- So at 30, I started Wine Library TV, YouTube blows up.
At 31 I'm on Conan O'Brien, Ellen,
there's articles being written about me,
now they're writing that the business grew
from three to 60 million dollars in sales,
I'm becoming this guy.
I got so many goddamn emails from friends in high school,
during that period when I was showing up
in all these magazines and TV shows,
and every single one of them, was like
"Hey Gary, you remember me from high school?
"Oh my God, you're so lucky."
I wrote back every single one of them, and said,
"Let me just clarify one thing, I'm not lucky,
"I worked. I worked every goddamn weekend and every holiday,
"since I was 14 years old,
"so you can keep that luck shit in your pocket."
("Inertia" by Irregular Expression)
Every day, every day that I live my life,
I get five to 27 emails from people
that are telling me that they are quitting,
or they should quit, or,
or are really coming to me as a last resort
to convince them not to quit I think a lot of times, or,
or maybe give them confirmation that they should quit.
You know, "Hey Gary, this is Sally,
"I've been doing my blog now for nine months
"and I'm not getting the results that I like to see
"or that I was promised" or that, you innuendo.
"Should I give up, like, you know, should I,
"is my content not good enough,
"am I, is my voice not good enough?"
And I think about it, every time,
every time I see these emails,
every time people ask me at conferences I think about it,
I think about how sad I am
that I wasn't documenting my life,
or putting out content, or doing The #AskGaryVee Show,
during those five and a half years of Wine Library TV,
especially those 18 months when nobody was watching.
You know the story that's never told,
is the story that I was building Wine Library
to a huge company long before Wine Library TV,
and that the first month that I did Wine Library TV,
was the first time that Wine Library
had not grown 30% over the prior year's revenue.
So not only did I have the patience
to let it play itself out and win,
it was a scenario where I was actually losing money
by being patient.
Many of the people that are going to watch this video
are not achieving what they want,
and are lacking the patience,
and think everything happens overnight,
and that is coming at the cost of an unhappy life,
or no loss financially, just loss in time.
Just coming at the expense of Angry Birds,
or House of Cards marathons, or the bowling team,
or hanging out with friends and having a beer,
or reading a magazine,
or whatever the hell gets you off and excited as a hobby.
It's coming at that expense,
it's not coming at the expense of actual money,
or something, or pain, or, you know,
it's coming at the expense of a luxury.
And so to me,
the insanity, really, and that's what I'm gonna,
you know, the disproportional misunderstanding
that there's not a person that you can name, not one,
there is zero people that you can name,
that had it happen overnight.
Even the nine year-old Stevie Wonder
and six year-old Michael Jackson,
there were years of work put in prior
by their parents, by their uncles.
Even with the greatest talents, even with LeBron,
he seemed like so young when he hit the scene.
Guess what, he wasn't,
he'd already been playing basketball for 15 goddamn years.
Even though you all say to me like, wow, you did it,
I didn't do it, I did it when I was 14 years old,
and 15 years old, and 16 years old, and 17 years old,
and 18 years old, and 19 years old, and 20 years old,
and 21 years old, and 22 years old,
which are all the years that every single weekend,
while my friends went to the Jersey shore
and hooked up with girls,
while my friends went fishing,
while my friends hung out and threw round the football,
and lived the leisure life,
every weekend, every single weekend,
let me just say it one more time, every weekend,
every day, from the day I got out of school
to the day I went back into school, every vacation day,
all of them, not a good amount of them, every day,
from 7am to back then 8pm, every day,
I was learning the wine business.
I was honing my craft to be a good salesman.
I was figuring out how to be an operator.
I watched how my dad interacted with his employees,
what I liked about it, what I didn't.
I watched my cousin Bobby interact with the employees,
I took what I liked from it, what I didn't.
I was 30 years old before any of you ever saw me.
Go show me the videos on YouTube right now,
that have me under 30. They don't exist.
I was putting in the work, for half my life, from 15 to 30,
where I built an actual business. I put in actual work,
and so if you want to tell me that every goddamn moment
of my life between 15 and 30 is an overnight success,
then knock yourself out, but that is complete bullshit,
and every one of you know it.
And so when you email me, that you've started this thing,
that you have the audacity
to want it to be the rest of your life.
The audacity, really, the entitlement,
that you think that you should be able to do something
that you love so much, for the rest of your life,
that makes you enough money,
to be able to do it for the rest of your life,
that you're giving up after four months?
That you're giving up after two years?
As a matter of fact, every single person watching this video
should be trying for that moment
for the rest of their life, period.
You might hit pay dirt at 80, and cool,
then you can really do exactly what you love from 80 to 100.
My friends, it is a gift, is a gift,
to wake up in the morning, and be able to do what you want,
for the rest of your life.
The way you do that,
is by becoming a quote unquote, "overnight success".
You know, the excuse that everybody uses
to deploy against somebody who's actually put in work,
for the last decade, and got themselves into a position
where they can do something pretty rad,
that we all think is cool, and we all wish we could do.
You know, that thing,
the thing that you say to yourself
to make yourself feel better,
about when you're laying in bed
and playing a goddamn game on your phone,
instead of putting in the work to achieve what you want.
Nothing in life is free, nothing happens overnight,
it all takes tons and tons of work,
and tons and tons of talent,
and tons and tons of serendipity,
but my friends, luck, serendipity,
there's a forced culture within that.
You know, you'll just sit in your room,
hoping and then something lucky happens,
nobody just knocks on your house's door and says
"Congratulations, you've been awarded this".
Luck comes from being in the right spot.
I've been really lucky, because I fucking bleed
out of my eyes every day of my life and work my face off.
You're really lucky when you're at that 11:30pm meeting,
where the lucky thing happens, pretty cool,
since all you were fucking sleeping.
I was pretty lucky, weird, that I scheduled that meeting
'cause I did a ton of things for 30 years,
that allowed me to even have that meeting
in the first place, that gave me the leverage
to have that lucky thing that happened.
There's no overnight successes, period, they don't exist.
Show me, leave a comment in YouTube,
leave the name, explain to me, tell me, show me,
let me know, show me the overnight success,
because I'll show you you, justifying in your brain,
something that is just not true, period.
("Inertia" by Irregular Expression)