketing firm, Visas and Chase and brands like that. The amount of attention that sits on LinkedIn globally, globally here, US, Europe, APAC, Asia, Africa. The amount of attention that sits on LinkedIn is staggering. The amount of people that just stood up that are actually posting one to three posts a day on LinkedIn is almost zero. The supply and demand of attention on LinkedIn is the opportunity. LinkedIn today is in the same place that Facebook was in 2012 before people understood what was happening there. Here's the biggest point that I need everybody to understand. The algorithm has changed everything in social media. For 20 years I've been building on social media, but I've treated it, and everybody had to treat it like email marketing. You would try to get as many people to follow you as possible like I did. It took me 20 years to get 50 plus million people to follow me. And then every time I would post, people would see it. That was remarkable. For 15 years, three years ago, everything changed. Now, by show of hands, how many people here have Never posted on LinkedIn? Raise your hands. Raise your hands. Jesus. This is gonna be very motivating to all of you. I have spent, what are we in 20, 24, 7 years of a lot of time and energy. I have a 30 person team that makes content with me for my brand and I have amassed 5 to 6 million followers on LinkedIn which puts me in the top 25 people followed on LinkedIn. And all the people, one more time, raise your hand if you've never posted on LinkedIn. The fact that everybody that just raised their hands could post a video or a written article or a picture tomorrow with no followers. And, and if it is remarkable content, that piece of content could reach more people than I could is why the last two years of social media have been transformational. I need everybody to understand what I just said. For 15 years it was a certain game. It was like email marketing. How many people here have done email marketing? Raise your hands so you'll understand this. Build a list. And I've been doing email since 1996, before some of you were even born. And in 1996 and 1997 and 1998 for my dad's liquor store, I used to get 90% open rates on email. For the people here that do email marketing, you know, that's a staggering number, but that's because back then, marketers hadn't ruined email. Now, 30%, 35%, 28%, good. That's how social media was for 15 years. Three years ago, everything changed because of TikTok. As a matter of fact, I would argue that social media is now no longer with us. Now it is interest media. The content that you're interested in comes to you in the algorithm, not you following things that you're interested in or people. This is an incredibly detailed thing that I'm focused on for all of you in this attendance, because it is the single variable that can change the outcome of whatever your ambition is here. We now live in a world where an individual piece of content, one piece of content, can absolutely change the outcome of what you're trying to achieve. There are so many people here who have big goals and dreams and wants and are missing the biggest opportunity that sits in their pocket. I ask you, I beg you, I beg all of you to take social media content very seriously in 2025. Because in the next 10 years, when we go to glasses instead of phones, this world will go away. And many of you will regret not taking advantage of the single biggest platform that has attention that is actually free. You want to get attention on the highway, you pay for billboards, you pay for direct mail, you pay for television, you pay for print ads. You, you Pay for Google AdWords. This platform is free. And the amount of reach that is now achieved with good content is staggering. And it is very, very impactful on all of your hopes and dreams. Please stop treating social media as this nice little thing. It is now the primary platform of attention. And all of you, if you're at this conference, I'm going to assume you're ambitious. If you're at this conference, I'm going to assume you want something good to happen. If you care about those things, you must finally take these platforms seriously, please. You know, it's funny, I don't know why, but I kept looking at the word Dubai, just looking at it, and I broke it down in my mind. I'm gonna break it down for you right now. I'm gonna start with the letter D. When I see that letter, it goes into a very specific place for me, and that place is the word determination. I'm always fascinated by why someone gives up. I'm just always fascinated why someone would give up, I think it's based on insecurity. I think too many people in this room give a shit about strangers opinions, which is a huge mistake. I ask all of you as you head into 2025 to realize a couple of things that are grounded in determination. I ask myself, why am I determined? Number one, I don't feel like there's an alternative. What am I gonna do? Not be ambitious? Sit around and cry? The biggest disease in our society today is entitlement. People in this arena and in this country and in this world think that someone else is gonna do it for them. I can promise you in America it has become a major problem. These people are confused and think politicians are gonna fix shit for them. The reality is that there's been a lot of prosperity financially over the last 20 years and collectively the universe has gotten soft. That is for this room, our biggest opportunity. There are just so many people that want it without putting in the work. It's true. This is why I love the Soviet energy in this room. Russians know how to fucking work. It's true. It's true. My Russian mother looked at me at I know you're on fucking delay. My Russian mother looked at me when I was 12 and she said, all right, that's it. I'm not buying you shit for the rest of your fucking life. That gets you to work real fast. My friends, determination matters. Determination really matters. And I ask you as we head into 2025 to focus on it. You, I got a good one for you. This one's gonna be very fun to say in this crowd. When I see the letter U, the first thing that comes to my mind is underrated. I am very fascinated by how many of you do not understand that it is better to be underrated than overrated. Many of you want to start a business so that you can get money to buy fancy shit. To look successful in front of others, you need the material items for your self esteem. You need the car and you need the watch and you need the bag and you need the stuff. I ask you to think very carefully why underrated is better than overrated. I believe too many of you want to look the part versus being the part. I believe that for many of you it's more interesting to look successful than actually be successful. As a nice Russian boy, I know that is a disease in Russian culture. Yeah. And so I ask all of you as you head into 2025, don't worry about impressing others. Don't worry about what people think about you. I promise you, when you're 90 years old and you're at the end of your life, you're not gonna give a shit what the stranger or the neighbor thought. Underrated is better than overrated. B big. I ask all of you, why not dream big back? Yeah. Back to the way I started this talk. Life is about perspective. I've been very fascinated over the last 20 years of how many people refuse or don't even know how to dream big. If you don't dream big, you have no chance of getting anywhere. The bigger you dream, the more likely you will go. Now, don't confuse dreaming big with delusion. If you're delusional, if you're not putting in the work, it's not gonna happen. You can't sit on your couch and and dream big. You've got to back up your big dreams. But I do believe that way too many people shortchange themselves. I believe deeply. I believe what I'm about to say. I believe almost everyone in this room is actually capable of much more than they think. That many of us, unfortunately, unfortunately have been surrounded by parents or our society that mitigated our dreams. I actually believe one of the most practical things in the world is to dream big. You have to be careful because sometimes when people hear that, they just make up ridiculous ideas. I'm going to be the next Elon Musk. Okay, John, you've got to be realistic. But if I accomplished anything in this talk today, if I got one person in this stadium to dream a little bit bigger than they used to dream, I believe it is a substantial accomplishment because I think it has a tremendous impact on their life. And I ask all of you to just dream a little bit bigger as you go into 2025. A was very easy for me when I saw it. I think about authenticity a lot. I think authenticity is a very important word. And it's also a word that comes very hard to people. Very similar to what I talked about earlier of people needing things for their insecurity. I'm fascinated by how much people struggle to be their full selves. I think about this a lot, actually. I wish. I wish everybody here was comfortable enough to always be themselves in every situation. Even at a conference like this, when you're meeting people or introducing yourself, people feel like they have to boist or they have to act different. Bigger than. It's a very interesting framework. There's something that is incredibly profound when you decide to become authentic. It's liberating. But more importantly, and this is very important, if you care about business and life, when you are authentic, you become fast. See, my friends, life is like sports. If you know anything about sports, whatever the sport, if somebody comes along and they're much faster than everybody else, they become incredibly dangerous. Speed. When you were fully authentic and you are not worried about being liked, if you're not worried about being judged, if your authentic self allows the people that should be around you be around you versus the people you think you want around you, you become fast, you become light. It becomes easy. I'm glad you get that. The other thing about authenticity that's important is if you heard me earlier in this speech and you decide that it is time to make content, you being authentic in your content will disproportionately grow your audience. So many people are struggling to grow on social media because the audience can smell them. They know it's not fully them. They can tell that they're being sold to, or they can't taste the real person. It just feels like everybody else. The more authentic you are, the more upside you will have. I implore all of you to go into your authenticity. Understood. I want to spend a lot of time on the word that comes to mind when I see the word I, the letter. Excuse me. This is going to be a fun one for me. I've started talking about this a little bit more, and I have a feeling this is going to be the part of the speech that really helps a lot of you going forward. The word that I'm obsessed with when I see the letter I is intuitive intuition. I've been thinking a lot about this. I don't know if any of you think about this. I always think, what do all of us not know that in 75 years humans are gonna laugh at us for not knowing? Today we know so many things that 100 years ago, humans knew nothing about. What is it today as we sit here that in 75 to 100 years, humans will make fun of us for not knowing? You know, like, I don't know that EarPods are drilling cancer into our brain and we should have never had cell phones on our head? Maybe. I hope not. What is it in a hundred years that people make fun of us or wonder why we didn't know? And if you asked me, my number one thing is that I believe over the last hundred years in society, we have become too focused on the brain. I believe that in the last hundred years, we have been too focused on the brain and have completely forgotten about the gut. I don't know if a lot of you have been following over the last 15 years in medicine. Maybe you or somebody in your family has been affected. But over the last decade, thank God, doctors are paying more attention to gut health. There's a lot of people who are finally, thank God, off of horrible medicine because people are really focusing on the gut health. That's beautiful. That excites me. I want everybody in this audience to see the gut from a different angle. I believe that too many people in this room make too many of their decisions based on the rational framework of the brain. I believe that in 75 years we will be laughed at for focusing too much on the brain and nothing on the gut. I believe that many of you have walked away from the best decision of your life because you did not trust your gut. I believe that intuition is incredibly underrated in our society. I believe that if you made more decisions based on what you feel that many more things would work for you. More relationships, more business decisions, more investments. Your gut and intuition is your disproportionate advantage. It is not replicatable. It is not commoditized. It is your core advantage in life. I hope me talking about it and the reason I asked for the lights is I'm watching you. I see some of you. I see that some of you are getting it. I hope this encourages you to go down the path. I would argue I'm getting to such a crazy place that I'm struggling. I believe in balance. Just, you know, gut is fine, but I like to look at rational stuff too. But I would be lying to you. After 20 years of a lot of success and a lot of failures, it's very obvious to me how this game is being played. I'm struggling. I'm trying, but I keep trying to bring the rational stuff. But I promise you, you know, it's funny when I come and fly across the world to do a talk like this, I wish I knew all of you very well what you would know about me if you understood of what I'm doing here. Is when I fly here, I say to myself, when you know, I'm very. I saw Casey today. I saw Randy today. I know they both spoke yesterday. I'm very friendly with them. Obviously some great speakers. I sit to myself and say, what is the one thing I can say? How many people can I get to think about something different? Why am I here? What value can I bring to you? I wish you understood how fiercely that burns inside of me when we talk about this last part. Intuition. I can feel a lot of you right now. Where you know, whether it's the relationship you're in, whether it's the job you have, whether it's a business decision or investment. I know. You know it's not right. I know. And I wonder, what the fuck can I say to give you the courage to get out, to jump? So many of us just sit in our shit. We sit in it. We sit in our shit, Gov. Noah. We sit in it. We sit in it. And I ask you, I ask you, if I'm poking at you from stage right now, to please have the courage to get out of it. If you follow your intuition, your life will be better. It'll be better. Thank you. That means a lot to me. My friends, the current math, the mathematics about being a human being, the current mathematics actually becoming a person sitting here, US, is 400 trillion to 1. The mathematics of you sitting here and being a fucking human being is 400 trillion to one. Now let me ask you if you've won the ultimate lottery of the universe. Cause I just want you to know every single person here won the ultimate lottery of the universe. Literally. Your mom could have gotten up for another glass of wine and you would not be sitting here. Literally. So I'm going to ask you if you literally won the single biggest lottery in the universe, are you just going to fucking sit and waste your fucking life away? My friends, most of the people here will not achieve their destiny because they were scared. Do you want to know what the number one weapon in the world is? Fear. Fear is the number one weapon in the world and the only thing that can combat it is hope and love. You must, first and foremost, if you're sitting here and you think you're coming to this conference to hear some sort of thing that's going to help your business or your life, you must hear this loud and clear. Nothing. Nothing. All the remarkable speakers in these two days, nothing, they say, will help you if you don't love yourself. Nothing. If you are unfortunate and your mother and father or someone else has instilled in you that you are not great, you must not cry about it. You must start to fix it. You must start to fix it. It is 2024. There has never been more opportunity in the world than today. Ever. This Internet thing, this blockchain thing, this is supreme opportunity. Our great grandparents had nothing of opportunity compared to us. It doesn't matter where you are, it doesn't matter where you were born, to who. The opportunity, the American dream is nothing compared to the opportunity of modern technology. Every single person here, legitimately has a chance to achieve whatever they want. But you and how you see it, and most of all your relationship with yourself is your jail or your freedom. Okay, I'm gonna take it from way up here to way down here. I'm going right back, my friends, I'm going back. I'm going very tactical. Every person in here must either themselves or have a team create content for them on whatever they are trying to achieve. If you want to be the mayor of a town, if you want to sell T shirts, if you want to build an empire, you must understand the tactical details that's going on. You must be self aware. Not everybody here is going to do good video. It's okay. One of the biggest mistakes right now is that many of you don't want to do social because you're scared of video. First, why are you scared of video? You're scared of video because you are insecure. You are scared that people are going to say you don't look good or that you're stupid. You literally. My friends, my number one goal in life at this point is to get everybody here out of high school. High school is over. Not for everybody, but high school is over. And unfortunately many of you still live as grown ups. Like we're in high school. You cannot live your life based on other people's opinions. If you live your life based on other people's opinions, you will never do anything. Once you get over that hump, you need to understand there's three ways to create content. Video, audio, or the written word. You can decide. For some of you, you're very good writers. For others like me, the camera is comfortable. For others it is audio. But you must going into 2025, if you came to this conference, you must pick your medium of choice and you must start creating content around your opinions, your interest, your expertise. The opportunity is too profound. I want to remind you, the odds of you sitting here right now and being born were 400 trillion to one. You were not born for a very long time. And I don't know if you heard, when you die, you are dead forever. We've got this little fucking thank God hundred year window now with modern medicine. Maybe fucking Elon or someone else will figure out how to keep us alive forever. I don't know. But I'm telling you right now, please, I beg you, stop wasting your hundred years on dumb shit like insecurity, little bit of random stuff that might help someone. Because that's my biggest obsession before I leave. Number one trend of 2025 live selling on social media. I don't know if you've seen Live shopping TikTok Shop. Many of you, if you pay attention to what's going on in China, it's been going on for a long time between TikTok Shop, between whatnot, between what I think Amazon and Walmart and Facebook and Instagram. How many people here sell a product? You sell something? Raise your hands. Stand up. I need to get a sense. Please, please don't sit. Stand up. If you sell something, a lot. Good. I'm glad I said this before I left. My friends, listen to me, please. This is one of the few things I'm good at. Everybody here, when you go home, you must search what's going on with live social shopping. What social media was in 2007, eight, nine, it was coming. Live shopping is coming. Every person standing should be selling their product on live social shopping. The people that move first in 2025 will make the most money. It's how it works. You can sit. Thank you. Please listen to me. Live social shopping next, not for next year, but for three, four years from now. And you should start next year. Live social shopping is big now, but for next year, I need you to start paying attention. There's something very big going on and for some of the entrepreneurs here, you're gonna take advantage of it and you're gonna do very well. How many people here? Are they themselves an influencer or they're in the influencer marketing business? Raise your hands. Okay, I have some good or bad news, depending on how you see the world in the next three or four years. One of the biggest trends in our society, it's already started. You can do pretty well next year, but it's going to get much bigger is the concept of virtual influencers. These are influencers who are not real people. They are AI avatars. What influencers have done to famous people, Virtual influencers are going to do to influencers. If you understand what intellectual property is, if you understand what I'm saying. Again, if you don't understand what I'm saying, I have good news. You can go to ChatGPT or Google and learn. Type in virtual influencers. Start getting educated. Especially if you make all your money as an influencer. You need to know what I'm talking about. It won't be tomorrow, but in the next 24, 36, 48 months. This is going to be a big trend. It's a big opportunity, but it's also a big vulnerability. You must pay attention to virtual influencers. Live social shopping, Virtual influencers the third one I've already touched on. I'm gonna say it again, cause I'm gonna pound it into your head. Into your head. Organic Social media posting. How many people here spend media dollars on social media to create a CAC and an ltv because you sell something and you're running math? Raise your hands. Good. My friends, I grew up in that game. For the last 20 years, the best CAC and LTV numbers in the world now are based on companies that run a very heavy organic social media play. And when that content does well, they slightly tweak it for performance and then they spend media. The top performing companies on CAC and LTV around the world right now will not spend $1 on media until the creative has proven to be successful in the algorithm. Because that is doing the creative testing, not your best practices. A and B testing. And then they pour money on it. It will be the standard. It is the biggest opportunity and it is why I've been yelling at you. For organic social media. The algorithm now is so good, it understands the quality of the creative. And the quality of the creative has always been the variable of success. Please dig into these three things. Please understand how these three things are happening right now. Live social shopping, organic social media to make your performance media better. And finally, virtual influencers. None of those things are achievable if you're anxious. None of those things are achievable if you're depressed. None of those things are achievable if you're not good. Please. So many of you are in the 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. 1. 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, in 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.